Happenstance Ch. 03

"I wish you would stop referring to Mum that way, Matt," Shelley said. "I know she hurt you badly, but she'd not the same person she was back then."

"She may be a mother to you," I responded. "But she'll always be a slut to me. A cheetah can never change her spots. Any woman who could do to her husband what she did to me will always be a slut in my eyes."

That last comment seemed to have a greater impact on Shelley than I thought was warranted, and she shuddered in my arms before bursting into a bout of sobbing the likes of which I'd never seen from her before. It was as if her world had collapsed, and she had seen her whole family disappearing into a bottomless sinkhole. Her cries carried such a sound of helplessness that I instantly wanted to eat my words.

I knew I couldn't take them back, but I swore then that I would never again let my anger control my mouth. I never wanted to hurt anyone the way I hurt Shelley that night.

"I'm so sorry, Baby Girl," I said over and over as I attempted to comfort her. While speaking softly to calm her, I rubbed her back, just as I had done when she was a small child agonising over some physical or emotional injury.

It was half an hour before her sobbing stopped; half an hour during which I had been sipping on my Scotch and trying to work out what nerve I'd hit.

'Perhaps she'll tell me when she recovers,' I thought.

When I felt she had calmed enough for me to leave her alone for a few minutes, I headed to our bathroom, returning with a wet washcloth and a towel to clean her up. With that job done, I went to the kitchen to retrieve the box of tissues we kept there. I also refilled our drinks - replacing her wine with a large glass of water - and returned to the living room.

"I think that's enough for tonight," I said, handing her the glass of water as I resumed my seat. "You're done in. Why don't I help to bed? We can finish this discussion over the weekend."

"Are you coming to bed with me?" Shelley asked.

"No," I answered. "I thought I might come back down and finish my drink after tucking you in."

"Then the answer is no," she said. "I'd never sleep knowing you're down here mulling over tonight's events and letting your anger control your thoughts. Besides, with the mood you're in, you'd end up finishing that bottle of Glenfiddich, and I'd find you asleep on the settee when I came downstairs tomorrow morning.

"We've never gone to bed with issues like this hanging over us before tonight - hell, we've never had an issue as serious as this to confront - so why would we want to start doing so tonight? Let's get everything out into the open. Then we'll know where we stand. Or at least you'll have all the facts to mull over rather than building a picture of events based on unsupported imaginings.

"Isn't that how you taught me to work on a story? Make sure you have all the pieces before putting the jigsaw puzzle together?"

I nodded my head in agreement. I was surprised at how quickly she'd been able to switch from her earlier emotional outburst to rational thinking. There was an element of determination in her voice that told me no matter how unpleasant I might find what she was about to share with me, she wouldn't hold anything back and that she was prepared to let the chips fall where they may.

"First, let me reiterate that I was just as surprised as you were when Mum turned up at tonight's function," she said after I'd reminded her that she had the floor. "I had no idea she would be there. Oh, I knew she and Dan were in a relationship, but I hadn't received a hint - from either Mum or Dan - that he had invited her to attend as his plus-one partner. I mean, why would he? Last year, he turned up with a big-titted bimbo on his arm."

I couldn't help myself. I had to smile at Shelley's inability to see the irony in what she had said. Slut. Bimbo. The words were often interchangeable.

Sitting as she was at the other end of the settee with her legs tucked up under her, she saw my smile. Her face flushed as she realised the implication of her words.

"Stop it, Matt," she admonished. "I'm trying to be serious. Besides, Mum doesn't have the boobs to be a bimbo.

"Anyway...," she then proceeded to tell me about her mother joining them on their trip to Mount Isa. How, apparently at a loose end, Charlie had asked to join them at the last minute. How Shelley had received permission from both Dan and her boss for her to do so. How the twin bed configuration of the accommodations made it possible for the two women to share a room. And how Dan and Charlie had hooked up and had ended up spending their days and nights together. The only thing she didn't mention was how Harry had spent his nights.

When I asked about it, she told me he had found a spare bed in a room occupied by a cameraman from another network. Apart from the difference between Harry's mention of sharing a room with a cameraperson and Shelley's use of the term, cameraman, the two stories tallied.

"That's a relief," I said when she had clarified that point. "It would have been awkward having to share your room with your cameraman while your mother was shacked up with your producer.

"So, just to make it clear," I said. "Dan and your mother took a liking to each other and turfed Harry out of his bed so they could have a bit of privacy while they played hide the sausage. Harry found somewhere to sleep in a room occupied by a fellow cameraperson. And, with all the hanky-panky going on around you, you spent your nights alone wishing you were home with me doing the same thing. Have I got that right?"

"Yes," she answered, her eyes dropping to study her hands as she spoke. That had been the same avoidance response I had received from Harry when I'd put the same question to him. Both of them were hiding something.

'Don't overthink it,' I told myself. 'She's probably trying to cover for Harry. After all, he wouldn't want word of his indiscretions to get back to his wife. And whether she approved or disapproved of his actions, the old 'what happens in Vegas - or Mount Isa, in this case - stays in Vegas' rule would be as true of reporting crews as it was for any other group of work colleagues when away from home.'

I'd seen the same thing myself when attending conferences. Male and female reporters would pair up for the duration of the gathering, with not a single word of their dalliances leaving the venue when it was time to return home. I loved Shelley too much to allow myself to become involved in such a betrayal of my marriage vows. And I believed Shelley was the same. There was no way she would break her vows for a few nights of sexual experimentation with someone she'd met at a rodeo.

"Hmmm," I murmured to cover my thoughts.

"Okay," I then said. "But if everything was so above board, why the secrecy? How do you explain my not knowing about Dan and Charlie before being blindsided by her appearance at the function tonight?"

"I'm sorry, My Darling," Shelley responded sheepishly. "I should have told you about Mum coming to Mount Isa with us, if not before the event, then certainly afterwards."

"Afterwards would have been nice," I said. "But before would have been better. You say it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but you had enough time to run it by your boss and Dan beforehand. And there was time to make airline and hotel bookings. Why couldn't you find time to tell me about your plans? Wasn't one of the things we'd agreed upon long before we married that there would be no secrets between us?"

"You're right. By not telling you, I turned an item of harmless information into a secret. And that was stupid. I didn't tell you before the trip because I believed that, feeling the way you do about her, you'd try to talk me out of taking her. I thought that if I put off telling you about her coming with us until afterwards, you'd see that she wasn't the bad influence on me you thought her to be.

"The trouble was that the longer I put off telling you about it after we returned, the harder it became. In the end, I decided not to tell you at all, thinking that what you didn't know wouldn't hurt you."

"And how did that work out for you?" I asked.

"Abysmally," she answered.

"That's the problem with secrets," I explained. "Regardless of how much we want them to, they can't remain undiscovered forever. No matter how insignificant, well-intentioned or deeply hidden they may be, happenstance will always ensure they are eventually exposed to those from whom they are being kept; usually - as happened tonight - at a time least favourable to the secret holder.

"The thing about secrets you don't appear to understand is that they depended on lies to support them. And it's those lies that, once they begin to fray, need more lies to hold them together.

"You might not have seen not telling me about Charlie accompanying you to Mount Isa as a lie, but that's exactly what it was; a lie of omission. No matter how well-intentioned your reasons might have been, you've made me wonder how much I can rely on anything you tell me. There was a time - right up until tonight, in fact - when I knew I could trust you. But now, I'm not so sure."

That comment brought on another flood of tears, which, to my way of thinking, were a bit more emotional than my words required.

"You're right about one thing, though," I continued once her tears had abated. "I would certainly have tried talking you out of taking the slut with you had I known beforehand. I don't trust her and, knowing how much she would love to see our marriage destroyed, wouldn't put it past her to attempt to lead you into a situation that would bring that about."

Her response to that was another bout of heart-rending sobbing. She was so wrung out by the time that crying episode ended that I decided to end our discussion. I knew she was still hiding something but hoped it was only Harry's liaison with his unnamed cameraperson.

"There's something I have to tell you," Shelley said between sobs as I began to stand as a precursor to leading her up to bed. Thinking this was something I didn't want to hear, my heart was thumping as I sat back down.

"As you know," she started, "there's an unwritten rule that says, 'what happens while on assignment, stays wherever that location might be'. I don't know what you people in the print media call it, but among the television networks, it's known as the Vegas Amendment."

"We call it much the same thing," I said, interrupting her. "I'm pleased to say, though, that I've never found myself in a position where I've had to rely on anyone to apply it to my actions. But please continue."

"I wouldn't have thought you would, Darling," Shelley responded. "But... but I'm pleased to hear it."

"Okay," she said after a slight pause, which I assumed she needed to collect her thoughts after I'd cut in on her. "So, while I've never been involved in anything that would fall into the category of inappropriate behaviour while we've been away from home, I know Dan and Harry take advantage of any opportunity that might arise to share their beds with the ladies of whatever town we might be visiting. Because we are only in those smaller locations for one or two nights, however, those are short-lived flings.

"Mount Isa is different. We, and other network crews, are in town for much longer. And because it is an annual event, there are opportunities for longer-term relationships to form. Some crew members see the rodeo as a chance to meet up with sleeping partners from previous events and rekindle the friends-with-benefits relationships they have been involved in; some of them for years.

My previous cameraman, Stuart, was one of those. And it looks like Harry is following in his footsteps. He and Tricia - his cameraman, or cameraperson as you put it - coupled up on the first night and spent every night together after that. I don't know about Dan. He was with me last year and, so far as I knew, spent his nights in town with a string of rodeo queens.

The producer I had before Dan - Denis Wright - was a happily married man who, like you, would no more think about cheating on his wife than trying to fly from the roof of our hotel. With his permission, I used him as my beard, which allowed me to fend off the advances of the predators that prowled the town's pubs, clubs and hotel bars during rodeo week. Our arrangement worked so well that I don't doubt there were some who thought we were an item during the two years we worked together, which, of course, was the plan. I was sorry to see him retire at the end of 2013.

"Without George during the 2014 event, I was a fifth wheel, so after a couple of after-dinner drinks and a few turns on the dancefloor, I left Dan and Stuart to their own devices and went to my room. After speaking to you and the twins, I'd spend some time reviewing the following day's schedule before showering and settling in to read whatever book I brought with me.

"It was the same this year. The two exceptions being that Harry spent his time with Tricia and, rather than Dan seeing to the needs of a bevy of beautiful rodeo groupies, he had Charlie. The only change to my normal routine was that, with Mum being with us, I felt I should spend a bit of time with her. Not knowing when I would return to my room, I called you and the children before going down to dinner. By the time I discovered that my presence wasn't required, we'd already agreed to the timetable, so I left that schedule in place for the remainder of that trip."

Satisfied that I now had the full story and relieved that my fears had not been realised, I helped Shelley to her feet and led her up to bed.

Our coupling that night was among the gentlest and most passionate we'd ever shared. We made gentle love to every inch of each other's bodies, during which I brought her to at least six orgasms of varying magnitude, and she gave me one. But we saved the best 'til last. As soon as I entered her, she went off like a crazy woman, repeatedly shouting, "Claim me! Claim me!", as I pushed my rock-hard phallus as deep into her as I'd ever been. She didn't stop coming and squirting until I blew my lava-hot cream well up into her long-sterile womb. Then, with a drawn-out moan, she passed out, experiencing the little death for the first time in years.

Also for the first time in years, my penis refused to deflate, so, turning her onto her side, I stayed buried in her until she recovered.

"No. No. No," she yelled as I began to withdraw. "I need you inside me. I just wish I could keep you there forever. After squeezing my shaft with her vaginal muscled for what must have been ten minutes, she pushed me out of her so she could turn onto her stomach. She then tucked her legs under her, pressing her breasts into the mattress and raising her magnificent heart-shaped derriere in the air, and begged me to take her from behind.

Putting a couple of pillows under my knees to get extra height, I entered her at a downward angle, rubbing her G-spot with every inward and outward motion and tickling the mouth of her cervix on every stroke. Each of my outward pulses brought with it a quantity of my earlier release, which I reached around beneath her and collected. Some of it I rubbed on her clitoris, but the bulk of it I slathered on her anal bud, pushing my lubricated fingers deeper and deeper into her rectum, synchronising their movements with my penile ministrations.

As I felt her orgasm approaching, I pulled all the way out of her vagina and replaced my fingers with my long, rigid shaft. She started to climax as soon as I bottomed out, the pulsations of her sphincters bringing me along with her. As she'd done earlier, she screamed and squirted her way through another massive orgasm as I pumped my sperm up into her bowels.

I was still pumping as she collapsed beneath me, so I followed her all the way down until she lay flat on her stomach. Once again, she refused to let me pull out of her, her sphincters holding me tightly until I was too soft to grip, all the while shuddering through numerous aftershocks.

---oooBJSooo---

It took a while to put what I'd seen as a breach of trust behind me. While I was convinced that Shelley had done nothing wrong, it hurt to know that she had lied to me to hide her mother's involvement in her working life. The question that plagued me, though, was whether or not she'd told me the whole truth about that trip. Trust was important to me, and although she hadn't completely destroyed it, she had certainly put a few dings in it.

Our lives gradually returned to normal, however, and we settled back into our regular patterns; her mother being the only fly in the ointment.

After spending a few months getting to know the local real estate market, Charlie found a house that matched her needs. That wouldn't have been a problem, except that the house she bought was only two suburbs away from us. She and her mother moved into it at the end of March, 2016.

To avoid confusion when Shelley told me about the move, I made it clear that her mother's close proximity didn't mean we would become closer as a family.

"Nothing's changed," I told her. "Everything I said when you first told me she had returned remains the same now that she's a ten-minute drive away as it did when they lived across town. I won't be visiting her in her new home, and she's not welcome in mine.

"And, just because she's now living closer to us doesn't mean we will be using her to babysit our kids. I'm happy with the arrangements we already have in place, which will continue. She and her mother are a pair of evil bitches, and I don't want the twins having any more contact with them than is necessary."

---oooBJSooo---

Shelley's first overseas assignment occurred in April of 2016 when she and her crew were asked to take on a four-day, three-night trip to report on an official visit to New Zealand by the Australian prime minister.

Despite being buoyed by the success of her reporting while in New Zealand, however, she seemed a little down when she returned home. Even our post-trip reunion was somewhat subdued, certainly more subdued than the loving we'd shared before her departure. When I asked her about it, she apologised for her lack of enthusiasm, explaining that the trip had been both physically and mentally exhausting.

One thing I noticed, however, was that during our lovemaking session, she once again asked me to claim her. As this was the third time she'd made such a request, I felt compelled to ask her about it. She responded that she didn't realise she was saying it but explained it away by suggesting it was probably her way of telling me how much she missed me and was possibly a subconscious request for me to welcome her back into our bed. Whatever the reason, it became a regular part of our post-trip lovemaking from then on.

Shelley was back to her old self a couple of nights after her return from New Zealand when, after enjoying a romantic night of dinner and dancing, we shared a long and energetic session of conjugal excess. I have no doubt that if we hadn't had to see to the twins, we would have spent the whole weekend in bed. But then, that's one of the sacrifices we make for our children.

That trip's success gave her career another huge boost, resulting in more assignments to domestic and international locations over the coming years. By 2019, the frequency of her away trips had increased to three or four times each year and rather than being away for a few days, she was often away for weeks at a time. That was particularly true during federal and state elections when she could be away from home for up to a month.

The one constant in Shelley's schedule, though, was Mount Isa. She had become the acknowledged face of the network at that event, and with the contacts she had established over the years, she was able to introduce an element of human interest to her reports. Her rodeo coverage was so popular with her viewers, in fact, that she was presented with an Honourary Rodeo Queen award by the rodeo committee in 2019.