Karma. I’d seen it in action before, but it really didn’t like when people try to fuck others over. And this was the perfect example.
Suddenly jumping up off my lap, Jacinda squeaked, “Ryanne,” and ran out the door.
Thanking Giselle, I hung up and went to find where she’d gotten to, only to see someone else I’d forgotten all about—Ryanne Gallagher.
After the accident, it’d taken everything we could to get Reid to calm down. He went off the rails for six months, the guilt of it all literally eating him up inside.
Seeing her, she looked like a slightly more fragile version of the girl I remembered from over a decade ago.
“Ryanne, you look beautiful,” I said sincerely as Tony washed her hair.
Seeing I was glancing at him inquisitively, he shrugged. “I didn’t want this beautiful hair to be anything other than perfect, so I got one of the other girls to check it and then brought her over to wash out the crap Jacinda put in it.” Pulling his fingers through the long strands, he sighed. “It’s like silk. What do you wash it with?”
Rockie jumped in quickly with his hands over his ears. “Don’t ask her that shit. Trust me, you don’t want to know. None of us do.”
It took a week for us to hear back about the shit with Kortni, but when it did, I told Jacinda to meet me at Kleins and had a bottle of champagne waiting. Knowing how important it was, Bond sat at the bar to act as our taxi driver for the night.
Apparently, getting told by the governor’s lawyers that the book would be distasteful and outlining how he remembered Kortni being during the trial was enough for them to decide against seeing the book deal to fruition. The lawyers had also gone the extra step of reaching out to other publishers and agents, letting them know the same thing.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a news channel did an interview with Aidan Dahl, Ned’s nephew who’d found Jacinda, and he’d recounted how hostile and nasty Kortni had been to her right after it’d happened. He made everyone doubt her side of the story, meaning it’d be unlikely she’d ever get whatever it was she was looking so hard for. Well, at least she’d finally had her fifteen minutes of fame—twice.
That evening, I got Bond back. No, we didn’t have sex on his desk, but we did do it on the floor right in front of it.
CHAPTER 15
Jacinda
Seven weeks later…
Today had been a good day. I’d had the whole day off, so I’d spent it with the girls, including our two newer additions, Cyn and Ryanne. We’d introduced them to the pole dancing workouts, and then we’d spent some time hanging from these large panels of silk, which took some effort to maneuver around in.
It looked easy, like you’d just be swaddled and swinging, but that mean bastard who did our classes was a masochist, so of course he’d made us use them properly. This had left me aching all over, but some of it was due to the amount of laughing I’d done, too.
Getting out of my new Mini, I trudged up to my front door, waving at my neighbors and doing my best to look like I hadn’t had my ass kicked, seeing as how I was wearing workout gear. No one wanted people to know they were unfit as hell when they were wearing this shit.
We’d had Damian neutered five weeks ago, and I could confirm the only time he’d been an angel since had been when he was still doped up on the anesthetic and painkillers the vet had given him. Granted, he was nowhere near as bad as he’d been before, but he still randomly jumped out and launched a ninja attack on whatever part of your body he could get his claws into.
If he did it today, I’d lock him in the cage we’d bought for when he’d had the surgery. The vet had advised us to look at him like a dog and start crate training him. I hadn’t been convinced, but Canon had researched it when we’d gotten home, and sure as shit, there were full websites dedicated to it. The only problem was I was a wimp, and I hated hearing his sad meows. I also hated how vindictive he was for the first five minutes after we let him out again, so I couldn’t say I was all fired up to do it tonight.
Closing the door behind me, I turned the lights on and took a step deeper into the living room, but stopped when I saw a large box waiting for me on the floor. Canon must have caught the delivery before he’d left for work.
I couldn’t remember what I’d ordered online at any time, there were just too many to keep track of, so I ripped the box open and pulled out all of the paper covering its contents.