A Grand Seduction Page 24
A new and improved straw arrived, and she dunked it into her rainbow-colored beverage. Much better, though now the drink was nearly finished. A sex on the beach next, perhaps.
She laughed aloud at the thought. That’s what some of this was supposed to be about, wasn’t it? She’d done all the work, made all the plans. That she would be making her escape alone and on the run, well, that hadn’t been part of it.
What a fool she’d been. Or rather, that he’d been. He’d passed up a life in the lap of paradise for a cheap screw with a broken-down bar tramp. Bastard. Dominique had taken considerable risk for that man, lying to her friends and his dense excuse for a wife. She’d insisted he had never strayed, when in fact they’d nobbed each other raw the very first night and many times since. He was a man of some means, with the giant cock of an eighteen-year-old porno star and promises of undying allegiance to her. They’d decided to run off together with some of his liquid assets and her risky client investments, including the seduction scheme earnings the quartet was supposed to share. At the time, she didn’t figure the group would miss it. There was plenty more to be made after she was gone. She knew they meant more to each other than the money she’d squirreled away. After all, women’s happiness in the wake of ugly divorce was what it had all been about. They wouldn’t have begrudged Dominique using that money to ride off into happily ever after with her charming, erotic prince. Not once they thought about it.
Then it had all gone wrong. When the group decided someone else should take a stab at Chester, she couldn’t talk them out of it. She took matters into her own hands by contacting a plain, stringy loser she knew he would never fall for. Yes, she could have just warned him. But something inside had nagged at her. Would he?
And so, instead of delivering the fee as she’d told the others, morbid need drove Dominique to the motel that night. She used an alias to get a room and lie in wait, bitterly hoping she was wrong. Part of her had already known, and that part had come prepared. Entering the room to find that trollop with her lover, Dominique found that the gun was already in her hand. It went off so easily, much more than one might expect. She would have made an end of his cheating whore, too, if she hadn’t had bigger plans.
While the girl stood waiting for death, eyes squeezed shut in terror, Dom stuffed a pair of gloves into the girl’s purse. A pair she’d bought to match her own perfectly. The gun was left in the room, too, as evidence of Lanie’s guilt. Lanie’s punishment would not be death, but consequence for it.
Though she’d though everything had gone off flawlessly, something led police too close to her door. Thank God she already had her runaway plan. Now she had no wealthy man along to split the bill, but what she’d gained by those risky, high yield investments should keep her solvent for a while.
Chester not being here to share it bothered her, but better she found out what he really was before running off together like some lovesick fool. Besides, there was no shortage of handsome, willing, and wealthy men on the island. So yes, she’d had a narrow miss but had landed on her feet. Such was the story of her life. She just hoped that her friends had been smart enough to cover up the rest so their lives would be full of barbecues, not prison bars.
Silencing her thoughts for another sip of her drink, a conversation wafted to her over a gentle current of afternoon breeze stirring off the bay.
“I know he was with that skinny little tramp from the Mambo line. I could smell her cheap perfume on him.”
Turning in on the chat, Trudy found the words attached to a gaudy brunette with a gaudier cocktail diamond and a pointy bikini top. Her abundant waist was mercifully sheathed in a sarong. She sat with two other hens, bobbing their heads in female commiseration.
“I mean, does he have any idea what I could do to him if I caught him cheating on me?”
A simple-eyed blonde blinked at her. “What could you do?”
“Take half of all he’s worth, for starters,” she said.
Her other companion frowned. “Thought you signed a prenup?”
Laughter bubbled out without warning, and the three women turned their stares in Dominique’s direction, each wearing varying stages of incredulity.
The wife in question leaned forward in her lounge. “Find this amusing, do you? Not that it’s any of your business.”
Smile never wavering, she nodded. “My apologies. But I find it downright reminiscent.”
Lowered voices whispered of busybodies before returning to the subject of infidelity, and the new Trudy Walters returned to her drink. Perhaps she might hang up her invisible shingle someday, and A Grand Seduction would be back as a sole proprietorship. Casting a glance sideways at the women, she chuckled to herself. Next time, however, she wouldn’t make the same mistakes. She’d offer the same service to men looking to dump gold-digging wives.
After all, sometimes women were the ones who had it coming.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning story writer Lisa Logan resides in Southern California with her triple-A husband (an Author, Artist, and Actor) and their 7-year-old daughter. She has authored more than fifteen books under three different pen names. During rare moments where she is not writing, she enjoys gardening, cooking, movies, and schools her daughter at home.