The first time they were able to get together after the release of the photos was the following Sunday. Jake ordered a limo driver to take him to one of his favorite lunch spots. Halfway there he suddenly commanded the driver to stop. He stepped out and walked away, disappearing down a downtown Los Angeles street, cutting through an alley, and stepping into Mindy's Mercedes. They went directly to her place, ate a quick and satisfying lunch prepared by Marcella, and then rode the horses up to Mindy's secret place in the mountains. There they fell into each other's arms and were soon lustfully screwing atop the checkered blanket, Mindy shouting out her profane encouragements the entire time.
After Jake emptied himself into her body they lay twined together for a few moments, enjoying the closeness of their sweaty bodies. When their breathing returned to normal Mindy squirmed out from beneath and walked over to the horses — who had watched their naked, noisy antics impassively — and reached into a compartment on her saddle. When she returned to the blanket Jake saw she had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Jake's eyes widened in surprise as she put one in her mouth and sparked up.
"You smoke?" he asked.
She smiled guiltily. "Yes," she said. "I have for years. I've been avoiding it when I'm around you — you know? The image thing? — but the one after sex is just so divine. I couldn't hold off any more."
Jake shook his head in bemused amazement.
"What?" she asked. "Did I finally manage to spoil your vision of me?"
"Not at all. It's just that all this time I've been not smoking around you because I thought you didn't approve of it. I've been dying for a smoke for hours."
They laughed together. She gave Jake one of her cigarettes and they lay back on the blanket, smoking and staring up at the sky.
Later, after riding back to her house, she revealed another of her vices by mixing them up a pitcher of vodka martinis. They were very strong and not much to Jake's liking but Mindy downed them like they were water. Soon she was drunk, giggly, and very affectionate. They retired to the bedroom where she became profane and extremely nasty — nastier than her usual level of bedroom nastiness.
While engaging her in the classic rear-entry position on the floor at the foot of the bed — and breathing heavily from her demands to do it faster and harder — she suddenly reached back and spread her own butt cheeks as widely as physically possible.
"Put it up my ass!" she yelled.
"Are you sure?" Jake asked doubtfully. Her anal opening looked awfully small.
"Fuck yeah I'm sure," she told him. "Get it in there!"
And so, ever the obedient soul, Jake pulled himself out of her dripping pussy and put the head of his cock against her puckered anus. He pushed slowly, intending to work himself inside over a few minutes, but Mindy was having none of this.
"Cram it in there!" she ordered. "Rape that fucking ass!"
He did as she asked, finding at once that she wasn't nearly as tight here as he thought she'd be. She moaned blissfully at the intrusion and immediately began telling him to fuck harder.
"Oh yeah," she cried as he pistoned in and out. "Now hold me down by the neck — Yeah... like that! Pull my fuckin hair... harder... harder! Oh yeah... fuck yeah!"
Late the next morning Jake was once again tired, scratched up, sore, abraded, and quite satiated. Instead of dropping him off around the corner, Mindy pulled right into the circular drop-off in front of his building.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked her, already seeing the astonished faces of the doorman and two of the minor league celebrities as they stared at them from the lobby.
"Well, they already know we're seeing each other, don't they?"
"True," he said. "But what about that discretion we promised?"
She leaned over and kissed him firmly on the mouth. "I'm being discrete by not sticking my tongue down your throat," she told him.
"I see."
"Call me tonight?"
"You bet."
And he did. They talked for more than an hour and made plans for the following Sunday. Mindy suggested that since it was already known by the various National Records spies that inhabited the building that they were seeing each other there would be no harm in her visiting him in his condo. She was dying — she said — to try one of the exotic dinners his manservant was known for. Jake was forced to agree with this logic and extended a formal invitation.
Crow was not terribly happy about it when he found out (and Jake didn't even bother asking how he'd found out — the information had come to him less than twelve hours after Jake had told Manny he would be having Mindy for dinner on Sunday).
"This is your idea of being discrete?" Crow asked after calling Jake up to his office. "You invite her into your very building, where anyone and everyone can see that she's going up to your condo? How long do you think it will be until one of those local newscasters that lives in that place starts to think they're real reporters and feeds that to the news desk?"
Jake, knowing that there was little Crow was willing or able to do about it, simply shrugged off his concerns and told him to mind his own business. And, of course, Crow was right. When Mindy entered the Esnob Pinchazo building on Sunday afternoon she found herself waiting at the elevator with none other than Steve O'Riley, the flamboyant local weatherman. O'Riley pretended to make small talk with her for a moment and then, just as the elevator arrived, flat out asked her if she was here to visit Jake Kingsley.
"Whatever would make you think that?" she replied.
This confused O'Riley for a moment. "Uh... well... because it's been reported that you two are seeing each other and he lives in this building."
"Does he?" she asked innocently. "I didn't know that."
"You didn't?"
"No. Isn't that a fantastic coincidence? I'm here to see one of my girlfriends though."
"Oh," he said, disappointed. "I see."
O'Riley pushed the button for his floor. Mindy pushed the button for number twenty-four.
O'Riley chewed his lip for a moment. "Your friend lives on the twenty-fourth floor?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yep. She sure does."
"That's Jake Kingsley's floor as well."
"Is it?" she said. "That's another amazing coincidence, isn't it?"
When the doors opened at number nine O'Riley stepped reluctantly out. He cast one last glance at Mindy Snow, who was smiling her friendly smile at him.
"Bye now," she told him. "And if you see Jake around tell him I said hi, okay?"
"Okay," O'Riley said, his head spinning. He walked slowly down the hall and had put his key in the door when it occurred to him that maybe it really wasn't just a fantastic coincidence. Could it be that Mindy Snow really was up there with Jake Kingsley?
When he got inside he made a phone call to the television station. The news director agreed with his logic. Within an hour a news crew, packing a telephoto video recorder, was discretely staking out the lobby.
Meanwhile Jake was having another of his illusions of Mindy's innocence shattered. She had just been introduced to Manny and had just given her drink order to him (a double Vodka martini). As Manny went off to the bar to construct it, she turned to Jake and asked. "You got any pot? I really want to get stoned."
He did. They smoked several hits out of his bong and then retired to Jake's bedroom for a long, luxuriant session of sex, during which Mindy presented her bare ass to him and ordered him to spank her.
"Harder!" she said at his first feeble swats. "Leave some fucking marks on me, goddammit!"
He left some marks and produced a few shocked looks from Manny when they finally emerged from the bedroom. The sharp cracks of his hand hitting her flesh had been clearly audible to him as he'd fussed over his shrimp soup and Parisian chicken.