Things We Do in the Dark(73)

He was seeing her, and there was nowhere to go, and no way to rewind.

The music was too loud for her to hear him actually say her name, but his lips formed the word Joey, and that was enough to bring her all the way back into herself. Just like that, Ruby was gone, and now she was herself again, buck naked in a strip club, and painfully, excruciatingly ashamed. It felt like one of those anxiety dreams where you thought you were clothed, only to realize that you were naked in front of a roomful of people.

Except it was actually fucking happening, and there was no way to wake up. Joey was in a nightmare of her own making.

A couple of Drew’s friends spoke to him, gesturing for him to sit down. Someone poured him a beer from one of the many pitchers on the table. He finally took a seat, but pushed the beer away. Someone else smacked him on the shoulder, waving a twenty and pointing to Joey. Drew shook his head decisively. No, he did not want a lap dance. Or, perhaps more accurately, he did not want a lap dance from her.

Jack-or-Jake had his arms wrapped around her waist from behind in a too-snug embrace. Normally she would never have tolerated this, but staring across the table at the person she loved most in the world, she wasn’t sure her knees wouldn’t buckle. She felt dizzy. Nauseated. There was a ringing in her ears. Her stomach hurt.

“Baby, let’s do the Champagne Room,” Jack-or-Jake said into her ear. She could feel him pressing against her. “I have to be alone with you.”

She opened her mouth to say no—because surely she couldn’t do that, she couldn’t go with one of Drew’s friends into the goddamned Champagne Room while Drew was looking right the fuck at her—but no words came out.

Instead, she nodded dumbly as Jack-or-Jake pulled her away from the group and toward the room with the curtains and the velvet booths, where two hundred fifty was just the starting price for a bottle of champagne and a whole lot more. As Jack-or-Jake fumbled through his wallet to pay the bouncer, Joey chanced one last look back. She made brief eye contact with Drew before he took off his glasses and turned away.

He understood what was happening. He just didn’t want to see.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


In hindsight, Paris doesn’t believe that Drew meant to shame her when he drove her home later that night. He was shocked, embarrassed, and upset, and while he didn’t express any of those feelings very well, they were understandable.

Unlike what was happening now.

Paris’s new lawyer is in his late forties, with a shaved head, a bulldog neck, and biceps the size of footballs bursting out of the sleeves of his fitted Lacoste golf shirt. Paris had found herself a little starry-eyed when Elsie first introduced them; she had not expected Sonny Everly to be such a hunk.

And then he spoke.

The three of them are sitting at the kitchen table, drinking the coffee Paris brewed and eating the doughnuts Elsie brought.

“Come on, Paris. Why’d you really marry him?” Sonny asks. He isn’t happy with her first two answers. “No jury is going to believe you genuinely loved the guy. He was almost thirty years older, with a history of addiction, who was basically a dick to everyone. He was officially a has-been when you met. The jury needs to understand your relationship so they’ll sympathize that you lost him.”

“He was retired when we met, and I don’t know that version of Jimmy you just described.” Paris’s arms are folded across her chest. She’s aware that it makes her look defensive, but at the moment, she doesn’t care.

“Bullshit. You saw a meal ticket and grabbed it. Or you have daddy issues. Maybe you sensed his mind was starting to go and figured you wouldn’t have to wait too long to talk him into killing the prenup.”

“Fuck you,” Paris says, her voice hot. She looks over at Elsie. The woman doesn’t exactly have a warm personality herself, but compared to Sonny, she’s a cruise ship director. She gives Paris a tiny shrug. I told you.

“None of the above,” Paris says. “We started as friends and we got closer. We liked and respected each other—”

“Did you guys have sex?”

Paris’s cheeks are burning. She glances at Elsie again, who’s now picking at an invisible speck of lint on her blouse. It’s one thing to answer this question for, say, Henry, who was forever interested in other people’s bedroom activities and wanted all the details. But she can’t imagine discussing it with a man she’s just met and a woman who’s probably slept with Jimmy more times than she has.

“Our sex life was normal,” she says.

“Did he require any pharmaceutical assistance to perform?”

“Why is this relevant?” Paris snaps. “What does this have to do with him being dead?”

“It has everything to do with it.” Sonny leans forward, looking right into her eyes. “Everything about your very abnormal, short-lived marriage is relevant. The prosecutor is going to pick your life apart, find all the ways your relationship wasn’t perfect, and paint you as an unhappy, selfish, gold-digging bitch who murdered her elderly husband for the money. The more you tell me now, the more I can prepare for that.”

“Jimmy wasn’t elderly. And I didn’t kill him. Next. Fucking. Question.”

Sonny sighs and looks over at Elsie. “You didn’t talk to her about this?”

Elsie shakes her head. “We never got that far.”