The Pre-Nup (15 page)

“I knew it!”
Mara rolled up her sleeves and prepared to release her surging adrenaline via senseless violence. “I caught you! You’re caught!”

Josh and the sequined seductress stopped cooing at each other and blinked up at her.

Josh was the first to recover his composure. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question,” Mara said. “How could you?”

“Hey!” The dark-haired dancer caught up with Mara and sank her manicured talons into Mara’s forearm. “You can’t do this! I’m calling security!”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Josh turned to his companion. “This is her.”

The stripper sized up Mara through heavily mascaraed eyelashes. “You don’t say.”

“Yeah.” Josh reached into his pants pockets, produced his wallet, and took out a few bills, which he handed to Mara’s escort. “She can stay here with us. It’s fine.”

The brunette consulted the redhead. “You okay with this?”

The world’s most gorgeous female nodded. “If he says it’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t worry.”

The brunette made a face but retreated, leaving the other three to face off over berries and bubbly.

Mara opened her mouth to rip into Josh, but the stripper beat her to the punch. “So you’re Mara. You have some nerve, showing up like this. Ever heard of boundaries?”

Mara leaned across the tiny round table and got right up in the other woman’s face. “First of all, I don’t need boundary talk from someone who bares her booty for tips. Second of all, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced, you little—”

“This is Bentlie,” Josh said quickly, before Mara could finish her sentence. “She’s—”

“Oh, I know what she is.” Mara glared at the dancer, who glared right back. “Now back off; this guy’s engaged.”

“So what?” The stripper lounged back against the banquette and took a slow, leisurely sip of champagne.

“So obviously you don’t care about oh, you know,
morality,
but I do.”

The stripper stopped smiling. Her hazel eyes glittered coldly. “From what I hear, you’ve got no room to talk about morality. In fact, from what I hear, this guy’s not engaged anymore. You know, I meet a lot of men in my line of work. A lot of low-down, no-good, lying, sexist, bottom-feeding assholes. But not this one.” She trailed her fingers from Josh’s wrist up to his shoulder. “He’s a nice guy.”

Mara’s blood pressure skyrocketed. “Hands off.”

“Why do you care?” the redhead challenged. “Didn’t you tell him to go sleep with another woman?”

“What exactly have you two been doing back here?” Mara demanded.

Josh straightened up in his seat and tried to avert the head-on collision. “We should go.”

“Not so fast.” Bentlie nibbled on a strawberry. “Josh and I have been talking. He has lots to say, and obviously, you don’t listen.”

“Oh, now you’re a therapist in a thong?”

“I get paid a lot more than a therapist,” Bentlie said loftily. “And I don’t need a psych degree to see that you treat him like dirt and he’d be better off without you.”

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“I’ll talk to you any way I want.” Bentlie raised her eyebrows to Josh. “Why do you put up with this?” She turned her attention back to Mara. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a guy who actually respects women? I don’t think so. Sounds to me like you’re spoiled and selfish. You don’t deserve him.”

“That is not—”

“Still talking.” Bentlie smirked. “I can’t believe you threw away a catch like this.”

“I didn’t throw him away.”

“Hello? You sent him off to Vegas and told him to have sex with someone else. Face it, babycakes, the engagement is over.” She smiled at Josh. “You’re lucky you escaped before it was too late.” The two of them exchanged a meaningful look.

“All I asked for was a pre-nup,” Mara said faintly. “All I wanted was—”

“Blah, blah, blah, you, you, you.” Bentlie examined her lacquered red fingernails. “
You
want,
you
need. You’re an idiot.”

“I see where this is going. You think you should have him instead?”

“Hell, no.” Bentlie helped herself to another strawberry. “I’ve had enough of marriage to last me a lifetime.”

“Her ex-husband was terrible to her,” Josh informed Mara. “Verbally abusive, compulsive liar, gambling problems.”

“I can’t believe this.” Mara snatched up Josh’s champagne flute and drained the contents. “I am not going to sit here trying to justify myself to some random stranger—”

“I have a name,” Bentlie said.

“Give me a break. Bentlie’s not your real name and we all know it.”

Josh looked disappointed. “It’s not?”

“Of course not!” Mara couldn’t wait to deflate the dancer’s mystique. “Her real name’s probably something like Sarah or Kristen or—”

“Alex,” Bentlie admitted, twirling a lock of red hair around one finger and amping up her expression of wistful vulnerability. “But I don’t tell customers that. Only real friends.”

“I understand.” Josh’s eyes shone with gallantry. “You have to keep some things private.”

“Enough.” Mara circled the table, grabbed Josh’s elbow, and hauled him to his feet. “Tonight’s therapy session is officially over.”

Josh waited for the next break between songs before telling Alex, “You have my card. Give me a call and we’ll figure something out.”

Mara stopped yanking at his sleeve and punched him in the shoulder. “
Figure something out?
What is that supposed to mean?”

He started toward the exit. “Let’s go.”

“Oh no. I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me—”

Josh lowered his voice and regarded her with flinty detachment. “Let’s. Go.”

Her protests died halfway to her lips and she found herself trailing along behind him.

“Bye!” Alex called after them. “It was great to meet you, Josh. Stay strong! I’ll talk to you soon.”

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Mara said to Josh’s back as they made their way into the smoke and mirrors of the club’s main floor.

“Then don’t.”

“Well…” She tried to figure out exactly when she had lost the upper hand. “Aren’t you going to explain yourself?”

“Nope.” Josh waved to Eric and started across the room toward the bar. “I’d say the situation’s pretty self-explanatory.”

“Hey!” She stumbled after him. “Don’t just walk away from me!”

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” He kept going.

“Wait! Let’s just talk this through for a second.”

“Mara.” He stopped long enough for her to catch up. “Why are you here?”

She lowered her eyes and forced out the words. “I came to apologize.”

He ignored all the tits and ass and mirrored disco balls surrounding them on all sides and watched her closely. “Really?”

She studied the worn maroon carpet. “Yes.”

“Well, go ahead then.”

Her head snapped back up. “What’s that?”

“Apologize.”

“I just did.”

“No, you didn’t. You said you were
going
to apologize.”

Her cheeks burned. “I was. Until I saw you with the minx with no tan lines.”

“Don’t talk about her that way. She’s a very nice girl. In fact, I was hoping you could talk to her. She’s having some legal issues with her divorce—”

“Did you have sex with her?” Mara blurted out.

His brows snapped together. “Of course not.”

“Did you kiss her?”

He rocked back on his heels and stared at her.

“Well? I’m waiting.”

“Do you not remember what you instructed me to do before I left Phoenix?”

The rivulets of cold sweat started up again on her neck. “So you did kiss her.”

“I’m not going to answer that.” Josh resumed walking toward Eric and signaled the bartender for a beer. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m finished with this push-me-pull-you bullshit. Bentlie was right—”

“Alex,” Mara corrected.

“Whatever you want to call her, she was right. You’re punishing me for something
you
did, and I’ve had it.” He dusted off his hands. “You’re scared to make a commitment? You refuse to get married without a bunch of legal loopholes? Fine. We won’t get married.” He opened his mouth to continue, but she was so terrified to hear his next pronouncement that she cut him off with “Let’s do it. Right now.”

“Do what?”

“Get married.”

“Can we please be serious here?”

“I am serious. Let’s do it! Come on!” She was starting to hyperventilate a bit, but tried to parlay this into giddy enthusiasm. “We can be at a drive-through chapel in less than ten minutes. No muss, no fuss, no pre-nup. You win.”

“Get real.” He let out a harsh bark of laughter. “You’re not ready to get married tonight. Neither am I. I don’t think we’ll ever be ready.”

“What are you saying?” She reached out to touch his face, but he flinched away.

“I’m saying good-bye, Mara.” He changed direction and headed for the exit. The dancer’s words echoed through her mind:
You’re spoiled and selfish. You don’t deserve him.

So Mara let him leave and realized too late that a woman with a fake name, fake breasts, and a fake hair color knew her better than she knew herself.

Ten minutes and several sodden tissues later, Mara emerged from the restroom and scanned the bar area for Eric. But he had abandoned his earlier post, and she finally located him by a small round table in the middle of the room, slouched deep into a black leather chair and surrounded by a bevy of undulating blondes.

She sat down next to him. “I’d offer to buy you a lap dance, but I’d say you’ve already got an embarrassment of riches here.”

“Yeah. So?” Eric threw some cash down on the table-cloth without even looking up from his Scotch and soda. “At least they’re not pretending to care about me because they feel sorry for me.”

“Oh boy.” Mara settled in and made herself comfortable. “You know, for a guy surrounded by hot, naked chicks, you seem pretty depressed.”

“No offense, but I’m trying to have a little guy time here.”

She nodded toward the stack of money. “Well then, I should probably tell you that you’re supposed to put those in their G-strings.”

He glanced up at her long enough to notice her red-rimmed eyes. “What happened to you?”

“That is a long and ultimately pointless tale. Let’s focus on someone who actually has a shot in hell of saving their relationship: you.”

“Where’s Josh?” He finally gave her his full attention, and the dancers, sensing that the cash flow was drying up, drifted off toward more promising prospects at neighboring tables.

“He left,” she said flatly.

“Where’d he go?”

“He didn’t say.”

He indicated his Scotch. “Want the rest of that?”

“Nah, I think it’s best for everyone involved that I self-medicate with carbs instead of alcohol tonight. Where’s the rest of the bachelor party?”

Eric shrugged. “They’re around here somewhere. Or not. Maybe they went back to the casino. It was every man for himself after Josh went in to the VIP room.”

“Clearly, men do not share the strict no-desertion code of honor that girlfriends do.” She shook her head. “Jeez. Who leaves a guy in your condition alone with a bottle and a bunch of strippers?”

“I
want
to be alone. If you wouldn’t mind…”

“Sorry. I can’t just abandon you to the vagaries of the Black Diamond.”

“Sure you can. It’s easy.”

“Nope. Jen would never forgive me.”

Eric’s expression darkened. “Say her name again and I’m outta here.”

“Look. I know you’re not in the mood for this, but the thing you have to realize about Jen is—”

“Isn’t there a no-harassment code of honor? You don’t hear me yapping about Josh.”

“That’s because there’s nothing left to yap about. He’s done. I made it impossible for him to love me.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“No, I mean, I wish I could just turn it off like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Being in love sucks. It’s like a drug. It’s like…diet soda.”

“Well, you know, there’s a cure for that now.”

Eric set his jaw. “So tell me about Patrick. Just get it over with. Is she seeing him again?”

“No,” she said emphatically. “Forget Patrick. Let me tell you about Jen instead.”

He paused for a moment. The strobe lights onstage threw glints of gold across his face. “I could take her company away from her. In the divorce. Part of me really wants to do it. Just so she’ll know what it’s like to put in all that time and effort and get nothing back.”

Mara nodded and waited.

“I won’t actually do it.” He prodded the ice cubes in his glass. “Probably.”

She sighed and waved away an approaching dancer. “Jen and I go back a long way. Almost as far as you and Jen go back.”