Текст книги "Sweet Sinful Nights"
Автор книги: Lauren Blakely
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
CHAPTER NINE
A patron sloshed beer on a table in the front row. Some dude snapped a photo with his cell phone camera from the back. A waitress circled through the tables carrying a tray, expertly dispensing beverages to meet the two-drink minimum.
Bob’s Beer Haven and Comedy Club in Soho didn’t change its rules when Brent stopped by. The dimly lit comedy club off Spring Street had a been-here-for-years vibe, a low stage, and merely adequate acoustics. The crowd didn’t show up for the ambiance—they came there because the owner was known for his taste. Over the years, Bob had scouted and promoted some of the leading up-and-coming comedic talent, who went on to big careers. Damn shame that the landlord had just jacked up the rent astronomically—quadrupling it, so Bob was shutting down operations soon, and the location had been leased to a chain restaurant.
Brent and Bob had a long history; the guy had booked him for a few sets at a Los Angeles comedy club when Brent was working on Late Night Antics. Those club gigs had led to bigger ones that had helped Brent to grow his reputation in the entertainment business.
Whenever he’d visited New York for business or to see his brother, he’d tried to pop into the Soho club. He could easily draw a big crowd now, and fill out a fancier theater in midtown no problem, given the time he’d spent on screen hosting his own show on Comedy Nation before he shifted to the nightclub business. But he had no interest in that. He wasn’t on stage tonight for the money. He was on stage for the fun of it, and for the farewell—bittersweet though it was, given the fate of this establishment.
But this wouldn’t be the last time they worked together—Bob was a solid businessman, and Brent had promised him a job managing his club in New York, provided he got the approval from the city to open it. With two kids in college now, the man had needed to find a new gig quickly, and Brent was glad to potentially offer him something.
“So let’s say that there’s this guy,” he began, pacing slowly across the creaky wooden stage. “I’m not going to name names or point fingers at who this guy might be.”
He stopped to roll his eyes around, as if he were somehow looking at himself, and somewhere in the audience he could make out the silhouette of his brother pointing at him on stage. Brent held up his hands as if he was innocent. “Like I said, I’m not naming names. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say this guy fucked up a situation with a woman. Because, let’s face it, every now and then, from time to time, the man will be in the wrong, right?”
“Every now and then,” a woman in the crowd called out sarcastically.
“Exactly,” Brent said crisply. “It’s rare, totally rare, that the guy is the one who messes up. Because men are usually on top of their shit in a relationship. They never forget birthdays, they always remember to bring gifts to their women, they never say stupid, dumbass, idiotic things,” he continued in his deadpan tone. “Men, generally speaking, are really evolved creatures.”
Several loud chuckles resonated from the audience.
“But sometimes a man makes a mistake. And he has to make it up to a woman. What is this guy supposed to do when the woman is just not one of those gals who likes flowers?”
He stopped to scratch his head as if he was thoroughly flummoxed by the situation, and truth be told he actually was. Perhaps he could work out what to do next with Shannon in this routine.
“You see, I thought about a few options.” Brent stopped talking and quickly backpedaled, as if he hadn’t meant to indict himself, when he clearly had. “I mean, this guy,” he said in an exaggerated tone. “Not me, ’cause I’m not talking about me. Because this is clearly not about me at all. But this guy, who is obviously not me, he’s trying to figure out how to do something really fucking awesome for his woman. Something that proves he’s the man she needs. Something big,” he said, emphasizing that last word as his eyes drifted downward to his crotch, so the audience got his meaning. “So I thought: what does she want? What does a woman really want? And the conclusion is...” He stopped, paused, took a breath, because comedy was all in the delivery, then finished, “me.”
A few more laughs.
“So I’m just going to dip myself in chocolate, head to toe, and give her me. Covered in chocolate. For her to lick off.”
He held his breath as he tested out this new material for the first time. A ripple of laughter began, but there was still the punch line to deliver.
“But then I realized, that’s not really a gift for her. That’s a gift for me.”
Laughter rang out across the club. There were few sounds better than this—better than the sweet laughter of a joke well told. It was the great exhalation—it was relief and buoyancy all at once.
But then, it wasn’t a joke. He did need to prove himself to Shannon, and if she somehow happened to see this set, he was certain she’d know it was part of the big grovel, as Mindy had so aptly put it.
“So, yeah. Maybe not chocolate,” he said, then continued on for another ten minutes, finishing up his set. When he was through, he joined his brother and his wife in the audience during a short break between acts. Julia clapped proudly as he walked over, then wrapped her arms around him in a big hug. “As always, you were magnificent,” she said.
“I’m just sorry you didn’t wind up with the funny brother,” Brent said, adopting a frown.
“Shame she didn’t get the funny-looking one, isn’t it?” Clay said, deadpan.
Julia smiled and laughed. “You two are crazy. I know you were both lady-killers back in high school. All the Nichols men are fine-looking specimens,” she said, then patted Clay’s leg and wiggled her eyebrows at him.
Brent latched onto two words. He stared at her sharply. “High school? You think we stopped after high school?”
“Fine, fine. College, law school, and beyond,” she added, then dropped her chin into her hands. “But seriously. What are we going to do about your little problem?”
He furrowed his brow. “What little problem?”
She gestured to the stage as an answer.
Clay chimed in. “Do you think you fooled us?”
Brent snapped his fingers. “Damn. You guessed it. I really am going to dip myself in chocolate. Should I do dark or milk chocolate, though? That’s the million-dollar question.”
Julia swatted him. “Brent! Seriously. Your lady problem.”
“What lady problem?”
“You know you can’t trick her, man. Might as well own up to it,” Clay said, leaning back in his chair, parking his hands behind his head.
Brent laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, you got me. You saw straight through my routine.”
“I know that, sweetie,” Julia said, flashing a small smile. “But let me give you some advice. Whoever this woman is, she doesn’t want you to solve the relationship problem by dipping yourself in chocolate, as cute as you may be.”
Brent sighed, then laid out the story for his brother and his wife. “I’ve clearly got to big gesture the hell out of it. What do I do?”
Julia answered immediately. “The answer is simple. You need to focus on what matters to her. How can you show her how important she is to you? Where did you fail in the past in that regard?”
Brent scoffed. “That’s gonna be a long list.”
“Then take it item by item, step by step, and follow her cues.”
Clay pointed his thumb at his wife. “She knows what she’s talking about. Listen to the one and only Mrs. Nichols,” he said, and those words dug into Brent’s chest like a rusty shovel. He was thrilled that Julia and Clay were so happy together, but Shannon was supposed to have been the first Mrs. Nichols. She was supposed to have been his wife ten years ago. Now, she was simply a woman he’d had one dirty encounter with in his nightclub. He was at square one with her for all intents and purposes. Saying he was sorry yesterday was the barest beginning of trying to win her heart, and now he had to move past apologies and show her why she should want him.
After Clay and Julia went home, Brent made his way to the bar to catch up with Bob, who was pouring from the tap for another customer. “What does it take to get a beer around here?”
The man looked up and said dryly, “Evidently, it takes a chain restaurant.”
“No shit. But hey, you’ll be handling cosmos and top-shelf liquor in no time.”
Bob gave him a quick salute, then handed out the drink. When he returned, he poured him a beer, then clinked an imaginary glass to Brent’s. “Here’s to the next phase—cosmos and fancy-ass drinks at your new club.”
“And to landlords who aren’t assholes,” Brent said, raising his glass.
“Amen.” Bob rapped his knuckles on the counter. “I’ll miss this place.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Later, Brent hailed a cab and headed to his midtown hotel. As the cab ambled through traffic, he unlocked the screen on his phone, and opened up a new text message to Shannon. Keep it simple—keep it direct. That was what he’d do.
I’m in New York... thinking of you... can I see you when I return this weekend?
In seconds she replied.
I don’t know. Can you?
Oh, she was feisty tonight, toying with word choice. He responded with a:
May I?
As the cab rolled past the Port Authority and the neon lights and tourist traps on 42nd Street, her reply arrived.
What will you be wearing?
Okay, he was getting somewhere, if they were talking about clothes. Brent grinned to himself as the cab lurched to a stop at a red light. Maybe he wasn’t entirely at square one. Because he knew this woman. Knew how she liked to flirt. How she liked to play. How she liked to keep him on his toes.
What do you want me to wear?
As the cab started up again, he clutched the phone and peered out the window, forcing himself not to simply stare at the screen and wait for a reply. As he scanned the billboards and neon signs, he spotted one up ahead with a body in motion. A dancer leaping through the air. He read the details on the sign, and something clicked. “Yes,” he said triumphantly out loud, and he had the answer to the question Julia had posed to him—what matters most to Shannon. He was about to begin a quick Google search when she replied.
Honestly, you’re pretty hot in nothing. But I don’t think you should parade around naked at dinner, and I keep hearing the new restaurant in the Cromwell is fantastic. There’s a four-month wait, though. And I know you hate waiting. But maybe you can get us in...
Like there was a chance in hell he wouldn’t.
Consider it done.
The cab arrived at his hotel, and several phone calls later, he’d pulled it off. He knew enough people in Vegas, so he’d called in some favors and secured the reservation for the woman he wanted most in the world. He also had something else for her, thanks to a couple of extra minutes spent Googling and ordering, but he’d wait until dinner to give her that gift. As he got into bed, he wrote to her, letting her know he’d pick her up at seven-thirty on Saturday. Her response was swift.
Impressed. Also, no need to pick me up. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.
Damn. She hadn’t given up her address yet. But that was okay. He had a way to earn it when he saw her that weekend. He laughed to himself at the realization that he was thirty-one years old and excited as hell about a dinner date.
But then, the dinner date was with her.
* * *
Tanner Davies snapped his fingers to get the waitress’s attention. The woman with the bouncy ponytail doubled back to their table. “Yes?”
“I said I wanted sweetened iced tea. Take it back,” he barked, making a get this out of my face gesture with his fingers. “This is unsweetened.”
“Right away, sir,” she said, with a deferential nod.
Tanner, the landlord, turned to Brent, and shook his head. “Fucking waiters. Anyway. Like I was saying, the neighbors are worried about you, man. They think you won’t address their concerns properly.”
Brent nodded at the owner of the building he’d already leased space from in Tribeca. They were at McCoy’s in midtown, rolling up their sleeves to discuss the latest two-steps-forward-three-steps-back routine that New York was pulling.
“With four clubs open in the first year, I think that shows how serious I am. We just opened Saint Bart’s, and that follows our first club in Vegas, as well as our clubs in Miami and San Francisco,” Brent said, carefully detailing the progress his business had made during the first twelve months.
Tanner shrugged dismissively. He might as well have just said who gives a shit? Brent wasn’t so sure if Tanner was the enemy or just the gatekeeper of all the problems the city kept heaping on him. Permits were shooting up in cost. Hands needed to be greased. The zoning commissioner threw up roadblocks. But New York was a linchpin in Brent’s plans for Edge. It was vital to the growing success of his operation, and Brent needed Tanner to help him win this city over, even though just then he wasn’t sure if Tanner was even on his side.
“So what’s the real concern?” Brent said, opting for directness. “And what can I do to help ease them?”
Tanner scratched his jaw, and cleared his throat. “Look. I’m just the messenger here, so don’t shoot me. But the neighbors don’t trust you. They think you’re a flash in the pan. Impulsive even. They see you as the bad boy of comedy who hosted a foul-mouthed TV show. And they worry you’re just some former TV celebrity who’s going to bring a lot of noise and crowds into their neighborhood at night,” Tanner said, and Brent reined in the flash of anger he felt over that word—impulsive. “And they want to know why they should allow another club in their neighborhood, especially one run by someone with a high profile.”
“The location is zoned for a nightclub,” Brent said, pointing out the obvious, because that was the reality of the property. Rather than deal with intangibles, Brent wanted to try to focus on the facts. “You had one in the building before mine and it went out of business.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying to them,” he said.
“And how do they take it?”
Tanner sighed, a frustrated stream of breath that seemed to peter out of him. “Not well.”
Irritation knotted in his muscles. He didn’t even know who was friend or foe. He might not ever know though, so he shifted gears. “So I need to prove to them why it should be my club?”
“Yeah. Why you and not some other nightclub.”
Brent launched into his pitch about Edge. He wanted to make sure the landlord would go to bat for him. “Because we don’t attract the raunchy crowd that the previous club drew. You won’t find twenty-one-year-olds puking outside the loft apartments at three in the morning. We don’t cater to the whole deejay culture that attracts the crazy fans. My clubs are upscale and classy. They have a certain mystique, a lush sensuality, but it never crosses over into trashy. Edge is seductive, it’s sexy, but it’s never raunchy.”
The waitress returned with a fresh iced tea. “Here you go, sir. Sweetened, as you requested.”
Tanner grunted, then spoke to Brent. “That’s what we need the neighborhood association to see.” Tanner lowered his voice to a whisper. “And it wouldn’t hurt if you threw in a few thousand to have some of the Tribeca parks redone. There are a couple in need of a makeover, and that could make the residents happy.”
“Easy enough. I’ll be glad to do that. Anything else?”
“Yeah, how about you peel off a little extra for me? The ex is trying to take me to court about alimony payments.” Brent didn’t answer because he didn’t like the sound of the request, but Tanner quickly waved a hand and flashed his yellowed smile. “I’m just kidding. I won’t let the bitch have a dime of my money. And I’ll help you with all this. I want your club in my building.”
“Great. And I want Edge there too. So let me know if there’s anything else you need from me.”
“That’s all for now. But I’m sure there will be something else soon. That’s how it goes in New York. You gotta do whatever it takes.”
That seemed to be the new mantra in his life, whether with women or with business.
CHAPTER TEN
Shannon extended her arms high above her head, her palms flat together, her fingers pointing towards the sky. Perfect warrior pose. Just like her grandmother beside her.
At age seventy-three, Victoria Paige showed no sign of slowing down. She was fit, trim, muscular, and determined to keep up with anyone and everyone.
“Even the dog is getting jealous of my yoga skills,” Victoria said with a wink as she and Shannon shifted poses on the sun porch of her ranch home in one of the nicer areas in the Vegas suburbs, a house that her four grandkids had bought for her. Her Boxer mix raised his snout at the two women, then returned to lounging in the sun.
“As well he should be, Nana. Your downward dog is the best,” Shannon said as they both planted their hands on their mats. Shannon had taken up yoga in college when she tore her ACL, hoping it would help rehab her and send her back to the stage. No such luck. ACL injuries were pretty much impossible to come back from. But the practice had helped her to recover, and she’d kept it up since it was one more way to stay active. Her grandmother had taken to yoga quickly too, and now it was something they did together whenever Shannon visited her, which was at least once a week.
Her brothers were in the backyard. Michael, the handiest of the crew, was fixing a fencepost with their grandfather, while Ryan and Colin drank beers and tended to the grill. The homey scene was almost enough to make anyone forget why the six of them were so close.
“I hear from Colin that you’re doing business with your old flame,” Victoria said, as they finished their final stretch. There was no judgment in her tone. No haughty raise of the eyebrow. Victoria was never like that, not now, and not when she’d taken them in when they were teens. She’d done her best to finish the job her son had started, seeing the four of them through the end of their high school years after their mother went to prison for conspiracy to commit murder, sentenced in a swift and speedy trial mere months after the killing of their father.
Shannon’s stomach clenched, as it often did just thinking of the last moments of her father’s life. Thomas Paige was shot four times in the driveway of their own home, a run-down, ramshackle house in North Las Vegas, the worst section of the city, riddled with crime. He’d been found with fatal gunshot wounds and an emptied wallet, as if a robbery had simply gone wrong. A robbery was plausible enough in that neighborhood.
Shannon and her brothers didn’t come from means. They came from desperation. They were bred from broken dreams, from a mother who’d wanted to be a Vegas star but never had the talent, so instead eked out a meager living as a seamstress, and from a father stuck driving cabs in the nightshift. But his situation started to change, and he’d thought he’d finally caught his lucky break when he began driving limos. He started making more money, and after a couple of years at his new gig, the future looked bright.
But there was no lucky break the June night he was shot after eight hours of chauffeuring rich kids from the swank suburbs to their after-prom parties.
Social services sent the pack of unruly Paige-Prince kids to live with their paternal grandparents once their mom was arrested for murder. Shannon hadn’t even started high school then, and at the time she’d never fully comprehended how horrible her grandparents must have felt. Their son was dead, his life taken at the hands of his wife, the very same woman who’d carried these four messed-up, fucked-up, troubled kids who had been dropped on their doorstep as teens—orphaned through death and then through prison bars.
As she grew older, Shannon came to understand the terrible balancing act that her father’s parents had had to pull off to raise them with love and kindness during those last few critical years. Shannon and her three brothers were grafted by murder into their grandparent’s home, united by the death of the flesh and blood that linked the two generations.
Some days, she missed her father fiercely. Today, she felt that empty longing envelop her in a split second as she stepped out of the pose, finishing their yoga session, and looked at a sun-faded photo of her father in his young twenties that hung above the end table on the sun porch. Sepia now in tone, the image showed his hands wrapped around Michael’s waist as he hoisted the toddler onto a slide. She could remember him taking her to the park, too, sometimes with his parents. He’d loved the outdoors, and loved to soak up the sun with his kids.
Her grandparents were the reason she returned to Vegas after a few years working in London, Miami, and Santa Fe for various dance companies and touring shows. Despite all that had happened, Las Vegas was the epicenter of her fractured family, her grandparents the heartbeat. Together with her brothers, they’d moved their grandparents into a new house in a safe and affluent section of Vegas. They’d made a pact as teens to live differently than their parents, to pull themselves out of the shit circumstances they’d grown up in, and to make sure they’d never be like their mother, who’d do anything for money.
Who’d done the worst for money.
Shannon looked at the picture again, pressed her fingers to her lips, and then touched her dad’s photo in the frame. Victoria did the same, and murmured, “Rest in peace.” Shannon’s throat hitched. Even now, even eighteen years later, she still felt so much emotion welling up inside her.
Better to focus on the conversation about Brent than to drift off into photos of days gone by.
“You hear correctly,” Shannon said, answering Victoria’s question about working with her old flame. “He hired my company to arrange for some dancers and choreography at his night clubs.”
They walked across the cool tiled floor to the kitchen. Victoria turned on the tap and poured some water, and handed a glass to Shannon, who downed half of it quickly. “He’s a sweet boy,” Victoria said in a whisper, first checking to see if any of Shannon’s brothers were in earshot.
“Boy,” Shannon said with a laugh. Brent was hardly a boy. He was all man, and the memory of how he’d touched her on his bar the other morning crashed back into her, like a comet of lust.
“He came back to bring me my ring, you know,” Victoria said, leaning her hip against the counter as she pushed a hand through her silvery hair.
Shannon furrowed her brow. “You never told me before.”
“I did try to tell you at the time, sweetheart. But you didn’t want to hear a word of it. You weren’t interested in any news about Brent, so I let it go. The ring doesn’t fit me anymore, but he came by and dropped it off himself shortly after you split.”
A strange sense of shock raced through her system as she flashed back in time. She remembered tossing the ring at Brent the day she’d walked out. She recalled too the red-hot rage, coupled with the soul-ripping sadness that her one true love had chosen something other than her. The days after the break-up were an agonizing blur of tears and investments in boxes of tissues, of anger and impromptu sessions using her couch pillows as punching bags. The weeks that followed were worse, the missing intensifying, the emptiness deepening, and they’d made her wish she had answered his calls earlier because his calls had stopped.
Shannon vacuumed up those memories. She knew her grandmother had the wedding band again, but she’d never stopped to find out how it came back to her. She’d always figured it had arrived by mail, never by personal courier in the form of Brent Nichols.
“He called me in advance. Made sure I was here. Said he wanted to return it to its rightful owner,” Victoria continued, as she poured herself a glass of water.
“He came to see you at your house?” she asked, processing this news for the first time.
“He did. Pulled up on his bike and came inside. I offered him some tea, and sat with him for a few minutes. Russ was at work, so it was just your boy and me. He said he didn’t want to risk putting the ring in the mail, or FedEx, or any of those services,” she said, and this little detail somehow worked its way into Shannon’s heart, chipping away at the tiniest piece of ice that had coated that organ to protect her from Brent.
“That’s actually really thoughtful,” she said softly.
“He asked about you. He wanted to know if you were okay. How you were doing.”
Her heart beat faster. She wanted to grab it and tell it to settle down. “He did?”
“I knew you’d split up, and you were busy working on West Side Story, but I think he was just trying to find out how you were,” her grandmother said, stopping to take a drink of water.
That lump in Shannon’s throat resurfaced, and tears threatened her eyes. She blinked, holding them in. What was wrong with her today? She needed to get a grip. That was ten years past, and this was now, and she was seeing the man tonight. She hadn’t told a soul about her plans for the evening.
“I’m seeing Brent tonight,” she blurted out, desperate to tell someone she could trust.
“You are? About the business deal? Or maybe about more,” her grandma said in a sly tone.
Shannon went with it, turning the moment playful. “Maybe more. We’ll see.”
“Some things are worth second chances.” Then her voice turned cold, as she held up a finger. “Other things—one must never grant a second chance.”
“I know, Nana. I know.”
Then the softness returned. “For what it’s worth, I always liked him,” her grandmother said.
“Liked who, Nana?” asked one of her brothers.
Shannon straightened her spine. Shit. Michael had just sauntered into the room with the toolbox, heading to the garage.
“Liked you, my love,” she said patting her eldest grandson on the cheek. “I’ve always liked you.”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “Hmmm. Doubtful,” he said skeptically, but continued into the garage.
Once he was out of sight, her grandma hugged her. “Some secrets are just between us girls.”
“Girl power,” she whispered, as her grandmother winked in response, then headed to her room to change out of her yoga clothes. Shannon turned the other direction to hang with her brothers in the backyard, passing Colin and her grandfather on their way into the house.
“Just going to make some more marinade,” Colin said. “My marinade rocks.”
“It’s not better than mine. We might need to have a taste test contest,” her grandfather chimed in, and Shannon smiled at their competitive ways, then joined Ryan by the grill. He pressed a spatula on top of a burger.
“Are you going to bring one home to Johnny Cash?” she said, asking about his dog.
“Of course. Nothing but the best for man’s best friend,” he said.
Like all her brothers, Ryan towered over her, but she was used to being surrounded by those sturdy men. Ryan’s brown hair looked lighter in the noonday sun, as if several strands were streaked with gold.
He flipped a burger. “You gonna eat today, Shannon bean?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t give me a hard time just because I don’t eat like a grown man or a teenage boy,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. They’d always teased her because she’d never been a big eater. With a petite frame and a dream to dance, she’d never been a big foodie. Though, truth be told, she was saving her appetite for dinner. She wanted to enjoy that restaurant, especially since she didn’t usually splurge on meals.
She’d asked for the reservation partly because she knew Brent would be able to pull it off. He loved challenges, so she’d given him the kind he craved. The consummate man about town, he was known for greasing wheels and opening doors. Shannon knew her way around Vegas, but unlike Brent, she operated out of the limelight personally. Her dancers and her shows were the star. Not her. She prided herself on being able to walk around town, up and down the Strip, in and out of hotels and casinos without anyone recognizing her.
Ryan glanced carefully at the house. “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Did you hear from Mom?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s the same old, same old.”
“But is it?” Ryan asked, holding up the barbecue tongs as if punctuating a point. “What if she’s right?”
Shannon sighed and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Ry, we can’t do this every single time she writes to us.”
“But what if she’s right that there were others involved?”
“Well, there were others involved. The other guy is also in prison because his fingerprints were all over the gun,” Shannon said. The details had been splashed across papers and the news at the time, and the specifics of how the local detectives had followed the trail of evidence to their mother was in black and white for anyone to find. She and Ryan had hashed this out a million times, and probably would a million more. It was an endless cycle with no answer, because the answer was this—the twenty-two-year-old Jerry Stefano, card-carrying member of the local gang the Royal Sinners, had pulled the trigger. Jerry Stefano had been in touch with Dora Prince many times, and was instructed to make the crime look like a robbery that had gone too far.
But the murder was never about the money in Thomas Paige’s wallet. Thomas Paige had a $500,000 life-insurance policy. Dora Prince was the beneficiary. And Jerry Stefano had been promised ten percent of that if he could get away with it.
It was murder for hire.
Ryan shook his head. “I know, but what if, Shan?” He dropped his voice to the barest whisper. “Listen, a buddy of mine in the DA’s office said one of the attorneys visited Jerry in prison recently. Hasn’t been there in years, but wanted to ask him some questions. See if he knew about some other crimes.”
Shannon groaned. “He was a fucking Royal Sinners gunman. Of course he knows about other crimes. He was probably involved in them.”
Ryan was undeterred. “We should at least visit her again.”
“She’ll do her usual routine. Like she did at Christmas. She’ll try to manipulate us.”
She didn’t share Ryan’s sympathies. Not one bit. She harbored guilt though. Too much guilt over her mother, and all those years when she and her mother were as close as a mom and daughter could be. Her mom had been there for her, for every dance, every recital, every performance, every moment. Maybe that was why Shannon had such a hard time severing ties with the woman in orange. Or maybe it was because she believed that her mother, in some bizarre way, loved her and her brothers.
