Guess what (Patreon)

“Mercy. A little hard to recognize you without the chauffeur get-up,” Lois said, looking right at home with a martini at hand. “I saw someone who looked just like you the other night, but… no cap. Had to have been someone else.”

“Maybe you should get glasses like your friend.” Mercy cast her frosty look over to Lois’s date. “Kent. Glad you could make it.”

He nodded in mildly warm greeting. “Funny, all those years trying to get past you for a quote and now you’re the one we want to talk to.”

“I still have nothing to say.”

Lois chugged her drink. It was one of many, but it didn’t show. Lois’s eyes leered over Mercy’s green gown. “Smallville, why don’t you buzz off and let me have a word with sweet-puss here? I’d like to show her something.”

“Not interested,” Mercy replied curtly.

“So you are interested in your Aerospace Division guy’s big six-three?” Lois shrugged as Clark wandered off, looking for undoubtedly either the buffet or the bathroom. “We may have had our differences, but you never struck me as boring.”

“Oh, if I’d have struck you, you’d have known it.”

Lois grinned challengingly. “You smash me behind closed doors, I won’t tell.”

“Jerk me around and I will,” Mercy threatened.

She gritted her teeth to hide a dry mouth. She knew what might happen if she went off with Lois. She wanted it to happen. But she didn’t want to want it.

“Let’s go find some boxing gloves,” Lois said—teased, as she left the hall. Through one of the luxury hotel’s heavy oaken doors, the ingratiating sounds of the party immediately diminished, and they dropped further as Lois led her down the corridor to an elevator.