Barb, my secretary, stuck her head in the door and said, "Your wife is on line 2."

I gave her a little wave to indicate that I'd heard her, finished adding the column of numbers I was working on and then picked up the phone.

"Hey sweetie, what's up?"

"Just wanted to remind you that I'm going out with Julie after work for dinner and a couple of drinks. I left your dinner in the fridge covered in Saran Wrap. Just put it in the microwave for three minutes on high."

"Should I wait up?"

"Dirty old man!"

"Hey, I know what you are like when you come home after going out with her so don't blame me for taking advantage of it."

"I should be home by ten if you can keep your eyes open that long. Love you baby, see you when I get home."

"Love you too baby, bye."

I had a scowl on my face when I hung up the phone. I did not like Julie, never had, never would. She was just a little too wild and free for my taste. She had been married three times and even though I had never been able to confirm it (Bev flatly denied it was true) I'd heard that the reasons for the divorces was that Julie had been caught playing around. I didn't know if it were true or not, but there was just something about her that set my teeth on edge. But she was Bev's best friend so there wasn't much I could do about it except live with it.

Julie stood up for Bev at our wedding and since then she and Julie had gotten together at least once a week for coffee and they were constantly on the phone with each other. It hadn't been too bad there for a while, but then things changed. The big change came when Max joined the Marines and Julie (named for Bev's friend) went off to college. With nothing much except an empty nest on her hands Bev decided to go to work. Julie got her a job where she worked and after that they went out for dinner and drinks at least once a week and at least once a week they stopped after work for drinks with their co-workers.

While I would just as soon she not spend as much time with Julie I did enjoy the hell out of the nights she did. She would come home and fuck my brains out. I asked her once what the deal was.

"Promise you won't get angry?"

"Don't know. When you put it like that it is like telling me that there might be something to be angry about."

"Let me back up then. You know I love you, right?"

"Yes."

"You know I wouldn't do anything to screw up what we have, right?"

"Why am I suddenly start to feel like I'm not going to like what I'm about to hear?"

"Don't be that way baby. It isn't bad. The reason I come home horny is because when we stop for drinks we also dance and I'm a good looking girl even if I do say so myself. I get hit on a lot and when I dance with the guys who ask me I get felt up a lot. I never let it go anywhere, but it does wind me up and as soon as I get home to you you have to unwind me."

"That's the nights you stop after work, but what about the nights when it is just you and Julie?"

"Same thing. We eat and then go to a lounge for drinks. Guys start moving in on us and we let them buy us drinks and dance with us and they wind me up and you get the benefit."

She saw the look on my face and said, "Come on baby, I've never even so much as kissed one of them. I let them buy me drinks and I dance with them. They rub up against me, cop a feel of my boobs, run their hands over my ass and I let them because I know I'm getting them hot and I'm going to leave them hanging. They all can see my rings and they try to come on to me anyway so I feel they deserve to be left with a case of blue balls. Honest baby; I'm just having fun and you get to reap all the benefits."

It was true, I was reaping plenty of benefits. As with a lot of married couples as we got older we had slipped into a rut. The frequency of our lovemaking had diminished to once a week and sometimes even once every two weeks. My sex life had dramatically improved once Bev had gone back to work. So I kept my dislike of Julie to myself, the same as I had for the last twenty years.

The next four years slid by. Max was discharged and using his benefits from the service he went to college to earn a degree to back up what the service had taught him about computers. Julie graduated with a degree in Marketing and landed a job with a large advertising agency and Bev had moved up in her company to become the office manager. She was still stopping one a week after work with her co-workers, but Julie had gotten married again and their dinner nights slacked off to once every two weeks, but I was still reaping the benefits.

My world turned upside down on a Monday in June. I was taking a client to lunch and we were sitting at a table at Carl's Chop House when he said:

"I wonder if today is my lucky day."

"I beg your pardon?"

"See the woman just walking over to the booth along the wall?"

I looked over and saw Julie. "Yes, I see her."

"I ran into her and another chick one night at a lounge over on Berkley. What a wild night that was. My buddy and me bought them drinks and danced a couple of dances with them and when I hit on her all she said was, "You got a place?" The two of them were like nymphos. Me and my buddy couldn't keep up with them. They wrung us out. That one" and he pointed at Julie, "Suggested to the other one that they go back to the lounge and see if they could pick up two more. The other one thought about it for a minute and then said no, that she had to hurry home to her husband and then she took her wedding rings out of her purse and put them on. Can I ask her to join us?"

I was saved from having to say anything because just as Cliff was standing up to go over to Julie her husband came in and joined her. "Oh well," Cliff said, "You snooze, you lose."

We finished our lunch and left and luckily neither Julie or Paul noticed me. I don't know how I would have handled it if they had seen me and waved me over, especially with Cliff tagging along behind me.

After I left Cliff I went back to my office and stared out the window as I rolled what Cliff had told me over in my mind. The other woman couldn't have been Bev. She just wasn't that kind of a woman. It had to be some other friend of Julie's. I kept telling myself that, over and over, but the thought had been planted and it started to grow. Did I really know what Bev and Julie did when they went out? No, I only knew what Bev told me which was that she cock teased and then came home horny for me to take care of. Was it true? Did she only cock tease? And was she horny because of it? Or could she possibly be horny because some guy she picked up didn't get the job done and I had to come in and finish up. I didn't know, but I knew I had to find out.

I was ashamed of myself for doubting the woman I loved, but as tight as she and Julie were it was possible that Bev was the woman Cliff had seen with Julie. I didn't believe it, I really didn't, but a small very insistent voice in the back of my head kept saying:

"Check it out; put it to bed; eliminate the worry."

I made up my mind to follow Bev the next night she stopped with her co-workers and the next time she had dinner with Julie.

I knew where Bev and her co-workers stopped and so I stopped by there one Monday after work and checked the place out. There were several dark corners where I could sit and barely be noticed. The question was where would Bev and her friends sit? Figuring that there would be at least six of them I eliminated to booths. Bev said they danced a lot so I thought they would probably sit as close to the dance floor as they could get. They would probably put at least two tables together so I looked around the room and picked what I thought would be the most likely spot.

I needed a disguise just in case Bev or Julie did look toward my dark corner. I have 20/20 vision so I bought a pair of heavy horn rimmed reading glasses and punched out the lenses. I never wore a hat so a ball cap with the bill pulled down would partially cover my face. A work shirt with a pocket protector full of pens and pencils would take the place of my normal three piece suit and complete the disguise and I could only hope and pray that it would be enough. If Bev or Julie spotted me and saw through the disguise there would be hell to pay. There wouldn't be any way I could explain it and not come out looking bad. Especially if Bev were innocent.

But I had to know! I just had to know!

Wednesday was the day that Bev and he co-workers always stopped. They got off work at 5 o'clock so at ten to five I was sitting in my dark corner waiting for Bev and her group to arrive. The night went pretty much as Bev had always described it. I say pretty much because she left out a few things when she told me what she did. Like the fact that some guys got their hands inside her blouse, some guys slid their hands down the inside of the front of her skirt (and probably her panties) and she made no move to push those hands away. She never mentioned running her hand over the bulge in their pants and rubbing it or squeezing it.

One of the things she did tell me was that she never even so much as kissed a guy and that was a flat out lie. I watched her make out with three different guys in their booths or at their tables, but there were no trips out to the parking lot. The one thing that I did see that really bothered me was that I saw her left hand was bare - she had taken her rings off. What was it Cliff had said? When it was time for the woman to go home she took her wedding rings out of her purse and put them on?

Bev was usually home by ten-thirty so at ten I began looking for an opening where I could get up without being noticed and get out of the bar so I could be home when she got there. I saw her look at her watch and she said something to Julie and the two of them got up and headed for the ladies room. I got up and left as soon as they disappeared through the bathroom door.

I was in bed when Bev got home and she was stripping off her clothes as she came through the doorway.