“Who cares about that? Does it mean you’re not going to kill me?” Mark wanted to know.

“What it means is that Gabrielle won’t be digging through garbage or attending underground sex parties anymore. Well, unless I go with her. It also means that if someone is harassing her because they’re hoping that she’ll leave me, they’ll probably just give up.”

My happy balloon promptly burst. “That’s why you asked me to marry you? So that you can keep an eye on me and keep me out of trouble?”

“No. I asked you to marry me because I love you and I want to be with you always, you nutty broad. The fact that I might be able to keep you out of trouble is just a perk.”

“So why are you guys back early?” Jess asked.

“Because Braden missed his girlfriend too much,” Adam answered.

“We finished up the programs we were scheduled for and I was able to get us an earlier flight. There wasn’t anything of any importance to us going on tomorrow,” Braden replied, glancing at Adam.

“Because Braden missed his girlfriend too much,” Adam repeated.

“Right now I would like my girlfriend to come back with me to my place, but I would like her to please go change her clothes first so that my doorman doesn’t think I’m bringing home a hooker. By the way, what were you saying about Marla?”

“I’ll tell you about it on the way,” I said, heading off to my room to change. I was back in five minutes in yoga pants and a tee-shirt.

“Come on Mata Hari, let’s get out of here,” Braden said. We said goodbye to everyone and headed back to his place with Bruno.

Along the way I told him about Marla and the real story about the garbage. He was pretty shocked but he still laughed when I told him about Cam’s client showing up. At least he didn’t sound angry anymore. It was starting to sink in slowly that he had proposed. I understood it on an intellectual level but I don’t think that it had really hit me yet. I decided that he had been through enough stress because of me and I was going to comfort him with a nice massage and a bath together. When we got to his apartment I headed straight for the bathroom and started filling the tub, throwing in some eucalyptus bath oil. The scent was supposed to relax you. Bruno ran off to check the apartment for whatever Bruno always checked it for.

“Hey,” I called out to him. “Come here and let me not confront you.”

“I could use a lot of non-confrontation,” he said, poking his head in the door and starting to peel off his clothes. He looked really good peeling off his clothes incidentally.

“It must be very traumatic for a former player to ask somebody to marry him,” I teased.

“You have no idea.” He smiled. I took my clothes off too while he watched with a look that was becoming less relaxed by the second. So much for the scent of eucalyptus oil.

“You sit in front of me and scoot down. I want to rub your back and shoulders. You seem tense,” I said and he actually laughed out loud.

“Ya think? I wonder why.”

“Well, I may cause you some tension but I also know how to relieve it.” I slipped into the wonderfully warm water and sighed. He slipped in with me and sat between my legs, leaning back against me.

“Mm. I like the way your chest feels all slippery up against me,” he murmured, wiggling around a little. I started massaging his shoulders and he made a sound like a lion purring.

“I missed you,” I said quietly in his ear while plying him with gentle little kisses.

“I missed you too.” His shoulders were loosening up and he was sounding much more content.

“You’re sure you want to marry me?”

“Yes. I may want a ‘do-over’ on the proposal though. I think if I try really hard I could probably make it more romantic than that,” he said with a laugh.

“It will make a great story for the grandkids.”

“Oh yeah sure. How did you ask grandma to marry you, grandpa? Well, it was the night that she attended the orgy dressed like a dominatrix… By the way, when we tell our parents we might want to skip that part.”

“Our parents! Oh my God, that’s right. Do you think your parents are going to object because we haven’t been together long?”

“Are you kidding? My parents love you. They’ll be thrilled speechless. My dad knew he wanted to marry my mom after their first date anyway.”

“Really?”

“So did your dad.”

“He did? After meeting Bubbe?!”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “That’s true love, I’ll tell you.”

“So, he told you that, huh?”

“Both of them told me that when I had my man-to-man relationship talks with them. They’ll probably both suggest that we have a long engagement anyway though. I’m okay with that as long as you move in with me.”

“Jess won’t have a roommate.”

“She’ll find another one and we can afford to cover your rent until she does. Now, how about if you comfort other parts of me,” he said taking my hand off of his shoulder and placing it on a part of his body that was quite unrelaxed at the moment. I reached over for a bath sponge and began giving him a massage of a different kind. His breathing got heavy and he started to groan. I loved watching him get really aroused. “Sit on my lap,” he said in a thick voice. I changed position and thoroughly enjoyed the look of bliss on his face as he slid inside me.

“I love you Braden,” I gasped as he raised his h*ps and pushed into me harder.

“I love you too. Kiss me.” I kissed him and lost myself in all of the wonderful sensations.

By the time we had both completely released our tension the water had cooled so we got out, toweled off and headed for bed. Bruno was asleep in his doggy bed already as Braden and I snuggled in and fell asleep holding each other.

* * *

The sound of Braden’s cell phone on the bedside table woke us up the next morning. He reached over to pick it up as I groggily glanced at the clock. It was 9a.m. We had slept really late. It sounded like he was talking to either Adam or Mark.

“It’s on now? Okay, yeah. I’ll call you later.” He hung up and reached for the remote to the TV mounted on the wall. “Apparently an underground sex party got raided last night and a few notable local personalities were picked up.”

“A few?” Who had been there besides Cole, I wondered. Braden clicked on the news and we sat watching in shock as the full story unfolded.

Police say that the raid was the result of an ongoing investigation into the operation of illegal sex parties.

“Ongoing investigation my ass!” I said angrily. Braden shushed me.

Among those arrested were Pennsylvania State Representative Cole Stephenson. There was a shot of Cole with his head down walking to a car flanked by a couple of high-priced local defense attorneys. Socialite, Marla Benton…

“Marla was there! She must have been working the party!” It was a nice added bonus.

And society matron Veronica Mason, who may possibly have been the organizer of the party, known as Fanny Hill.

“Mrs. Mason! Holy shit! The whole gang was there!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Well, it looks like you’ll get access to handwriting samples from all three of your suspects. I’m sure they wrote out some kind of statement. If not, though, I’ll get a subpoena. It shouldn’t be too hard now.”

“I’ll give Steve Flynn a call and see what the earliest he’ll be looking at them would be. I’m not expecting today, since it’s Sunday.”

I was wrong though. Steve was available later that afternoon if we could get something from the arrest the previous night. Braden got on the phone with his office and found out that all three had made brief written statements, so the samples were ours. We made arrangements to meet Steve at the Roundhouse, Philadelphia police headquarters at three.

“I can’t believe that nasty frigid woman was hosting sex parties,” Braden said, shaking his head.“I hope it doesn’t reflect badly on the foundation that she was a donor.”

“I doubt it, but it will give Alan something to keep him busy.” I remembered how stressed he had seemed when the journalists started questioning him about my dad and I felt kind of sorry for him. But then that was his job.

“What do you think will happen to them?”

“I think they’ll hire high-priced defense lawyers, who aren’t half as good as public defenders, but who will still manage to get them off with probation. Then I’m sure that all three will write books that will hit the New York Times bestseller list and they’ll do the talk show circuit. It’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”

“Poor Felicity.”

“Oh come on Gabrielle. She can’t stand her mother and this will probably make her the coolest Goth chick on the scene.”

“Maybe you’re right. Now that the letter writer is probably in custody, do you still want to get married?”

“For the final time, yes! Don’t you?”

“Yes, definitely. I love you and I’m sure that I want to be with you. I’m just still kind of shocked that it happened so fast.”

“I’m not. I knew from the first date too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, do you want to hear about it from my perspective?”

“Actually I do. The male mind fascinates me. So tell me about our first date through your eyes.”

“The first thing I noticed, being male, was that you looked incredibly hot. You’re very attractive dressed for court, but with your hair down, dressed in a short skirt with bare legs, you look amazing.”

“I would have thought you would have noticed that my shirt kind of showed off my boobs.”

“That goes without saying. You know how I feel about those.” He glanced down happily for a moment and then continued, “I could feel the sexual tension between us and it was turning me on from the very beginning.”

“I could feel it too.”

“I probably would have been totally distracted by thoughts of nailing you, if it weren’t for the fact that you said that you liked walking in the city in the evening because you always felt like something exciting was about to happen. I just found that really cool and I couldn’t think of anybody else who would say something like that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and then when you told me later that you wanted to have hot sweaty monkey sex with me, that was it. I was done for and I knew it.”

“I’m sure lots of women have made you that offer.”

“Not that way.” He laughed. “And we talked for hours and found out that we had a lot in common. The biggest thing, though, was the places you took me. Anybody who could see true quality beyond superficial appearances was one classy chick in my opinion. And I could also see that you were a kind person without being condescending.”

“That’s so sweet. I knew you were a classy guy, and a good one, from how you acted in court.” “Last but not least, when I kissed you and you were so responsive, you almost drove me out of my mind. In another five minutes I probably would have begged you to invite me in. And speaking of inviting me in, my morning friend is visiting.” He gave me a slightly lecherous smile. Bruno didn’t even stir. He had become so accustomed to Mommy and Daddy having hot sweaty monkey sex that it didn’t even phase him anymore.

Later that day we sat across from Steve Flynn as he carefully examined the samples.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t be one hundred percent certain, of course, but it’s my opinion this note was not written by any of these three people. I don’t have the original from New York for comparison yet, but what I see in the facsimile just confirms that. Your anonymous letter writer is likely a different individual.”

I was stunned. I was so sure that it was one of those three. All kinds of thoughts raced through my head. How had some other person even known we were together? What was their motive? How had they known where we were in New York? For a brief second Cam came to mind. He had confessed that he was still attracted to me but he had sounded completely sincere about being happy for us. No, it wasn’t Cam. My gut told me it wasn’t. So, who was it then?

“Baby, don’t worry,” Braden said putting his arm around me. “We’ll make sure that there’s a full investigation and you’re going to move in with me and we’re going to get married and everything is going to be fine. Nobody is going to bother us.”

“Okay.” I smiled at him even though I was worried that those sounded like more famous last words.