The Afternoon Wife

My, Dash has been a bad boy.

He finally got his new book published about his obsessive love affair with me, and according to Malone, "The Afternoon Wife" gives up every explicit detail of our marital sex life! Of course Natty's all freaked out that it's gonna hurt my credibility as a Congresswoman -- but heck, I had a life before I was in Congress! I guess Natty wouldn't understand that since she's never had a life. Malone, on the other hand, isn't freaked out at all about the book. . .she's turned on by it -- which kind of scares me. I don't mind being thought of as a sexual being, but it disturbs me that she's all of a sudden picturing me naked -- along with every other person in the free world!

Dash showed up for his visit a day late and immediately took to flirting with every other woman in sight -- treating me like I barely exist! He's never done that -- even when he flirted with Charlene and Mary Jo and Julia, he still kept me on a pedestal. I admit it bothered me a little that he had Sissy and Natty so tickled, but it really ticked me off when he asked Malone out to dinner. I have a rule: "No man that I've seen naked can be seen by any woman I know. . . naked -- even when I'm done looking at him." In Malone's eyes, I'm sure he hasn't had a stitch of clothes on since he arrived, but there's no way she's gonna see what's really under there.

When I confronted Dash about his asking out Malone, he said she reminds him of what I used to be like -- innocent and naive. He's so used to the immature little "Lolita" that I once was, he doesn't really know how to react to "Congresswoman Sugarbaker." He even had the nerve to compare me to Eleanor Roosevelt!

But today, for the first time, I think Dash respects me as an adult and a woman. I'm not longer just his lustful obsession hanging on his every word, but a true woman -- a powerful woman. There's something about him ignoring me that made me want him more. He claimed that was his plan all along, but it doesn't matter. I decided to show him the difference between the girl he once knew and the real woman I've become.............not to prove anything to him, but strictly for my own pleasure.

So I laid him out on a fur rug in front of the fireplace, and told him to shut up and kiss me. . . .