Complete Bliss (Her Billionaires #5.3)(28)
Author: Julia Kent

“They make ’em contoured?” Darla asked sweetly, like they were talking about press-on nails. “I’ll have to try one. What about lube? You found one that helps everything fit in there?”

“Fit?” Madge asked, eyes gleaming.

“When you have them both in. You know.”

“Both—oh! No, no. I just have Eddie.” Madge tittered. Her face changed suddenly, and she nudged Darla, who followed the old woman’s lead and scooched in.

“But,” Madge said in a conspirator’s voice, “I do have a question. I have a granddaughter who is in this weird relationship.”

“Weird?”

“Like you two,” Madge said, pointing to Laura and Darla.

“We’re not in a relationship.” Laura giggled.

“I mean how you two are each with two men. Lydia’s got that now. Two men.” Madge paused and looked Laura over. “Two billionaires, actually.”

Laura looked like she’d been slapped. Slowly, like an interrogator who is receiving a confession from a serial killer and can’t quite believe the turn of events, Laura leaned across the table and grasped Madge’s weathered, bony hand.

“You have a granddaughter,” she said quietly, “who is in a threesome relationship with two billionaires?”

“Yes.” Madge frowned. “At least, I think they’re both billionaires. Their names are Mike and Dylan,” Madge said dryly.

Darla and Josie couldn’t help but laugh. Laura didn’t.

“That’s not funny. The Mike and Dylan part is, but lying about your granddaughter and making fun of me and Mike and Dylan isn’t—”

“I’m not lying. Lydia’s with Mike Bournham.”

“The Michael Bournham?” All three of them gasped.

“The. Yes. And Jeremy. His best friend.”

“And they’re both billionaires? I mean, I know Michael Bournham came close, but who’s this Jeremy guy?” Darla asked. The Bournham scandal was the talk of the town. The guy had been caught with his pants down—actually, off—on camera f**king some admin at his company and—

“Was she in the sex tape?” Josie asked. “The one who got her reality television show?”

Madge’s face closed off in a marked manner, and Darla knew that look well. That was the look of a mama bear who wasn’t letting no one mess with her cub. “No. Not her.” Something about the way Madge’s eyes turned to two dead stones made Darla stop moving, as if she needed to blend into the background before the world ended.

Because Madge could take a person down.

“Oh.” Josie’s simple answer said it all. Laura held her breath. Ribald laughter broke out at the table next to them. Darla wanted to look, to call out and ask what the joke was, but she didn’t want Madge’s eyes on her, as if Medusa might turn her to stone. Clearly, asking about the sex tape had been about as bad as asking a pregnant friend if she’d used protection.

You just didn’t ask.

“She’s traveling in Thailand with both of those boys right now,” Madge explained, as if nothing had just happened, as if she hadn’t sucked all the available oxygen out of the room and left them emotionally gasping for air. “Lydia’s always been so independent. A feminist. And now she has no job and they’re gallivanting all over Southeast Asia checking on Jeremy’s ‘investments.’”

“You sound skeptical,” Laura said.

“I am skeptical. That boy’s probably got a poppy farm and a string of opium dens. He’s a bit of a free spirit.” The skin around her eyes looked like a smiling elephant’s. “But he does love her dearly. So does the other one.” Madge waved one hand dismissively and tensed her whole body, her thigh connecting with Darla’s, transferring energy in a very bad way.

Something about that phrase—“the other one”—thrown out so casually, and with a kind of dismissal that bordered on contempt, made Darla’s hackles rise.

“That’s like ‘you people’?”

“What?”

“You throw it out there, like she has one real boyfriend and ‘the other one.’ Sounds like you disapprove. Here you are, Ms. Old Lady Dom with a butt plug fetish, tricking out with Alex’s grandpa and being all badass, and you’re judging your granddaughter for being in love with two men at the same time?” Darla could feel the curve of her neck extend, could taste the bile in the back of her throat, and as the air slid into her body slowly through her nose, inhaled like a battery charge, she knew that it was on.

Death Match at Jeddy’s.

News at eleven.

Laura and Josie’s eyes flew wide open in alarm as Madge turned slowly to her, a look of condescending disgust on her face, and said, “You’re judging me? I shat pieces of corn this morning older than you.”

“When you act like the life your granddaughter has chosen for herself out of a drive for love is something to sneer at, you bet your flat ass I’m judging you, lady.”

Madge leapt to her feet. “Fat ass? You are calling me ‘fat ass’?”

“I said flat. Flat. The Gravity Fairy done visited your backside plenty of times, huh? Looks like Kansas back there.”

“And the Oreo Fairy visits you twice a day, it seems.” Madge craned her neck ostentatiously to pointedly look at Darla’s admittedly lush ass.

“I have a Knuckle Fairy who’d like to—”

“Enough!” Laura shouted. “Both of you! I’d expected it to come to fists today, but not at this table!” The women all looked over at the guys, who were huddled and laughing, looking like something out of a Polo Ralph Lauren ad.

“Jesus Christ,” Madge muttered. “I break up enough fights. Don’t need to flatten some pissant little shit like you and bring on more trouble here.”

Darla’s heart threatened to shatter her breastbone like the giant pitcher of Kool-Aid crashing through the fence.

“Then quit denigrating your granddaughter’s relationship with her boyfriends while claiming to be nonjudgemental. Because all you’re doing is shaming her behind her back.”

Madge looked like Darla had just whacked her with a coffee pot.

Good.

Laura tilted her head, and Josie watched them with narrowed eyes, a look Darla knew all too well. She was ready for a throwdown if need be. Back home, Josie had her back. Not that Darla routinely got into catfights with eighty-year-old waitresses in dive bars.