Be With Me in Silicon Valley: The Juliette Trilogy (The Princesses of Silicon Valley - Book 3) (11 page)

On Saturday instead of horseback riding, I head into the office. Chris is there when I get in. He leaves within a half an hour. I work for a while, while I wonder why it is so important for me to even show up.

Heading over to the dry bar, the stylist recommends I get an elegant updo that takes advantage of my curls. Arriving home, I apply eye shadow, giving my eyes a smoky look. It’s now six; I put on the black dress and heels, only wearing a thong underneath. Then I take a selfie, and e-mail it to my mom. Since I never turned up the heat, I put on my mom’s coat as I sit on the couch reading while I wait for Nate. When he arrives, he gives me a surprised look as he does a double take, checking out my updo, eye shadow, and lipstick. After a nice kiss, I have to rub lipstick off his mouth. He snaps his fingers to jingle my chandelier earrings.

“You do know how to dress up,” he says admiringly.

“In college a group of my friends and I went as princesses to a Halloween party. I was Snow White,” I say as I bat my heavily mascaraed eyes at him.

“Well Snow White, let’s hope you don’t run into any evil queens or poison apples,” he says, as he heads back to my room to drop off his bag. Coming back into the living room, he suggests, “You two need to buy a modern thermostat, so we can turn it up by cell phone half an hour before we get home. And turn it down from our phone when in bed.”

“I’ll put that on our grocery list.” I say with a giggle.

Opening the door, he watches me lock up, then places his hand on my lower back as we walk together to his car.

I can’t stop smiling at his nice manners as he opens the car door for me. We drive about four miles to his boss’s house, not far from where I ride in Los Altos Hills. Not surprisingly, it’s a large modern house on a hill. Nate rings the bell. We’re ushered into a large entranceway by a tall slim blond who looks to be about my mom’s age.

Nate introduces himself.

She warmly says, “Yes, we met last month when you were interviewing. We’re so happy you can join us. I’m Carol, Mike’s wife.”

“Carol. This is my girlfriend, Juliette Cole.”

My heart literally stops. This week, he started calling me babe when we were having sex, now he’s referring to me as his girlfriend. My friends all complain that the guys our age are commitment adverse. Caroline is always getting ahead of the guys she dates. Is Nate getting ahead of me?

Smiling, I say, “Nice to meet you.”

The doorbell rings and Carol leaves us. A woman wearing black pants and a white shirt takes my coat. Forgetting Nate has yet to see me in my mom’s sexy dress, I look over at him in time to see his eyes pop out of his head. He looks like he’s about to drool. Placing his hand on my lower back, he pulls me tight as he escorts me into the living room.

As we walk, he whispers into my hair, “To answer your text, yes, I’m having fantasies about having sex with you wearing high heels and a cocktail dress. Now I don’t know if I can even wait for this dinner to be over.”

It’s a good thing that the house is full of doctors since my heart stops a second time in less than five minutes.

The living room is large, with thick cream-colored crown molding and heavy, elegant baseboards painted to match. The high ceiling and wall of windows make the room even more grand. It’s decorated in a casual, elegant, very California style. The walls, curtains, carpet, and furnishings are all in different textures of cream with sea green accents that match the modern paintings. The room is ringed with garland that’s been intertwined with thick gold ribbon. Each window is punctuated with a large wreath with gold ribbon twisted into a large gold bow. There are already six couples in the room. They look to be in their forties or fifties. Nate introduces me to each of them as his girlfriend.

As Nate talks to one of the other men, one of the women asks, “Are you from Minnesota?”

Surprised, I answer, “No, I’m from Los Altos.”

She raises her eyebrows, “How long have you known Nate?”

Realizing he’s only been in town two weeks, I smile. “I met Nate a few months ago when he was visiting his sister. His sister and I both played in the same soccer league.” Figuring this easily explains everything she needed to know, I change the subject. “Are you a sports medicine doctor?”

Laughing, she says, “No, I’m an attorney. My husband’s in this group.”

Nate saves me from small talk by putting his hand on my waist and pulling me in tight. “Can I get you a drink?” he says into my hair. His hand drifts down my waist to my hip making it easy for me to tell he’s having a hard time controlling himself.

“Red wine would be nice,” I say as a few more couples come into the room. Nate leaves me again to shake some hands and get a glass for me. Sitting down on an oversized ottoman, I smile as all the real adults greet each other and talk around me. Another woman sits down next to me, introducing herself as Steve’s wife. Using my new title, I introduce myself as Nate’s girlfriend.

Looking over my shoulder, my eyes meet with Nate’s as he talks to one of the men we met when he took me to the hockey game. After two other women sit down with us, they all start talking about their kids.

Nate returns with a large glass of red wine. Good, I need it, since I feel like I’m at one of my parents’ parties. As the conversation moves from kids to mortgage rates, I almost expect that someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and tell me it’s time for the kids to go to bed. Since it’s a little early for bed, maybe they’ll just direct me to the kiddie table for dinner.

Looking around, I ask if there are any women in the practice. One of the women smiles as she tells me there’s one woman, and including Nate, eleven men. She continues by telling me she’s an OB/GYN, and her practice is one hundred percent women. Lucky for me, there are enough people mingling that I can look engaged by simply smiling, and no one will know I’m out of my element.

After repeating the story of how Nate and I met about five times, I realize one of the women looks familiar. That’s right—her daughter and I were in the same Girl Scout troop. The daughter and I never were friends. In high school, she hung out with the theater group. That doesn’t stop the mom from filling me in on all her daughter’s exploits. Knowing the girl in question, I can read through the hype as I figure out she’s living in LA with her boyfriend, and working some lame ass job as she tries to break into the entertainment industry.

As one group of women shuffles out of my zone, another shuffles in and sits around the ottoman. I meet a woman who works at a bio-tech company, a Stanford professor, and a venture capitalist. I’m surprised that I’m the only engineer. This is probably the first time I’ve been anywhere in Silicon Valley where the majority of people aren’t engineers. I’m told by one of the other women that Carol, the homeowner, is an interior designer. I get a round of nods and smiles as I comment “That’s not surprising, this house is beautiful, she must be very successful at it.”

From the black pants and white shirts of the workers, it looks like the dinner is being catered. As everyone meets and chats, there is continually a server providing high-end appetizers. As we get up to head into the dining room, Nate comes over and instantly puts his hand on my waist as he quietly tells me, “Thank you for being such a good sport. I’m sorry for abandoning you. I had a hard time pulling myself out of that conversation.”

A flashback of England where Stephan is annoyed at me for not trying harder to fit in interrupts my thoughts. In every way, Nate is an improvement over Stephan. Next week’s crowd will be much closer to Nate’s age, I wonder if he’s ready for a geeky Silicon Valley party?

The dining room is large enough to sit twenty-four in three rounds of eight. The walls look to be papered in cream silk. It, too, has thick cream-colored crown molding and baseboard trim and a tall wall of windows. The room is festive, just like the rest of the house. It looks like they took out their dining table and we’re sitting on rented chairs and tables. Each chair has a white cover with a fancy gold bow. The table is all done up with white linens. Gold chargers hold white china, and each table has an over the top gold centerpiece. As I sit down at the seat with the designated place card, I finally meet the one woman who’s in the practice, along with her spouse. The spouse tells me she used to work high-tech, but now they have three-year-old twins. My mom’s conversation comes back to me as the partner tells me she’s now a stay at home mom, since the price of day care didn’t leave her with any take-home money. By the looks of this house, I figure these doctors must be making enough money to support a stay-at-home wife and their children.

Nate’s boss, Mike, interrupts the table conversation with a toast, as Nate‘s hand trails up my thigh, making it hard to concentrate.

The first course is soup. The pregnant wife of one of the younger docs talks with the OB/GYN I met earlier. Her spouse asks Nate how he’s settling in. Squeezing my thigh, Nate tells him, “It’s been an easy transition. Juliette’s a great guide. She’s been showing me the local sites; last week we actually rode horses past this house.”

After dinner, the hostess asks us to go to the family room where they have their tree set up. It’s another elegant, but casual, room with high ceilings and a wall of windows ringed in garland and wreaths. As the doctors talk about the last year, Nate pulls me against him and leans against the back wall. When the year-end video is shown on their large flat screen TV, Nate pulls me out of the room, leading me into a large powder room.

“Nate—” is about all I can say before he pushes me against the wall kissing me deeply. With one hand on the wall, he uses the other to snake up my leg, pulling up the skirt of my dress to expose my lower half. I plant my arms around his neck, my fingers in his hair. Grabbing my butt cheek his fingers enter me.

Releasing our kiss, I gasp, “Nate we can’t do this in your boss’s bathroom.”

“You look so hot, I’ve spent the entire evening trying to control my hard-on. No one’s going to miss us,” he says as he turns me around so we’re both facing the fancy counter and the large mirror.

“Grab a hold of the sink.” He instructs as he starts licking my neck. “Baby, arch your back.” he insists as he moves my panties over and positions himself while rubbing my clit. Staring at both of our faces in the mirror, I see my elegant hair and smoky makeup juxtaposed oddly to my shaking earrings and gasping mouth as Nate rocks into me.

He gasps. “Your breasts are so hot.”

Looking down my reflection, I watch them through the illusion top as they shake in rhythm to his thrusts. Looking up, I watch his face as he squints his eyes and grimaces. Our orgasms overtake us. After he pulls out, he kisses the back of my neck, zips up his pants, and then hands me some toilet paper. Cleaning myself up, and straightening up my dress, our eyes connect again in the mirror.

“You ready?” he asks.

Holding up my index finger, I give myself a good check and reapply my lipstick, making sure I don’t have any obvious signs of sex, besides my flushed face.

Nodding, yes, he opens the door, looks around, grabs my hand and leads me back to the wall in the family room. Standing in front of him, he wraps his arms around me as I lean back. “They didn’t even know we were gone.” He whispers into my hair as the video ends.

The next morning, as I lay across his chest tracing the intricate design of his tattoo with my fingers, he holds me with both arms. “I can’t believe we had a quickie in your boss’s bathroom.”

Feeling his chest rumble from laughter, he says, “That was fun, a lot more fun than that boring video.”

“Yes, a lot more fun than the boring video.”

“And you looked so hot. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. I think that dress is even hotter than the football T-shirt.”

“I hate to tell you this, but I borrowed that dress from my mom.”

Nate stills. “I don’t ever want to see your mom in that dress. I’m sure your mom’s a nice looking lady, but I think I’d need counseling if I ever saw your mom in that dress.”

“You make it sound like a trashy dress. I think it’s an elegant dress.”

“Babe, that’s what made it so hot, it showed just enough but not too much. It made me want to undress you to see the rest.”

My cheek lays on his warm chest, as I listen to his heart thump. “We should do something fun today. Something other than lying in bed and having sex.”

“What, you don’t like lying in bed having sex?” he responds.

“Oh, I like having sex with you. In the last week, we’ve had a lot of sex. I’d just like to do something with you other than have sex. I kept on thinking those ladies last night were going to ask me what the two of us do together, and I was going to have a hard time coming up with something other than have great sex.”

Chuckling deeply, he says, “OK, other than having great sex, what do you want to do?”

“Have you ever been down to Elkhorn Slough?’

“I can’t say I have.”

“It’s another one of my favorite places. We can rent kayaks and paddle into the slough. There’s lots of harbor seals and one of the largest populations of sea otters, along with a lot of sea birds like egrets, herons, pelicans, and kites.”

“Well, you know your slough.”

“My friend Kelly has a degree in biology.” I smirk, “Though these days she’s riding in the cross country cycling circuit. But in college, she spent a couple of summers working for The Elkhorn Slough Foundation. She loved kayaking around the Monterey Bay. Whenever I had the chance, I would come down and follow her around. She always made it so fun and interesting.”

Nate reaches over to his phone, “Elkhorn Slough,” he says as he pulls up his browser.

“Just type in Kayak Connection; it takes an hour to get there, see if they have any kayaks available for this morning.” I say as I sit up and grab my phone. “My parents have a membership to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Let me call them to get a couple of their guest passes.”

“Babe, you realize it’s eight in the morning.”

“My parents are up early, where do you think I get it from?”

Nate dresses in cargo pants and a Henley, while I wear running pants and a long sleeved running top. As we stop at my parents’, I’m relieved that they’re already on a hike. I’m not yet ready to introduce Nate to the family.

Nate stands in the hallway. I head for their home office and the section of my mom’s desk where she keeps things like memberships. After finding the passes, Nate is no longer in the hall.

“Is the purple room yours?” he calls out.

Following his voice to my childhood bedroom, I see Nate looking at it from the doorway.

“Nate, we don’t have time to have sex in my childhood bed.”

“I wasn’t even thinking of having sex in your childhood bed,” he says, cocking his eyebrow. “But we might have time for a quickie.”

Rolling my eyes, I pull on his arm, “No quickies in my childhood bed.”

He just kind of shakes his head, “You’re an odd combination of feminine and fierce.”

“What, because I grew up in a purple bedroom?”

“Because your purple bedroom is feminine at first look.” Then he takes a couple steps in, zeroing in on my Mia Hamm poster, my childhood hero. It sits above my bookcase filled with math books, computer books, and awards I’ve received. Behind my bed is a six-foot-tall, one dimensional, cardboard Tardis.

“But filled with…not very feminine things,” he says as his eyes move down to my high school team pictures. Finally, he picks up one of my plastic molded dragons and turns it around in his hand.

“As a kid I was enamored with dragons. I had a rather wild imagination.”

Putting it down, he looks at me, twines one of my curls around his finger, and says, “Yeah, let’s get going. You got the tickets?”

“Let’s grab something to eat first.” I take his hand and lead him into the kitchen. Opening up the refrigerator, I announce, “Toast, bagel, cereal?” I pull out a container of apple cider.

“Should we really be eating your parents’ food?”

“Really, you go home and don’t raid the refrigerator?”

With a big smile, he says, “True. I think one of the first things I do when I get to my parents’ house is to raid the refrigerator.”