AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He is not.” Agnes went over and got her a cup of coffee. “Drink this and stop hyperventilating or I’ll make you breathe into a paper bag. He’s just like his mother. Evie would never have sex with a stripper. Who told you this garbage?”
Maria got a wary look on her face and sipped her coffee. “Somebody who knows about men,” she said finally.
“Oh,” Agnes said. “Brenda called, did she?”
Maria put the cup down on the counter. “She and Taylor had finished up in the barn kitchen and were coming back and they looked through the double doors and saw him. He had that dumb flamingo hat on his head that Downer got him for the party. She knew it was him.”
“Because nobody else could be wearing that hat since Palmer sure as hell wouldn’t have taken it off the first chance he got,” Agnes said.
“She saw his face,” Maria said. “She told me to go down and look.”
“She’s a lying bitch from hell,” Agnes said. “But let’s be adults about this and do what she said. Let’s go find out”
“What?” Maria pulled back.
“Let’s go find out.” Agnes came out from around the counter. “Let’s go down to the barn and see what old Palmer and the boys are doing.”
“We can’t go down there,” Maria said, aghast
“Why?” Agnes looked her straight in the eye. “Afraid you’ll find out he’s innocent?”
“Hey,” Maria said, getting some of her old temper back.
“That’s more like it.” Agnes sighed. “Look, if you don’t want to marry him, don’t marry him. But he’s a good guy. Be up front about it. Don’t let your bitch of grandmother frame him for something he didn’t do. Go down there and tell him you don’t want him.”
Maria swallowed. “I do want him. If he’s really the man I thought he was?—”
“Why do you listen to Brenda?” Agnes asked tiredly. “Because she sounds right,” Maria said.
“Well, she isn’t. She preys on your fears to destroy your happiness so she can get this house back.” Agnes opened the drawer in the counter by the basement door and got out her flashlight. “Did your mother tell you what she did to her?”
Maria shook her head.
“She will. Come on. Let’s see who’s getting up close and personal with the stripper. I’ll bet you six M&M’S it’s not Palmer.”
“I don’t want that bet,” Maria said.
“Good girl,” Agnes said, and opened the screen door, looking back at the Venus as she went.
She was looking pretty good. Well, there’s one thing I finally got right, Agnes thought, and then followed Maria down the path to the barn.
When Shane came out of the shower, Joey and Carpenter were gone. He went downstairs and saw that the large round bed was still there below the balcony, but the party appeared to have moved outside toward the lawn and dock, where he heard male voices chanting “Drink, drink, drink.” Yeah, there’s a good time, he thought, and went down the balcony stairs and started for the big house, but paused when he heard a woman’s voice raised in anger coming from the one of the rooms under the balcony.
Great. Some stupid frat boy and an angry stripper. Just what Agnes needed, a scandal the night before the wedding.
The woman’s voice was definitely coming from the door marked office. “You fucking tried to rip us off,” she was yelling. “You think you can short us?”
Downer was probably trying to stiff her, Shane thought. In more ways than one.
“Twenty-five large,” the woman said, and Shane frowned. No stripper got paid twenty-five large. “I want the damn money. Tonight.”
Shane opened the door and paused. In the moonlight coming in the window he could see the stripper, in her miniskirt and bustier, standing at the side of a desk. She had a gun against the forehead of the man seated in the desk chair. The Don’s consigliere, Shane realized.
She turned at the sound of the door, and Shane lunged forward, grabbing her gun hand with both hands as she brought it to bear on him. She smacked him on the side of the head with her free hand, the open palm against his ear, stunning him on top of the damage from the RPG explosion earlier in the day.
Shane squeezed her hand and she dropped the gun just as she brought her knee up hard, missing his groin by scant inches to slam into his right hip as the consigliere scrambled across the room. Shane jerked her arm up and then twisted it, spinning her about as he kicked the gun under the desk.
He put his other arm around her neck in a half nelson and applied pressure, bending the stripper forward, and saw the compass tattoo in the gap between the skirt and bustier.
