Page 2 of Home Body
He didn’t even look up to see who’d barreled out the door, laser focused as he was on one thing and one thing only. It was the broad who looked up and ducked in time to miss Kenyan’s purse as she swung it with all her might, clobbering Chad square in the jaw.
He staggered back, his manhood suddenly shriveling up like a puckered-up prune. The slut disappeared back through the door. Dazed, it took him a beat to realize who’d hit him.
“Kenyon? What in hell are you doing here?” He swiped at a drop of blood on his lip.
“The question is, Chad, what in hell areyoudoing here?”
“Oh. Oh, um….” He fumbled with zipping up his pants. “I, ah….”
“You fucking bastard!” In a startling flash, Tamara lost it, pummeling him with her hefty purse. “How could you do this to me?”
Chad cowered under the assault, raising his arms to defend himself like a pitiful boxer losing a round to Mohammed Ali.
For a split-second Kenyon had been thrilled that her lifelong friend, her matron-of-honor, defendedherhonor. But like a coma patient groggily coming to, Kenyan’s fuzzy, mojito-infused brain caught on to what Tamara had said. “Me.”
“What?” Kenyon snatched Tamara’s arm. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘me’? You said he did this toyou.” She suddenly realized her friend was as furious as she was.
Jessa spat it out. “She’s been screwing Chad the whole time you’ve been dating him. I’ve tried to convince them to stop. But they’re gonna keep doing it even after you get married. Tamara said so. They’re disgusting.”
Kenyon gawked at Jessa as her brain struggled to absorb what she’d heard. “What?” Her voice took on the grate of a dying animal. “What?”
“Ah huh.” Jessa, unsteady from alcohol, stumbled sideways, righted herself, and pointed at the miscreant adulterers. “She tells her husband Larry…” she emphasized “husband” “…that she visits her sister one night a week, and he…” she snarled disgustedly at Chad “…tells you he’s playing poker. Everybody knows but you.”
Kenyon gulped in a breath. “You,” she cried, addressing Chad, “you, my husband-to-be, withher, my best friend since third grade?” Her watery eyes fell on Tamara in utter disbelief. “You did this to me? What about Larry? What about me? You tramp!”
The instant Kenyon took her eyes off him, Chad escaped back inside. Tamara ignored Kenyan, not caring one whit how much she’d hurt her husband or her friend. She went after her nascent lover. The spurned bride-to-be Kenyan and now bogus maid of honor Jessa scurried behind.
The quickest way out of the building was across the main floor right in front of the stage. Chad made it halfway before Tamara flung herself onto his back and brought him down. Like a World Wrestling Association champion, she pummeled his back with one fist and yanked at his hair with the other.
Chad couldn’t be heard over the blasting music, but the giant “O” of his mouth indicated screaming.
The red-wigged stripper on stage sighed disgustedly, stopped dancing, and plopped her fists onto her hips, looking down over the edge of the stage at the brawling couple on the floor. The rabid audience of men tore their eyes away from the object of their desire on stage and quickly became entertained by the fight.
Someone cheered, “Go bitch! Get the bastard!” Another hollered, “Hey dude, man up and put her down!” Many whistled and applauded but the brawny bouncer and the hefty man in asuit appeared and yanked them apart. The audience went wild with applause while hooting and hollering.
Utterly lost, standing in a tortured trance, Kenyon watched as her former fiancé and her former best friend got hauled away. She blinked and glanced up at the dancer on stage. The deafening music still blared, and the woman started dancing again. But Kenyon caught the look in the stripper’s dazzling lake-blue eyes before she turned away.
A stripper in a garish get-up, with glittery eyelids and wearing a cheap wig, pitied her. Kenyon O’Brien, the privileged and admittedly pampered daughter of prominent parents, had sunk so low she garnered pathetic pity from a sleazy peeler.
Life couldn’t possibly get any grimmer.
Her world went black as she crumbled to the floor.
CHAPTER 3
Here she was again, doing something her better judgement told her not to do.“No! Stop! Drive away, you idiot!”Dalia’s brain screamed at her. This was dangerous. She must keep her anonymity. But she could no more walk away from this poor slop than from a crying child or stray puppy.
The beleaguered bride-to-be sat on a ledge outside the front door of Babette’s Gentlemen’s Club, sobbing her heart out. She’d fainted inside, revived, and left with another woman. But here she was all alone needing help. Most of all she needed tissues.
Dalia put her truck in park, hopped out, and went over to the pitiful girl. Her shift had ended, and she’d intended on making a quick getaway like always to try to cleanse her karma of the fetid aura of that hellhole. Too bad she hadn’t managed to drive off before seeing this sorry scene out front. She scrounged around in her giant bag to come up with a package of tissues and handed them over.
Teary, almond-shaped, hazel eyes gazed up at her. “Th…Thank you,” the young woman said through a hiccup. She might be pretty, but it was hard to tell with her skin all puffy and redaround her eyes, her mascara running down her cheeks, her hair in a tangle, and the fake bride veil hanging sideways off her head.
“He, he cheated on me with my best friend and with a strip, stripper. Oh. You’re a stripper, too.” The hazel eyes looked Dalia up and down in her red get-up with a denim shirt thrown over it. “Sorry. You must have, you know, boyfriends here, too.”
At least the crying had stopped but the gal was drunk. Very drunk. This had no doubt been the worst night of the poor thing’s life.
“Do you have a ride home?” Dalia asked, ignoring the insinuation that she, too, had sex with men there.
