The Other Man(13)

“It’s not your job to mediate their relationship with their dad,” Lucy told me in her no nonsense voice.  “That is their business.”

I nodded that I understood her.  I tried to take her words to heart.  It was a burden I’d be happy to set down for good.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When the gathering wound down at an early hour, I was still wired.  I did not want to go home to an empty house.

I told Danika so.

She grinned.  “Me neither.  Tristan’s working tonight, and he has a good hour left of his show.  We should take a taxi to the casino and enjoy another round.”

“No need to take a taxi,” Bianca added, having overheard us.  “I have a car and driver right outside.”

We all smiled.  Sometimes it was very cool to have filthy rich friends.

But still, I mulled it over.  My oldest son, Rafael, worked at our friends’ bar there, and I didn’t think he needed to see his mother tipsy.

“Rafael . . . ” I began.

Danika waved her hand in air.  “Your boys adore you, we all know that.  He’ll be happy to see you.  Stephan and Javier both work tonight, too, so it’s the perfect time to do it.”

Stephan was Bianca’s best friend, and Javier was his husband.  They owned the best bar on the Cavendish property, and soon after meeting and hitting it off with them, they’d offered Rafael a job there when they’d heard he was looking for a bartending gig.

They were delightful, and Danika was right, it was perfect timing as I was always looking for an excuse to see them.

“Sold,” I said easily, as it had not been a hard sell.

We tried to talk Frankie and Estella into joining us, but they had plans that involved not waiting an extra hour or two to get home to their St. Andrew’s cross.  They were heavy into kink, to put it simply.

We said goodnight to them with hugs and airy cheek kisses.

“Hey, Blake,” I said as I got into the dark SUV idling at the curb in front of Bev’s house.

“Hey, girl,” Blake said, smiling at me in the rearview mirror.  She was Bianca’s longtime bodyguard/driver/friend.

“How come you didn’t come into girls’ night this time?” Danika asked as she slid in beside me.

Blake was usually a participant.  She went where Bianca went, with few exceptions.

“I had to make some phone calls for work, so I stayed out here.”

“Hey,” Bianca said to Blake, patting her on the shoulder as she got in last.  Another security guard, a male I wasn’t familiar with, closed the door behind her, then climbed into the front passenger’s seat.

“Hey,” Blake said back.  “How was the therapy session?”

Danika shot me a teasing smile.  “Pretty awesome.  You missed out with this one.  Lourdes had some bombshells to impart.”

I found myself blushing as I thought of all the things I’d let slip out of my mouth with just a few glasses of wine as lubricant.  “She’s exaggerating.  You didn’t miss anything important.”

“You might as well just tell me,” Blake said as she put the car into drive.  “Bianca will spill the beans later, if you don’t.  We all know it.”

I waved my hand in the air.  “That works for me.  Let her tell you.  I can’t seem to open my big mouth without oversharing.  Some details no one needs to know.”

Blake laughed.  “Oh no.  Will someone at least clue me into what kind of details she’s talking about?”

Without a word, Danika met her eyes in the rearview mirror and held her hands out with a good ten-inch gap between them.

We all started giggling.

“Well, hell,” Blake said when she caught a breath.  “I missed a doozy, huh?”

I glanced at the one male in the car, but he was sitting in the passenger’s seat, eyes aimed forward, acting like he couldn’t hear us.  I appreciated that.

“Where’s James?” I asked Bianca.  I just assumed he was out of town, because when he wasn’t, he usually showed up in person to pick her up, sometimes even coming early to sit in on girls’ night.

He was famously possessive of her time and person.

“New York.  It was only a two-day trip, and I’d have missed girls’ night, so I stayed in Vegas.”

Danika snorted.  “I bet he loved that.”

Bianca bit her lip, but it didn’t hide her smile.  “He did not.  I’m expecting him home anytime now, though he’s scheduled to come back in the morning.  You know how he is.”

“I can confirm that Mr. Cavendish boarded a flight about four hours ago, Mrs. Cavendish,” the man in the front seat said.

Bianca grinned.  “See.  I know my man.”

Danika nodded that she did.  “Whenever I catch myself thinking that Tristan is a possessive nut-job, I just remember that he’s mellow compared to James.”

“Just keep telling yourself that,” Blake muttered, eyes on the road.

That got another round of laughs.

Going anywhere with Bianca Cavendish was an experience.

The two, yes two, bodyguards we had with us that night were what they considered a light detail.  There was no current known threat to the soft-spoken woman, but due to past dangers to her person, and how high profile she was, (She and her husband were in the tabloids on a weekly basis.  Just a few days ago, I’d seen media coverage of her shopping for shoes.  Seriously.) she required at least two bodyguards when she went out in public.