But Gweneth smiled and sauntered her way into the room as if she owned that space. Except for Harrison, they all rose and gave her a hug. Jayda was about to rise too, simply out of common courtesy, but Harrison wouldn’t let her. She looked at him with thatwhy notlook on her face. But he merely kept her hand in his hand and wouldn’t allow her to stand up for Gweneth.
Gweneth saw it too. She had been dying to see the bitch up close and person and this was her chance. Still smiling, still playing the role of the carefree vixen, although Harrison, who knew her too well, could tell she was pissed, she turned to him. “And hello to you too, love,” she said. “Is she supposed to be your Mrs. Right? Or, as usual, your Mrs. Right Now?”
Felix and Kitty and many of the other couples laughed. But Harrison ignored her putdown. “Hello Gweneth. Funny you should show up.”
“Funny? Not on my end. No, darling, who you showed up with is what’s funny. I think that joke’s on you.”
Felix and Kitty and the couples that were in their camp laughed. Dalton and Archie looked nervously at Carter. They knew how badly this could go.
“Gweneth,” Carter said shakily, “I thought I told you that your services were no longer needed.”
“What services?” Jayda blurted out before she could stop herself.
Gweneth looked at her. Carter had said she was okay looking, but when Gweneth saw her for herself she was hugely disappointed. That woman was far fromokaylooking. She was no bombshell the way Gweneth was when she was her age, but she was far prettier than Gweneth would admit she ever was, and she had that specialitfactor Gweneth never had. Carter had lied to her to appease her. And now she was out for blood.
But not Carter’s. She didn’t give a damn about him.
She wanted Jayda’s blood. She wanted to suck the life out of that bitch.
“She’s younger than your usual type,” she said to Harrison. “Much younger.”
Harrison didn’t respond. Gweneth was like Felix in a lot of ways. She, too, loved to push buttons.
“What’s the matter, Darling? That Viagra no longer working?”
Felix and his clone-of-a-wife Kitty laughed out loud.
Harrison wouldn’t dignify that question with a response. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I’m here to wish HB a happy retirement. He loves me, you know.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know you.”
When he said those words, he and Gweneth shared a hard look.
It seemed to throw her for a second. “You live in the past,” she said. “Take this child, for instance,” she said of Jayda. “She’s young, which keeps you in the past. But we all know what she wants. And it ain’t in your bed.”
“At least I’m in only one bed,” Jayda shot back. “But you, on the other hand,” she said, and Harrison was surprised. How did she know?
Gweneth was enraged. “How dare you tell that low-life hussy our business!”
He hadn’t told her a thing, but Jayda wasn’t about to tell that heifer that.
“What happened is between us!” she added. “That’s our business.”
“We don’t have any business, Gweneth. You cheated on me, I left your ass, and that was the end of us. There is no us.”
But Gweneth was just as firm. “There will always be us. Nobody will ever love you like I did, Harrison. Nobody! And you will never love anybody the way you loved me.”
Jayda’s heart dropped. Did he love her that deeply?
But Harrison was frowning. “Since when did I love you, bitch? I never loved you and you know it. I never even believed in love, and you knew that too. You was a good roll in the hay for me, and I was a good roll in the hay for you. And that was the sum and substance of our relationship let’s face it.”
But that made no sense to Jayda. “Then why did it bother you when she cheated on you?” she asked Harrison.
Carter and Archie glanced at each other. This woman was sharp, and nobody’s fool, they thought.
“It bothered me,” said Harrison, “because of who she cheated with.”
