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“We have a cocktail party to attend if you’re done throwing money away on this machine.”
I look around, taking in all the people around us, the cacophony of the machines and boisterous chatter of people, and lean in so only she can hear me. “I need to speak to you about something.”
“Can it wait?”
“Do you want it to?”
She sighs and leans back against me in a way that feels so natural my insides hurt. She’s over hating me, but I wish she still did. I wish it weren’t so familiar with her. I wish it didn’t feel so good having her this close. I’m hoping she’s simply too indifferent toward me to hate me any longer so I can match that, but that’s not how Georgia works.
She’s never indifferent. She wears her heart and her emotions proudly and without apology.
“No,” she says quietly after a contemplative beat. “That said, not knowing might help me get through the cocktail hour without committing first-degree murder.”
“Even if it’s about him?”
“Did he kill my father?” she whispers in my ear.
I shake my head. At least not as far as I can tell from his phone.
“If you’re going to tell me that he’s been using me for the last two years?—”
“Would you rather I lie?”
She stares down at her hands on her lap, at the rings on her finger, and starts to fiddle with them. “It doesn’t matter. I already told you I didn’t love him and that our marriage was all but arranged.” She laughs bitterly, but then lowers her voice once more. “I suppose he’s a better actor than I am. So what was he after? Money, my father’s company, all of it?”
“All of it,” I parrot. “Especially the money. He has quite the lavish lifestyle and the credit card debt to prove it. Not to mention he has a serious gambling habit and a penchant for losing.”
“His daddy has money.”
“I haven’t gotten into his father’s phone or information yet, so I can’t speak to any of that. He likes to text his father about you, though his father doesn’t offer up much that way. Despite that, they’re both are furious that you ended it with him and are trying to find a meaningful way to change your mind, which is an aristocratic way of saying coerce you. He also asked his attorney if once you were married if he’d have access to your money with the prenup in place. But in fairness, I think there is love there too. Or more like a sick obsession and an unwillingness to let you go.”
She sucks in a shaky breath, the side of her head curving perfectly into the space between my neck and shoulder. I can smell her shampoo and a hint of her perfume, something expensive and exotic but intoxicating all the same, and I refrain from burying my nose in her hair so I can feel it on my face and breathe her in deeper.
“Ironically, you are the last person I should be leaning on for support after hearing that. You mastered the art of using me long before he came along.”
“Only I never cared about your money.” Just your body. While pretending I didn’t also want your heart as a map that only led to me.
She hiccups out a laugh. “Right. Maybe that’s why this hurts less than that did.”
“Georgia—”
She shakes her head, immediately cutting me off. Fine. I let it go. Probably better if I don’t tell her.
“It’s more than that, and while he is after your money and company, he’s also having you followed around LA, though it doesn’t seem they knew you left for Boston until you were already in the air. He was pissed.”
Her breath hitches high in her throat, and her hand claps over her mouth. “Oh my god. I don’t even know what to say. When did that start?”
I band my arm protectively around her.
“Four months ago.”
She hisses out a curse. “When I ended it with him.” Then she snorts out a sardonic laugh. “If he was looking for blackmail material, he couldn’t have picked a more boring woman. The raciest thing about me is my reading collection and the fact that my hands have been in more vaginas than his have. Is he in my phone or computer or anything like that?”
“Not as far as I can see on his phone.”
She’s silent for so long I’m about to turn her face so I can see her eyes, when she finally says, “That’s seriously troubling. For him and for me. Good thing I broke up with him, and good thing we’re in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world.”
I smile dryly, chuckling lightly.
