When he said, “You’ve grown old, Danielle. And boring.”
The broken glass had crunched beneath her heels as she walked out that same evening, with two suitcases and a cab ready to take her to the Bayview Hotel, where she wouldn’t sleep a wink as it occurred to her that her husband’s descriptions of their children suggested that he had stayed and watched them.
That conclusion hadn’t yet reached as she packed, but the sickeningly awful feelings of the encounter surrounded her like a toxic miasma, and she could feel tears forming in her eyes.
“How appropriate.” Nicholas stood watching her leave with the same cold grey eyes as his father, shirtless, arms folded. She shot him a wary look, trying not to imagine her daughter pinned beneath him.
“What’s appropriate?”
“You, spending the night with all the other cast-off mistresses in town.” As if sensing her discomfort, he put his hands on his hips, daring her to look. “They call it the Payview Hotel.”
“You’re one to talk.” The words came out before she couldthink better of them.
The glint in his eyes reminded her of the quicksilver flash of a knife blade sliding violently out of its wooden block. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, I know why my daughter really left.” Her hand tightened on the door knob and she moved a little closer to it as his weight shifted like he was about to spring. “You always thought you were such hot shit. Mr. God’s Gift to Women. Well, it seems like I’m not the only cast-off.”
His mouth twitched—not into a smile, but an expression utterly alien to her, cold and terrifying. A predatory grimace.
“Get out.”
But this was the first response he’d ever given her after years of flouting her authority and she wasn’t about to back down now.
“I’ve seen a lot of men like you. They think that just because they’ve got money to burn, they’re worthy of everyone’s time. But trust me, everyone thinks they’re a fucking joke. Or didn’t you think I’d seen you going through your sister’s things? Sleeping in her bed? You pathetic little creep. No wonder she left.”
For a moment, she saw real pain there, hot and raw and satisfying. Then his face became hard and stony—just like his father’s.
“Get out,” Nicholas repeated. “Or I’m going to hurt you.”
It’s not your house, she had nearly said, but something in his face had stopped her—a cold, collected menace that struck her as being very adult. It belonged more on a man his father’s age than on a boy in his late teens.He really would hurt me, she realized.In a heartbeat.
Anyway, her cabwaswaiting, so she turned her back onhim despite every instinct in her body screaming at her not to and she spent the night in her hotel shaking from a chill that could not be appeased by the down comforter as she turned her husband’s words over and over in her mind.
(she calls him Daddy)
That had been the last real conversation she’d had with Nicholas until the death of his father, when he had kicked her out. It wasn’t until she’d called him up for money that they’d spoken again.
Danielle had been shocked when she had looked him up, and seen not the scrawny, punk-eyed little shit that she remembered, but a younger, handsomer version of his late father. Despite the scandal of Damon’s sexual misconduct, and the ensuing lawsuit, Nicholas had somehow managed to walk away from the worst of the rumors mostly untouched. At the funeral, she had been astounded by the sheer volume of money she wouldn’t be seeing a cent of: he had given it all to Nicholas, not that he seemed to care. She supposed he wouldn’t have to, looking like that.
Ten grand, just totalkto her daughter. The last time a john had handed her that much cash, she’d walked home with a sore ass and sticky cleavage. She couldn’t even imagine what Justine had done to him to make him that fucking desperate.
(she’s had him wrapped around her finger)
Damon was probably laughing himself hoarse down there in hell.
But the joke was on all three of them, because she was tired of living in her daughter’s shadow, forced to beg for scraps of what belonged to her. It was time to take matters into her own hands.
Someone knocked on the door. Danielle let out a harshbreath and smoothed her hair back from her face before adjusting her thin lace-edged tank top, making sure the edges lay flat over her flowy harem pants. Her eyes landed on her half-melted Thai tea and she moved to throw that away, but not before fishing out a piece of ice and holding it briefly against each of her nipples.
She checked through the peephole, and yes, it was exactly who she was expecting: her slightly tarnished white knight, here to save her.
Pasting on a smile, she threw open the door. The younger man on the step was holding a cheap bottle of wine, and she saw his weaselly eyes widen in what appeared to be excitement, if his tented jeans were any indication. She stood a little taller, making sure to push out her breasts.
You don’t think I’m old and boring, do you, baby?
“Wow,” he said, his voice hoarse as he looked at her tits. “You look—”
“I know, baby. It’s good to see you, too.” Pushing off from the door, she stood on tiptoe to reach his mouth, making sure she could feel the press of her body against his skinny torso as she leaned into him. When she reached down to squeeze his cock through his jeans, he whimpered.
