“Nope.”
Zach let Steve’s arm slip from his grip and took a seat at a nearby table—undoubtedly so he could provide backup should Steve change his mind.
Tamara watched Steve’s approach, and the smug smile she had plastered on her face rivaled the one Sam Baily typically sported.
“Why do you have to be such a pain in the ass?” Steve said, sitting across from her without waiting for an invitation. “Nothing’s going to happen here that will be remotely interesting to your readers.”
“I just came to unwind.” Her smug grin widened.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Oh, nothing.” But she kept right on smiling.
“Are you going to leave?”
“Are you asking me to leave?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I want to watch it all go down.”
“Watch what go down?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Steve was about to call Reagan over to deliver that throat chop she’d promised but decided instead to try making Tamara as uncomfortable as she was currently making him. Maybe he’d get some answers, or maybe she’d leave. He’d be satisfied with either outcome.
“How do you know Sam Baily?” he asked, leaning his elbows on the table.
That wiped the smug look off her face. “None of your business.”
“So the lives of all my friends are everyone’s business, but your life is nobody’s? That doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“I know him through my sister.” She shrugged. “Not that interesting, is it?”
“And how does Bianca know him? Why did he save her from bankruptcy?”
She crossed her arms and turned her face toward the wall beside her. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“She doesn’t answer my questions unless it’s ‘would you like some more money?’ and I bet you can guess her answer to that one.”
Tamara straightened, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t you dare say anything bad about her. You ruined her in that divorce.”
“I ruined her?” Steve laughed. “If anything, I protected her. I was stupid, I see that now. I was still in love with her at the time, but I’ve finally let all that go. I met someone who loves me for me, not for what I can do for her.”
The smug smile returned to Tamara’s face. “I can’t wait to watch her dump you.”
Steve frowned. “And why would she do that?”
“You’ll see.”
“What do you know that I don’t know?”
“I’m not going to spoil the surprise.” She pointed toward the door. “I think you might want to check on your friend, though.”
Steve turned in time to see Zach dash out of the pub, and Steve was pretty sure he was crying. Oh fuck.
Thirty
Roux lifted an adorable designer purse and checked the price tag. Fifteen hundred pounds! Surely the decimal place was off. She did some quick mental math on the exchange rate—two thousand bucks. Who the hell would spend two thousand bucks on a purse? That was a mortgage payment on a nice house. She set the purse down carefully, afraid that if she scuffed it, she’d be forced to buy it.
“You could get that for yourself,” Raven said.
“And make payments on it for two years? No thanks.”
“Put it on Steve’s card. You know you want it. It’s so cute.”
Actually, no, she didn’t want the reminder that she was broke. It was bad enough that she couldn’t afford to buy him those socks he’d requested.
Maybe she could afford to add the bag’s adorable matching coin purse to her collection. She squinted at the tag, hoping to make the price smaller. Eighty pounds? For a fucking coin purse? Perhaps she should start collecting thimbles instead.
Iona, who was trying on hats as if she’d been invited to a royal wedding, reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. “Google alert,” she announced. She had dozens of them set up so that she’d know what anyone was saying about the band or its members on the Internet. She’d been getting a lot of them over the past couple days as people who’d attended the Download Festival had been posting about them. There had been a few slurs, but most of the attention had been positive.
“Will you stop obsessing?” Azura tried to take her phone from her hand. “We’re supposed to be having fun as sisters today, not as bandmates.”
Iona’s eyes widened, and she glanced at Roux. Azura peeked at Iona’s phone over her shoulder. Her face also registered shock before she looked at Roux. Iona clutched her phone to her chest and took a deep breath before stuffing the device back into her purse.
“You’re right,” Iona said. “Play today, work tomorrow.”
“It was about me, wasn’t it?” Roux said, digging through her purse for her own phone. All she had to do was search for her name on Google and she’d get the same results that the alert had shown Iona.
Iona grabbed Roux by the shoulders and crammed a hat on her head. “This hat is perfect for you.” She forced Roux in front of the mirror and took her purse—the phone still inside—and handed it to Azura, who grabbed the nearest evening gown and made a beeline for the dressing room. Sage dashed after Azura while Iona, Raven, and Lily made a human wall around Roux to keep her in front of the mirror. The silly red hat with the feather shaped like a question mark was tugged from her head and replaced with a wide-brimmed black-checkered fedora. Roux knew her sisters well enough to know they were hiding something from her.
“I’m going to find out sooner or later,” she said, removing the hat and passing it Iona. “What did it say?”
“It’s not important,” Iona said, but she drew Roux into a tight hug and squeezed her as if one of her favorite shelter dogs had been adopted by a dog-fighting ring.
“Was it about me and Steve? We were expecting our relationship to go public.”
Iona crammed another hat on Roux’s head. Was she fighting tears?
“How bad can it be?” Roux said.
“That motherfucker!” Azura bellowed from inside the dressing room. “I’m going to rip his entrails out through his ball sac and strangle him with them.”
Roux’s stomach dropped. “That bad, huh?” She pushed Lily aside and marched toward the dressing room, not slowed at all by Raven, who had her arms around Roux’s waist and was trying to dig her feet into the carpet.
“The pictures are probably old,?
? Iona said, chasing after her. “From before he met you.”
Roux was trying not to jump to conclusions, but it sounded like what had her sisters so upset on her behalf was more about Steve than her. Roux checked under dressing room doors until she found the pairs of feet that belonged to Azura and Sage. She tried the knob, but the door was locked.
“Open this door and give me my damn phone!” Roux demanded, pounding on the door with her palm.
“That gown looks lovely on you,” Sage said to Azura, as if Azura’s outburst had never happened and Roux wasn’t now trying to rip the door off its hinges.
“Roux,” Iona said in her most calming alpha-bitch voice. “Let’s go back to the hotel and we’ll discuss this in private.”
“Are you worried that I’ll make a scene?” Roux spat, dropping to the floor and lying flat on her belly, squirming under the dressing room door. She got stuck when her butt—always too round, in her opinion—caught on the bottom of the door. “Oh, I’m about to make a fucking scene. Give me my damn phone!” She reached out and caught Azura around the ankle, trying to pull her down to her level. Her shoulder protested at the angle of her arm, but Roux refused to let a little pain stop her from getting her phone and finding out what had everyone so freaked out.
“Sage,” Lily said calmly. “Unlock the door before she hurts herself.”
The door latch clicked, and the bottom of the door scraped across Roux’s back, forcing her to lie flat until she’d been freed. Lily helped her stand, and even though Roux didn’t know exactly what all the drama was about, she could feel tears building inside her. Instead of directing her out of the store, Lily eased her into the dressing room. Raven and Iona squeezed in behind them and shuffled close so they could shut the door. Six grown women in a dressing room stall didn’t offer much breathing room.
“Iona,” Lily said, “tell her what to expect before we show her.”
“I . . .” Iona sucked in a breath. “I don’t want to.”
“Steve,” Azura blurted. “He’s with some other chick. They’re both naked and . . . and doing stuff.”
Oh, was that all? Did they think she’d freak out over pictures of Steve’s past lovers?