Eileen gave a harsh bark of laughter after a few seconds. “I swear she tore him apart from the inside out. Vic wanted to please her, but he never could, you know? It got to the point where he just tuned her out, ignored her. That’s the worst sort of punishment for a woman like Jennifer,” Eileen murmured in that magnificent, deep voice that she used to such stirring effect on the stage.
“So she got back at him by jumping in the sack with ol’ Max over there, staging things just right so that Vic found them going at it full force.”
Niall flinched at the harshness of Eileen’s statement. She hated to think of Vic being subjected to something so painful. She tore him apart from the inside out. From the look that she’d seen on Vic’s face just now Niall had no problem wholeheartedly believing the accuracy of that statement.
All the effervescence and joy Niall had felt earlier that evening seemed to be dissipating as quickly as the bubbles in her untouched champagne.
“But Jennifer ended up being the butt of her nasty tricks,” Eileen continued. “She thought she’d whip Vic into a frenzy of jealousy and rage with her little plot, believed that he’d be even more desperate to keep her at all costs. But instead Vic dropped her faster than a stranger’s germ-ridden snot rag.” Eileen laughed softly, genuinely seeming to enjoy the memory. “She tried to get back in his good graces for months afterward, but the only thing she got from Vic was silence and ice. Finally she gave up and married ol’ Max a year later. I don’t think Vic has given her the opportunity to speak more than two words to him since then.”
“Until tonight,” Niall said softly.
“Yeah. Until tonight,” Eileen agreed with wary speculation.
Both women’s gazes flickered across the crowded room until they found Vic. His head stood above everyone else’s, so he wasn’t too difficult to spot. He was conversing in earnest with a bald man Niall didn’t recognize. His typical impassive expression was once again in place, so Niall couldn’t guess at his emotional state.
She cleared her throat with difficulty. “You seem to know an awful lot about the whole situation with Vic and Jennifer, Eileen.”
“I should. What do you think I was acting out on that stage up there tonight?” she asked with a bitter laugh.
Annoyance flickered across Vic’s awareness as he pretended to listen to a half-drunk Chicago socialite who had legs up to her armpits. He’d been trying to send Niall a “save me” signal for the past ten minutes now, but for some reason her gaze always seemed to bounce in the opposite direction whenever it got near him.
And where had all the luminescence that had been shining in her face earlier gone? Granted, he studied her from across a crowded room, but she suddenly seemed distant . . . drained.
Maybe she hated this type of affair almost as much as he did.
When he saw Niall make her way across the room an interminable few minutes later, he muttered a gruff “excuse me” during the socialite’s mid-ramble, barely noticing her shocked, offended expression as he walked away without a backward glance.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath a few seconds later when he caught a glimpse of Niall’s golden hair before the ladies’ room door shut with her on the other side of it.
“I think the boys’ bathroom is over there.”
Vic stiffened before he turned to face Jenny.
“I’m waiting for my date.”
“That blonde girl? Niall, wasn’t it?”
Vic didn’t respond, knowing that Jenny knew precisely to whom he referred. Besides, she was baiting him by calling Niall a girl.
He’d been so shocked by her sudden appearance earlier that he hadn’t been clear on what he’d been feeling since then. He suspected that Jenny’s presence must be having a profound effect on him on some unconscious level.
How could it not?
But in all honesty the only thing Vic had been focused on since he’d arrived at Mina’s was being with Niall. It seemed like every goddamned person in the room had adhered to him at some point, making it impossible for him to merely cross a span of fifty feet and claim her. He saw that she was always conversing with someone, including his mother, his sister, and a middle-aged, powerfully built man who looked like he was considering taking a bite out of her as she looked up at him with her huge, sexy eyes. His friend Caesar—who went through women like Vic did number-two pencils when he was on an editing spree—had a glazed-eyed, goofy look on his face as he vied for Niall’s attention. Best forget what Caesar looked like he was about to do when Niall laughed at one of his dumb-ass jokes if Vic wanted to maintain their friendship.
It never occurred to him to question the fact that he didn’t have a clue as to what Jenny had been doing for the last hour in the crowded room.
“May I have a word with you in private?” Jenny asked, her omnipresent hand settling on his lower arm.
“I can’t right now.” Her perfume found its way to his nostrils. Just the hint of it used to drive him wild with lust.
“Just a minute of your time, Vic? Didn’t what we had together warrant at least that?” Jenny asked in a trembling voice that struck Vic at that moment as totally genuine.
He answered her honestly. “I don’t owe you a damn thing, Jenny.” He glanced back at the closed ladies’ room door. “But it’s no sweat off my back if you want to talk to me for a minute.”
Much to his surprise, he realized that what he said was true. Why shouldn’t he listen to what she had to say? She was a human being, after all. He no longer felt the nauseating, blinding rage that he’d suffered in various degrees since he’d found her in his bed bouncing up and down on Max Blake’s cock.