Mischief in Miami by Nicole Williams

 
     

     
     
    TEMPTATION AND FREEDOM. You might not find any relation between those two concepts, but in my world, they go hand-in-hand. In my world, we’ve discovered a way to market temptation, and freedom is calculated and strategized.
    In my world, we sell both.
    We’re known as the Eves, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the woman who had the temptation thing down. You won’t hear about us in the news, or on the streets, or in the papers. Your best friend’s cousin didn’t grow up with one of us, and we weren’t in the same sorority as you.
    We’re the hiccups in society. We’re women without names. Our fingerprints can’t be traced. We’re invisible.
    How do we do this?
    We hide in plain sight.
    You might pass us every single day. You might serve us our morning coffee or fit us for a cocktail dress. You might swipe our membership card at the gym or wax our most private of parts.
    You might think you can read me like a book, but you’d be as wrong as everyone before you who tried.
    Eves don’t do personal. We don’t do happy hours, book clubs, or girls’ nights. We don’t rent apartments. We don’t keep a P.O. Box. We never get put on a case where our old acquaintances might be. We cut off all ties with our past. We don’t do boyfriends, boy-toys, or one-night stands.
    I deal in one thing and one thing only. It consumes my life. It consumes me.
    I generate temptation in order to impart freedom.
    A freedom I was denied.
    How do I manipulate the temptation/freedom equation?
    I pluck the apple from the tree.
    In twenty-first century terms?
    Infidelity.
    Yes, I know that right after the word adultery, infidelity is one of the most controversial and hated words. Just thinking about it can make a woman squirm in her seat. But if you remove all the emotion and bias, it’s nothing more than a word. The act behind that word is something else entirely. It can be unplanned, spontaneous, unintentional, or in my case, calculated.
    We’re not a charity, and we don’t work pro bono. We charge a pretty penny, but I haven’t run across a Client yet who didn’t think the service we provide was worth every cent. Before anyone goes and calls the women’s movement on us, hear me out. It isn’t the men we’re benefitting with the service we provide. It’s the women. The wives, specifically.
    Our Clients are the women who fell in love with a man with enough dollar signs behind his name to require a pre-nuptial agreement. That same woman who, months or years later, finds her beloved husband isn’t the loving, honest, and faithful person she’d hoped (perhaps, naively) he’d be. That same woman who would come out on the other end of a divorce with nothing. Not one damn dime because she fell in love, signed her name on some document, and the mister with a wandering eye and dick couldn’t keep either to himself.
    That is where the Eves come in. That is where I come in. It’s what I know. It’s what I’m good at. And it’s what’s going to pave the road for my own freedom.
    I’m in the business of great exploitations.
     

 
     

     
    IF I HAD a dollar for every time the Meet took place at some posh, upper-crust spa, I could have made a down payment on the BMW 640 convertible I was zipping around in. Of course, with the balance in my international bank account, I could have purchased it outright, along with a dozen of its luxury counterparts. Even if I wanted to own the flashy, sex-on-wheels car I was cruising in, buying it was out of the question.
    Car ownership meant titles, which meant personal information.
    The car belongs to G. I think. G’s the top-dog. She’s the president, CEO, gate-keeper, and founder of the Eves. She discovered each of us, recruited us, and went on to train us. She gives us our marching orders and monitors us. We report back to her. Basically, she’s the almighty, omniscient, in G we trust. I don’t know what G stands for, or if it stands for anything, but I like to think of it as