Faking Forever (First Wives #4)(81)

“Who would do this?” Lori asked.

Only one name came to her head. “Corrie.”

“Victor’s ex?”

Shannon nodded. “She’s left me several messages, all pretty angry that Victor and I are together.”

“Threatening?”

“Not directly. Just bitchy. Reminded me of high school.”

“You can file a police report,” Reed suggested.

“And add fuel to the tabloids? No. She’s a scorned woman, barely an adult. She’s searching for attention, and I don’t want to give it to her.”

“She broke a window,” Lori reminded her.

“I bet that’s the last of it. This is a cowardly adolescent act.”

“Don’t underestimate her because of her age,” Reed said. “Younger people have done worse.”

Shannon heard the wisdom in Reed’s words. “If I file a report, and they bring her in for questioning, then what? She gets attention and seeks more? How likely is this vandalism going to be linked to her outside of an eyewitness?”

Reed was once a detective before he went into private security. He knew the system better than anyone.

“Not likely.”

“Did you keep the messages on your phone?” Lori asked.

“No.” She held up a hand before Lori could continue. “I will from here on out.”

“Good. All of them.”

Reed removed his cell phone from his pocket and started snapping pictures of the room. “In case we need them later,” he told her.

Shannon removed the pressure she was giving to the bottom of her right foot and peeked under the paper towel.

Lori saw it and stood. “Okay, that’s it. We’re going to the hospital. Honey . . . can you?”

Reed turned to them, saw the problem, and moved to scoop Shannon up in his arms.

“I can manage.”

Reed didn’t listen. “I’m sure you can.”

He walked her out to her garage and into the passenger seat of her car. Lori followed with her purse and house keys.

“I’ll stay here until one of my guys can come with some plywood and close this up. I’ll meet you,” he told his wife.

They kissed and Lori slid behind the wheel.

As they backed out of the driveway, Shannon turned to her friend. “Thank you for doing this.”

“You don’t have to thank us.”

“I know.”

“You do have to promise me something,” Lori said as she turned the corner.

“What?”

“Anything else, from a doormat kicked out of place or a heavy breather on the phone, you tell us.”

“I will.”

“Does Victor know about Corrie’s phone calls?”

Shannon watched the lights going by. “I told him about the first one. He called her and told her to let it go.”

“She didn’t.”

“No, she got him to talk to her, which is what she wanted.”

“And you didn’t tell him about the other calls?”

“No. And I don’t want him hearing about this until after he’s home. Which is another reason I didn’t want to call the police.”

“Fine. I get it. But anything more serious, and he’s brought up to date on everything.”

“You sound like your husband.”

“No.” Lori turned into the ER parking lot. “He sounds a lot like me.”





Chapter Thirty

Shannon wore flats and a long dress to hide them when she joined Lori Friday evening.

The rest of the week was free of broken windows or a need to go to the hospital. She’d had a couple of brief conversations with Victor, brief mainly because of the time difference and his work schedule. But when they couldn’t talk, they sent flirty texts to say they were thinking about each other.

The tabloids seemed to have moved on to bigger stories, and Corrie was MIA.

Shannon’s theory about letting it all blow over was working out.

Unlike the charity event Shannon had attended with Victor, this was a formal cocktail party for a lot of Lori’s lawyer-type friends, set up as a fundraiser for one of her colleagues who was moving into the political arena.

It was the kind of event that Shannon knew well and Reed avoided if he could.

She and Lori mingled with the crowd, listened intently to the rhetoric, and spoke in hushed tones when no one was listening.

Shannon felt the weight of men staring at her and often had to thank them politely for their offers of seeing them socially and then promptly tell them she was involved.

“Where were all these men last year?” Shannon whispered to Lori at the midpoint of the event.

“Here. But you weren’t putting out the available vibe.”

“I’m not available.”

Lori glanced over the heads of the people standing around them. “More than you were last year.”

There was some truth to that.

Lori’s smile dropped and her eyes narrowed in across the room. “What the . . . ?”

Shannon felt her skin warm, and she turned to find the source of the heat.

Paul.

“Did you know he was coming?”

“Of course not.”