AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“In bed,” Vera said, while Maeve rolled her eyes.
The doorbell rang, announcing it was time for Book Club, which meant Ashley could put her problems aside and instead muse on why someone thought a hired assassin made a viable love interest.
Number one rule for Book Club: don’t talk about book club.
Or the books.
Or anything remotely related to literature.
As usual, there was a lot of chatter about who had read the book, whether it was worth the price (or best-selling status or as good as the author’s previous), and who wanted to start the discussion.
Then it quickly devolved to a romance book club. Or hockey romance club.
Okay, they just talked about Dex O’Malley.
Pure coincidence, because Ashley didn’t bring him up. Lainey (recently separated, two kids under five, husband now with his personal trainer) had just finished commenting on how hardcovers were too, uh, hard when Mallory (three years divorced, no kids, ex about to remarry) cut in with the following:
“You see Dex O’Malley is up to his old tricks?”
Ashley remained silent. She might have looked up the video of him punching that other hockey player in that bar, purely so she knew what she was dealing with tomorrow, but she didn’t really have an opinion.
Okay, she did. A mom always had an opinion.
The man was an idiot. A brawling idiot, with too much money and too little sense. God knew what she was going to do with him when he showed his far-too-handsome face at the shelter. Hopefully she could palm him off on one of the other volunteers while she worked on the Empty the Shelters event they had planned for next month.
“Good left hook,” Vera commented after she’d viewed the video.
(The mention of Dex’s “old tricks” prompted everyone to review his sordid online history, which included that other video from last year, the one where he received a very enthusiastic blow job from two women in a nightclub. Two! Ashley tried to puzzle together the notion of “sharing” a guy like that, but she was too skeeved out to let her imagination complete the picture.)
“Pity you can’t see the peen,” Mallory offered. “It’s hidden by the blonde’s head.”
“I’d have thought the team would have scrubbed the internet of it.” Maeve took a sip of her wine and winced because Vera had bought Chardonnay and Maeve hated Chard. “Don’t they have social media people to do that?”
Vera spoke around a cracker and a slice of Gouda. “Even if they got it taken down, it’s whack-a-dick. Anyone can put it up again any time they want. He’ll always be known for it, poor guy.”
Don’t get into sexy situations on camera, then, Ashley’s inner prude responded. She hated that bitch. But as a mom who hadn’t seen action in a very long time, the prude often had her way.
“I’m sure he’d rather be known for his hockey,” Eva added (divorce still fresh, still reeling from the affair). “Maybe he hit that guy so people would talk about him in a different way.”
Vera scoffed. “It just reminds everyone of how much trouble he’s caused.”
Cora might be making a big mistake in letting Dex O’Malley use the shelter to rehab his image. But they were so reliant on that Rebels moolah …
The way people were talking about him, though? Ashley didn’t enjoy it, so while this would be the perfect opportunity to mention that “hey, guess who’s coming to volunteer at the shelter tomorrow?,” it seemed prurient. Now that she’d heard about him more, and how the world reacted to him, she might not tell her hockey-mad daughter, or anyone else in the family, about their new volunteer. With a bit of luck, he would be in and out of the shelter—and her hair—quicker than Bandit would squirrel his way out of her sudsy hands.
Tired of the book-free conversation, which had moved onto the Sins of the Exes portion of the evening, Ashley headed upstairs to see how Willa was doing. She found her on her iPad, drawing butterflies. No surprise there. Her daughter was obsessed with butterflies.
“Finished your math homework?”
An absent nod, then a dreamy smile. “We’ll see the butterflies feeding, Mom.”
“We will? Oh, right, we will.”
Greg had signed Willa up for Bunking with Butterflies, an overnight event at Chicago’s Nature Museum. The idea of spending a whole night learning about butterflies and their habits was the most exciting thing to ever happen to her.
“I hope Lottie doesn’t mind,” her daughter mused.
“Doesn’t mind what?”
