A flash of anger lights up Mark’s eyes. “Ember, Fletch is an important client of mine. How will it look if I show up to this dinner without you on my arm?”
“It will look like we’re no longer together,” I tell him drily. “Which — hey what a coincidence! — is the actual truth.”
“You agreed not to make that public knowledge,” he bites out.
“I agreed not to tell anyone until the timing was right. I did not agree to continue letting you parade me around in public at social events.”
“Appearing with me at social events is expected of a wife,” he counters.
“Not one who’s soon to be an ex-wife,” I retort. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you ask Denise? She’s willing to put out for you in private. I’m sure she’d be willing to do so in public.”
Denise, inconveniently for Mark, is also married. But hell, maybe once our divorce is final, she’ll ditch her boring drip of a husband and switch to Mark. She’s just enough of a fake, heartless bitch for him. The two of them are perfect for each other. I’m sure they’ll make each other miserable.
“What’s so funny?” Mark scowls, and I realize I’ve been smiling to myself.
“Nothing,” I smirk. “But the answer is no, Mark. I’m not going to dinner with you. You’ll have to figure out an excuse on your own. I draw the line at actively faking it.”
“What about the gala?” he barks in alarm, raising his arms wide. “You can’t be absent from that! December, there’s no way people won’t notice and start talking if you don’t attend!”
The annual charity gala hosted by the board of a local charity for children’s cancer research is happening in a few weeks. It’s among the biggest events of the season for the tony, wealthy set of Tanner Springs. It’s one of those “everyone who’s anyone will be there” things, where people get dolled up in outfits that cost more than many people’s monthly mortgages, and try to outdo one another in wealth and conspicuous generosity. I hate the damn gala, but at least in the end, the money goes to a good cause.
“I’ll go,” I grumble. “But I’m not showing up on your arm, Mark. We’ll go in separate cars. And I refuse to play any games, so I’ll tell you right now that if you insist on making up stories about some upcoming vacation we’re taking or something like that, I won’t play along.”
“Ember, you…”
“No,” I say firmly. “You’re lucky I haven’t told people we’re not together anymore. That’s not going to last forever. Don’t press your luck.”
His frustration is evident. Blinking behind his glasses, his jaw works as he tries to gain the upper hand. “By the way, I drove by the house yesterday,” he tries, giving me a condescending sneer. “The lawn needs mowing.”
“What were you doing driving by the house?” I blurt. “It’s not on your way to anything that I can think of.”
“I had a meeting with a client in the area,” he says vaguely, waving a hand in the air.
“The lawn is your concern anymore, Mark,” I remind him. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
I notice he doesn’t ask about Bert, but I don’t point it out.
After a couple more attempts to dig at me, and a couple more angry outbursts about dinner this Saturday, he finally leaves. I don’t walk him out. I hear Mark say a few words to Margot out in reception, and have to smile when I note her clipped tone as she answers him.
When the front door closes, I heave a sigh of relief.
“Good lord, that man is exhausting,” Margot calls. “You survive that?”
“Yeah.”
She sticks her head in the doorway. “What did he want?”
“He came here to ask me to go to dinner with Denise Hadley’s parents this Saturday.”
Margot rolls her eyes so hard I’m afraid they’ll get stuck.
“Good God, how can he be so insensitive?” she explodes. “Hold it, scratch that question. It’s Mark we’re talking about here.”
I flash her a grin, grateful that I have at least one person with whom I can share how ridiculous my life is.
“So, you said no, obviously,” Margot guesses. “Judging from the way he blew out of here.”
“I did. Can you imagine having to make small talk with Fletcher and Gayle, and not tell them that their daughter is a cheating whore?”
“Thank God for that,” she exhales. “You were too much of a glutton for punishment while you were married to him. I’m glad to see you’ve regrown your backbone.”
Margot leaves about fifteen minutes later to go pick Benji up from school. For the next hour or so, I do my best to concentrate on work, but after Mark’s unexpected appearance, I’m too out of sorts. I make it until almost four-thirty, and then decide to call it a day.
“I promised Bert a long run when I get home, anyway,” I say aloud to the empty office. As though I need the office’s permission to leave at a reasonable time.
As I lock up and stride out to my car, I can’t help but cast a quick glance at the parking spot next to mine. The one where Striker was waiting yesterday.
I’m not sure if the adrenaline spiking through my veins is dread or anticipation at the thought of seeing him again.
10
Striker
“Prospect!”
Jude looks up from repainting the storage shed on the edge of the clubhouse compound and comes ambling toward me, perpetually cocky grin on his face. “Yeah, Strike, what is it?”
“You haven’t earned the right to call me by my name yet,” I growl, even though I know it’s no use.
He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Sorry, sorry. You called, sir?”
“Fuckin’ A,” I grumble, shaking my head in irritation.
Jude lives to push my buttons, and the buttons of everyone else in the damn MC. He’d have been out on his fuckin’ ass months ago, if he wasn’t the brother-in-law of our club president, Angel. Not only that, but Jude’s sister Jewel used to be our bartender at the clubhouse for so many years I lost count. That was before Jewel and Angel got together. Since they hooked up, Jewel’s been managing one of our other businesses, the Smiling Skull Bar. We’ve gone through a bunch of different bartenders at the clubhouse since Jewel took on that job, but we’ve never managed to replace her.
Jude, cocky motherfucker that he is, thinks he’s goddamn club royalty because of all that.
Unfortunately, he’s also proving himself to be a damn good prospect, if you overlook his mouth and his attitude. He was a little piss-ant when he came to Tanner Springs at seventeen years old, but he’s pulled his act together since then. Sure, he’ll pretend to bitch about shit we have him do. But he’s never blinked at any real order we’ve thrown at him, no matter how dangerous or demeaning. He’s proving his mettle for sure.
“Get yourself cleaned up and meet me out in the front parking lot,” I bark at him. “You got yourself a new job.”
“What about the shed?” he asks, looking back over his shoulder.