Men Like This. Roxanne Smith

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      Oh, that’s right. She’d done something fun tonight. “I had a great time. In fact, I wish we were still there.”

      “Oh, I’m sure you’ll have others.” Angie sounded slightly distracted. Quinn imagined her painting her toenails or watching television. “What time did you get home?”

      Quinn cleared her throat. It wasn’t her fault. She shouldn’t feel stupid, but for whatever reason she did. Must be some kind of male superpower. “Would it be weird if Richard wanted to sleep with me?”

      “Of course not. It’d be weird if he didn’t.” Angie didn’t seem distracted anymore. “Did something happen? Oh my God, did you go home with him?” Her voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “Did you guys do it? Are you calling in secret from the bathroom? Was he good?”

      Richard had inspired an intense lack of charitable feelings, but leave it to Angie to smooth Quinn’s angry wrinkles mere seconds into the conversation. “No, nothing like that, but he did bring me to a Hollywood nightclub. Shows a little spark, doesn’t it?”

      “Hollywood? Does he know you?” The disdain in her best friend’s voice was welcome commiseration. “Where are you?”

      “A place called Sabini’s.” Quinn appraised the room once more. Large round bulbs suspended from the ceiling hung low and cast their warm glow over the bar, thus creating quite the snug little atmosphere. “I’m pained to admit it, but the private bar is sort of nice. It’s the mosh pit of sweaty, spastic idiots in the dance room next door who frighten me. I can’t believe that passes for dancing these days. I thought the first guy I saw was having a seizure. He’s lucky I didn’t shove my brooch in his mouth to stop him from swallowing his tongue.”

      Angie snorted. “A creative way to divest yourself of a fortune. I’ve been to Sabini’s before. Your Richard’s a classy one. Are you two having a good time?”

      “Not exactly.” Quinn explained in painful detail how her night had gone so topsy-turvy.

      She waited in silence for Angie’s reply. She imagined her friend working through the scenario in her mind.

      Finally, a response. “Well, okay. I guess my question is why you’re still there.”

      Quinn loved easy questions. She sucked the last drop of beer from the long-neck bottle and smacked her lips for emphasis. “To get drunk. Why does anyone sit at a bar and order booze?”

      “Nice. Tomorrow you’ll wake up not only divorced and homeless but with a hangover cherry on top. Way to take your power back, honey.”

      “I’m not homeless. I’m staying at a hotel.”

      “Homeless isn’t synonymous with cardboard box. You don’t have a home. You’re homeless.”

      Quinn waved to the bartender. Time for another drink. “Shut up and tell me what I’m supposed to do. Am I overreacting?”

      Angie clucked her tongue. “Had he taken you out for kung pao chicken, I’d say yes, but this is kind of a big deal. He dragged you to some shady Hollywood club wearing a thousand-dollar ball gown and million-dollar diamonds. Not just ignorant, mind you. Potentially dangerous. This is L.A., not Friendly, Texas. Letting him leave you there was even dumber, by the way.”

      “Probably.” Quinn tried for a deep breath. It escaped as a depressed groan. “What do I do? Fire him?”

      The mere suggestion made her stomach pitch. She mustered up a weak smile for Busty the Barkeep, who promptly deposited Quinn’s second beer in front of her.

      “There’s only one thing you can do.” Angie sounded apologetic but remained firm. “You have to kill him.”

      Quinn pressed the phone closer to her ear. The spectacle had ceased, and people were back to their regularly scheduled partying. “Like it’s ever that easy.”

      Angie scoffed. “You have no problem scalping a sweet, vulnerable, and ruggedly handsome pediatrician with a chainsaw, but you can’t kill Richard? You even murdered the poor doctor on the very same night he finally worked up the courage to ask that cute barista out on a date. It took a lot of courage for him to step out of his comfort zone. The guy had issues.”

      Quinn rested one elbow on the bar and said what she always said. “You’re taking it too personally, Ang. You’ve got to quit falling in love with my subjects.”

      “What in the hell is a barista doing with a chainsaw in the first place, huh? Does she moonlight as a lumberjack?”

      Quinn wanted to roll her eyes at Angie’s protest but couldn’t. She was too pleased with herself. Her life’s work revolved around inspiring heartfelt emotion in others. More’s the better if the emotions were dark ones like grief and loss.

      They were sort of her calling card. “Look, if I wrote Richard into a story to give him a grisly death, I’m afraid he’d notice. He is my agent. And you’d understand why the barista had a chainsaw if you’d bother to finish the book.”

      “I can’t, Quinn, I just can’t.” Her best friend sniffed. “You kill everyone I love.”

      “I’m sorry. I’ll write you a happy ending one day. Promise.”

      Angie went from sniveling to haughty in the space of a single sentence. “The only happy endings these days are in massage parlors.”

      Quinn was still laughing when she ended the call and returned the slim black cell phone to the hidden confines of her ball gown.

      Her silk strapless Carolina Herrera ball gown.

      Every bit of good humor conjured disappeared. Quinn remembered where she sat and how she got there.

      Richard, Richard, Richard. He’d really screwed up tonight. Angie’s solution, while amusing, wasn’t pragmatic and wouldn’t solve anything. Quinn nervously rolled the beer bottle between her hands.

      The idea of confronting Richard in his office made her queasy. He’d downplay the entire scene and make her out to be a dramatic prude. The smoothness she counted on for publishing negotiations would come back to bite her when she found herself looking down the barrel of it rather than grinning smugly from behind it, but what were her choices?

      She had to make a stand. She needed to put him in his place, be the iron fist of the feminine movement.

      Then again, there wasn’t much determined avoidance couldn’t patch up. Key West was fabulous this time of year. Cabanas, boat drinks, palm trees, and pool boys.

      When had she last gone on vacation? Disneyland three years ago. With Blake. Quinn didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to daydream about pool boys. For research, of course. She was far too old for a pool boy.

      She’d need a pool man.

      “You don’t match.”

      For an instant, the deep voice coming from behind stunned her. Since she sat virtually alone on her side of the L-shaped bar, she had no choice but to accept the man—a pool man if her luck had improved any—intended the words for her. Some drunken fool trying to succeed where Richard failed. What had she been thinking staying СКАЧАТЬ