Bad Things (Tristan & Danika, #1)(50)

I shrugged, my mouth twisting wryly. “I don’t know if interesting is the word. Frustrating would be more apt.”

She laughed. She started to say something, but it was interrupted by some woman behind me loudly calling her name.

I turned to see a blonde woman descending on us. She was Vegas pretty, with hair bleached platinum blonde, a face that reminded me a bit of a Bratz doll, and bombshell curves that no one could have mistaken for natural. Still, she filled out her pink bikini in a way that would have made any straight guy look twice.

Frankie smiled at the woman, but there was a noticeable chill in her eye that hadn’t been there before.

“Natalie,” Frankie said. “Long time no see. What are you doing here?”

She pronounced the Natalie strangely, the a’s made into ah’s. I guessed that Natalie was one of those women that tried to make a pretty normal name sound exotic, but it just came out sounding a little stupid.

“Frankie, I can’t tell you how I excited I was when I heard you were getting your own show! I’ve been dying to talk to you!”

“Oh yeah?” Frankie asked, disinterest practically pouring off her in waves.

“Well, I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for ages.”

“Really?” Frankie was clearly skeptical.

“And I think it would be great for my career to have it done on your show.”

“Career?” Frankie asked.

“I’ve gotten into modeling,” Natalie said smugly.

Only in Vegas, I thought. Natalie was a good three inches shorter than me, which made her unlikely model material, no matter how pretty she was.

“I take it you and Howard didn’t work out.”

Natalie shrugged. “We’re still seeing each other. Nothing exclusive anymore, but he’s been good to me, and I won’t forget it.”

“Sure, yeah.” It was so obvious to me that Frankie couldn’t stand the woman, but Natalie seemed oblivious to it.

Natalie’s gaze sharpened on something behind Frankie, and I’d have sworn it turned predatory. “Is that Jared Vega?” she asked softly.

Frankie didn’t bother to hide her eye roll. “It is.”

“Is Tristan around? Those two are usually inseparable.”

Frankie’s smile was just a flash of teeth. “Nope.”

“Damn. I needed to talk to him.”

“You could always call him,” Frankie offered.

Natalie flushed. “I don’t have his number. Could I get it from you?”

“Sorry. Can’t do that. I’ll let him know you wanted to talk to him, if you want.”

“Fine,” Natalie said, her tone dismissive, then abruptly walked away.

“That was…interesting,” I said, wondering what to make of the blonde woman. She hadn’t been openly rude, just strange.

“Natalie wouldn’t know how to be anything but self-serving. A lot of conversations with her end like that. When you’re no longer useful to her, she just walks away.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“She’s a gold digger. You know the type. What she said about her ex, Howard, says it all. That was gold digger code for, we’re not dating, but I give him a blow job every time he pays my bills. Howard is almost sixty years old, by the way.”

“Yuck,” I said, watching the bombshell blonde approaching Jared and Dean. “She has to still be in her twenties.”

“She is. And that’s not even the worst of it. The whole story is just awful. She was Tristan’s high school sweetheart.”

That made my heart twist painfully in my chest.

“The fact that he won’t date, that he only hooks up, is at least partially because of that twat,” Frankie said.

That word made the side of my mouth kick up in spite of the way her statement made me feel. “Twatalie made him like that?”

Frankie threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I like you. Yes, she did. Or at least, I blame her. Twatalie started seeing Howard when she still had Tristan’s ring on her finger.”

I went from mildly disliking Natalie to openly hating her guts with that one sentence. I couldn’t have said which made me hate her more; the fact that she’d been engaged to Tristan, or the fact that she’d cheated on him.

“That twat,” I said softly.

“Exactly,” Frankie agreed.

We reached the front of the line, and a very friendly bartender got me two margaritas, and an entire tray of tequila shots for Frankie.

I eyed up the shots dubiously. “Please tell me those aren’t all for you.”

She shrugged. “For us. I don’t like to drink alone. How hard do you think it will be to get Jared away from his pretty boyfriend?”

I glanced over at the two men. Natalie was gone, but they hadn’t stopped talking quietly to each other. “They don’t look like they want to be disturbed.”

“Well, then, let’s start without him. He’ll find us when he’s done.”

We hopped into a shallow corner of the pool, setting the drinks on the edge.

She talked me into a tequila shot, and I downed it with a grimace.

“So I know that Tristan had to work tonight. Does he know that you’re here with his brother?”

“He doesn’t.”