As Nick hit the kitchen he started to think that maybe he was underdressed for this dinner party. Holly was bent over, head in the oven, checking on dinner and he took a moment to look at her attire. She was dressed up, wearing a dark blue, backless party dress; fitted at the top with a full skirt to her knees.

“You look beautiful,” he told her, touching her bare back quickly as she stepped away from the oven. One thing he had always loved about her was that all of the dresses she wore were backless, and she had an absolutely beautiful back. She hadn’t needed to wear a bra a day in her life given that she wasn’t very well endowed in the bust department, which was disappointing for Holly, but for Nick it meant more backless dresses so he’d take it.

“So do...” Holly’s voice trailed off as she got a good look at his jeans and yellow polo shirt, “Are you really wearing that?”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asked, honestly unsure why his outfit was bad. He didn’t realize that this impromptu dinner party was a formal event, and certainly hadn’t relayed any kind of dress code to Alaina when he’d invited her.

Things through the rest of the week with Alaina had been tense, to say the very least, so there hadn’t been much discussion about the upcoming dinner party. Everywhere he went Gina accompanied him so he knew that she was clearly still dying to know about what had happened the previous weekend but his sister-in-law was watching him like a hawk. He never had a single moment alone with the other woman. If he wasn’t sure of it before, Nick was now absolutely convinced that Gina was there to keep an eye on him and see what he did all day, and he didn’t exactly approve of being spied on by his wife and her partner in crime.

“Your shirt is wrinkled,” Holly pointed out, tugging on the bottom of his t-shirt, “And those jeans don’t fit you very well. They’re way too big in the ass.”

“So I’ll iron the shirt and put my other jeans on,” he shrugged, finding that to be a simple solution but Holly’s groan told him he may have been slightly ahead of himself.

“Nick, can you please just put on a pair of trousers and a dress shirt? Would it kill you to not look like you’ve been schlepping around the house all day? I’m not asking for a tie and jacket but there must be a way to dress up beyond a pair of jeans and a golf shirt.”

‘Trousers and a dress shirt?’ he thought to himself with an agonizing groan. That seemed like a lot more work. He would have to pick something out and then put effort into ironing them. He was starting to think that Holly had invited the President over for dinner instead of the parents of their daughter’s play mate.

“Really?” Nick whined, “How do you even know they’re going to be this dressed up? What if I look like an idiot when they walk in the door all casual?”

Holly rolled her eyes, “These people have money and people with money go to dinner parties all the time and there’s a protocol for this kind of thing. I guarantee you that they will be dressed up. You said this Brian guy is a lawyer, he wears suits every day so why wouldn’t he wear one to dinner?”

Her logic seemed sound but he still doubted whether or not it was likely that Brian and Alaina would show up dressed to the nines. Looking at her pleading face he finally gave in, “Fine! I’ll go change but I swear if they’re not dressed up you owe me big time!”

~*~

As Nick swung the front door open a smile instantly graced his face. Not because he was happy to see the couple standing on the other side of the screen door but because he couldn’t wait to cash in on the favours Holly now owed him.

After being sent upstairs to change he had found a pair of grey slacks and a white dress shirt, pressed them to make sure they were to her standards of wrinkle-free, and dressed as though he were headed out for the night. Without a tie he kept the first couple of buttons on the dress shirt open, a relief from the humidity of the evening.

Brian, on the other hand, obviously wasn’t keen to spend an entire evening wearing the suits that he wore all day. He was in a pair of khakis and a short sleeved button up shirt emblazoned with the name of a country club on the breast pocket. He almost looked as if he hadn’t stepped out of an office that afternoon but rather stepped off of the golf course. Nick was definitely surprised by the other man’s appearance; it was not what he had been expecting at all. He was short; Nick definitely had been picturing someone much taller. Brian was barely a hair taller than Alaina. He felt like a giant compared to the two of them. Clearly in good shape, the other man was fit and tan, his hair bleached ever so slightly by the sun; probably from long hours spent schmoozing clients out on a fancy golf course somewhere. Over all though, he looked normal and friendly. Definitely not what Nick had been expecting of him.

Alaina, on the other hand, seemed to have the same idea as Holly when it came to dressing for the occasion. He nearly threw up when he realized she was wearing the same red halter dress that she’d been wearing when he’d stormed out of the restaurant in New York. She had to have worn it just to bother him, which made him worry how the evening was going to unfold.

“Nick?” Holly snapped her fingers to get his attention, “Are you going to let them in?”

“Yes!” he smiled and shrugged off his rudeness, “Sorry about that. I guess all that humidity when I opened the door went right to my head.”

Opening the screen door he let the two adults and Benji into the house. They exchanged introductions and pleasantries but were quickly interrupted by the youngest of the group.

“This is Olivia’s house?” Benji asked, wide eyed, “Is there toys?”

Holly laughed and crouched down to Benji’s level, “There’s lots of toys but you and Olivia are going to go and see a movie. How does that sound?”

The boy seemed to consider it momentarily, clearly weighing his options much to the chagrin of the parents in the room.

“I like movies,” he finally said with a nod of his head, “Once when Olivia came to my house we watched a movie. Can I see Olivia’s room?”

Suddenly Nick felt a brick in the pit of his stomach as he heard Benji’s words and judging from the look of confusion on Holly’s face, she had picked up on the same thing. With an unsure expression Holly pushed a smile through and nodded, pointing Benji in the direction of the stairs where he would find Gina and Olivia awaiting his arrival.

“He’s been going on and on about Olivia’s room,” Brian laughed as they watched Benji toddle off up the stairs, “Just dying to see if it’s as exciting as his.”

“I imagine it’s probably a lot pinker,” Nick laughed but noticed that Holly didn’t return the sentiment; instead she was just staring at her husband.

“You’re probably right,” Brian chuckled and the four of them made their way into the living room.

“Your dress is lovely,” Alaina commented on Holly’s attire.

Nick could tell that Holly’s smile was fake, “Thank you so much. So is yours. It’s very... flattering.”

“Thank you. I bought it for a special occasion but haven’t had the chance to wear it for one yet.”

Nick could have swallowed his tongue at that moment as he tried not to react to Alaina’s words. As soon as Holly made a move to go check on dinner he popped to his feet and looked between everyone, “What is everyone drinking?” he asked politely, hoping the other man wouldn’t request anything too complicated since his liquor cabinet was not exactly extensive.

“Vodka, rocks,” Brian replied, “and she’ll have a glass of wine - red.”

“White,” Alaina corrected with a smile over at Nick, “I hate red wine.”

“You’re in luck,” Nick grinned, trying to shrug off the tension in the room, “That’s what Holly drinks too! I’ll be right back.”

He made his way quickly into the kitchen to grab the drinks, surprised to see Holly downing a full glass of wine while standing in front of the stove stirring what appeared to be gravy.

“You seem upset,” he commented, grabbing a wine glass and a lowball glass from a high cabinet.

Holly watched him carefully as he fixed the drinks and then grabbed a beer from the fridge, “Please don’t drink out of the bottle. Put it in a glass?”

“I was going to,” Nick assured her and their eyes met for a quick moment before he headed back into the living room.

He knew that she was pissed because of what Benji had said. Holly had their days planned out and constructed down to the minute so it wasn’t possible that she wouldn’t have known about Olivia being in Alaina and Brian’s house. A play date had never been penciled in, and Nick hadn’t mentioned ever having been there.

Brian on the other hand, seemed to know all about their visits (probably minus all the fucking in the study) so he wasn’t fazed by the comment. In fact, he seemed to know quite a bit about their visits, much to Nick’s annoyance.

“So Olivia is feeling better?” he asked as Holly finally made her way into the room.

Holly gave him a curious glance and perched herself on the arm of the overstuffed chair Nick was sitting in, looking between the two men from behind the rims of her glasses, “Was she sick?”

“Well from what I understood she had a spot of bother at the park?”

“What he means is,” Alaina interrupted, clearly having realized that Nick hadn’t been as open with Holly as she had with Brian. She had told her husband about the visits to avoid a situation like this because now it looked as if Nick had been hiding something, “that day at the park when Olivia had the heat stroke. I think that’s the last time I had mentioned anything about her.”

“Oh, of course,” Holly nodded as if she knew exactly what they were talking about, “She’s fine now.”

The conversation swept into another lull and Nick cleared his throat to try and break the silence, “So Brian, you’re a lawyer?”

The other man nodded his head, “Yeah, I am. You’re a writer?”

“Yup.”

“Anything I may have read?”

Startling all of them Holly suddenly laughed loudly, “No,” she answered for Nick, then excused herself to go check on dinner.

~*~

To say that sitting at the table was awkward was an understatement. Nick wasn’t sure if it was just him feeling that way but being in the room with two women who probably wanted to cut his balls off wasn’t giving him the warm fuzzies.

Luckily dinner was delicious so everyone seemed to be preoccupied with cutting their chicken and enjoying the roasted vegetables.

He had barely gotten a piece of potato into his mouth when he felt it. The leg of his pants moved suddenly and he felt a very feminine foot against his ankle. Considering that Holly was sitting at the other end of the table, he quickly deduced who the foot belonged to.

He quickly glanced over to Alaina, seeing her take a long drink from her wine glass. She didn’t appear to be paying him any mind, but her foot continued to move against his leg, getting higher and higher. He wasn’t even sure how she was managing to move her leg without anyone noticing but figured she must have them crossed.

“So Nick,” Brian suddenly spoke into the quiet of the dining room, “Do you golf?”

Nick opened his mouth to answer but toes were suddenly pushing against the inside of his thigh and his breath caught in his throat. Coughing he shook his head then turned back to Brian all the while trying to hold his composure as Alaina’s foot rubbed rhythmically against his groin.

“Um, to be honest, not really, I haven’t had much chance to get out and golf. I don’t have a set of clubs or anything. I’d probably be awful!”

“You’ll have to come out with me some time,” Brian invited and Nick forced a smile on his face.

Nick took a deep breath in and out then picked up his beer and polished off the rest of the glass, “That would be great.”

“Nick, I was telling Brian that you used to play basketball in College,” Alaina suddenly piped up and Holly looked quizzically between the two of them, “So did he.”

“Oh, really?” Nick asked, his voice becoming somewhat shrill as he fought to ignore the foot job he was essentially getting at the dinner table.

Brian laughed, “You probably sound so surprised because of my height. I assure you, I might be small but I’m quick.”

Holly was clearly intoxicated as she leaned forward to the table, “That’s why I could never figure out why Nick didn’t play football. He’s already big and stupid.”

“She’s joking,” Nick said nervously, “Such a kidder you are, Darling,” he added sarcastically, and the room got uncomfortable again. Dropping his napkin as a decoy Nick gave a firm push to Alaina’s foot, successfully removing it from his leg while trying not to be too obvious about what he was doing.

“Who wants dessert?” Holly asked, loudly pushing her chair against the linoleum floor, “I know I could go for some. I made cherries jubilee, with extra brandy!”

With a groan Nick rubbed his forehead, not knowing if the evening could possibly get any worse.