Dangerous Exes (Page 35)

“Absolutely.” Blaire pulled out her phone and frowned. “Hold on a sec, Isla, did you answer Danica’s email?”

Isla stiffened next to me. “Yeah, I even called her, something seems off about her situation. Abby said everything was clean except for some weird cash transfer into their joint account for a large sum of money.”

“How large?”

“Shouldn’t we be focusing on Vanessa?” I interrupted, as a sick feeling washed over me. Shit. Shit. Shit. I sent myself a reminder text while Isla and Blaire kept talking.

“Ten grand.” Isla sighed. “Large enough that it’s suspicious.”

“Is that typical?” Colin just had to ask.

Fuck me.

“Sometimes,” Blaire answered before Isla could. “If they’re trying to move money around or pin something on the other person. It just feels strange, especially since it was wired the day she called for a consult.”

I started breaking out in a sweat.

“Huh.” Colin eyed me and then the girls. “Alright, we can save the world another day, let’s focus on getting Vanessa’s confession before Jessie gets too horny again.”

I groaned. “I accidentally drank tea, alright?”

“Boner tea?” Colin laughed. “Is that what it was?”

I glared at Isla. “Tell them.”

“He had a headache.” She snickered behind her hand. “And my Goo-Poh is a bit”—her eyes glazed over, and I hoped to God it was because she was thinking about what happened after the tea, what was still happening every time we touched—“helpful in the area of tonics and teas. She thinks of herself as a doctor.”

I rolled my eyes. “That lady would be a menace in a hospital, mislabeling every damn thing,” I grumbled, still thinking about the way the tea made me slur my words and how my body felt on fire next to Isla’s. The thing is, though, after the tea wore off, I still felt it, the pull to her. The need to touch her was so intense I had to look away and at Colin instead.

“Other than asking what the hell a Goo-Poh is, I guess the lingering question is . . .” Colin grinned as we started walking toward the pool. “Why’d you have that kind of tea on hand, Isla?”

“Exactly my point,” I said.

We stopped walking and stared at her.

She gulped and looked to Blaire. But Blaire held her hands up. “Oh no, I’m not covering your ass, I wanna hear why you had the tea too.”

“I, um . . .” Isla’s face matched her dress. “My Goo-Poh is insane, alright, guys? Jessie’s met her, she grabbed his ass! She heard me complaining about cohabitating with this charming thing over here”—she shoved a finger into my chest—“and said murder was too messy.”

“Smart woman,” Colin muttered.

“So”—Isla nervously licked her lips—“she told me to seduce him instead, said to, er, accept his blessing.”

My jaw nearly dropped.

Colin’s expression matched mine.

“And just to be clear, when you say blessing,” I said with the air quotes she hated, “you mean my”—I looked downward—“blessing.”

“Praise.” Colin lifted a hand in the air while Isla covered her face. “I think we should invite this Goo-Poh to Thanksgiving.”

“No!” Isla and I said simultaneously.

“Hey, she’s nice!” Isla reprimanded me.

“She sells illegal drugs masquerading as tea leaves!” I yelled, gaining a few odd stares from hotel guests. “Okay, let’s just drop it, I drank the tea, I lived—”

“Through a very hard time.” Colin was dead to me.

“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “So let’s focus on psycho Vanessa, not the blessings.”

“Of your package,” Colin added with a thumbs-up.

“Sometimes I wonder why we’re friends,” I muttered while Colin wrapped an arm around Blaire and kept walking.

Isla hung back with me, her face still red.

I tried joking. “Would it be too much to ask you to say something like God bless us, every one next time we—”

“Finish that sentence and I’m asking Goo-Poh for tea that makes your blessing go soft.”

“Ouch.” I winced.

“And we wouldn’t want it to be permanent.”

“You wouldn’t . . .” I added with a cocky grin.

She rolled her eyes but I didn’t miss the small smile on her lips. It was enough to hope that maybe it wasn’t over, whatever this thing was between us.

A gust of hot air hit me square in the face as I followed everyone outside to the pool area. Vanessa was perched at the corner in a white bathing suit that I used to think looked sexy as hell on her.

Because I’d loved white.

Now I thought it looked cheap, like she was trying too hard to get noticed.

She sipped on a mimosa while Wayne chewed a cigar next to her.

They looked like snobs.

I almost gagged.

“And there she is,” Blaire said under her breath as we found a table and sat. “Let’s order some breakfast and see if we can bait her to come over here, I’ve already been recording our conversation—”

“Thank God!” Colin burst out laughing. “So I can replay all the blessed parts?”

Isla groaned.

Blaire winked at him. “Yes, so if she says anything incriminating we’ll get it on tape. But she has to be angry enough to react, you know?”

“Got it.” I reached for a glass of water as the waiter approached. We ordered, I glanced at my phone. I couldn’t just text and fix my other problem.

I needed to call it off.

I just couldn’t do it in front of Isla. What the hell had I been thinking?

My anger had blinded everything.

And now, now I was stuck wondering where I stood with the one woman I wasn’t supposed to actually fall for.

But was.

While the one that I wanted out of my life forever continued to dig her claws into me any way she could.

Life wasn’t fair.

And was getting worse by the second as a shadowed figure approached and said in that perfectly breathless voice, “Hey, Jessie.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

ISLA

I wasn’t a violent person.

I was calm.

Controlled.

Serene.

I was going to pull every hair extension from her head and set it on fire.

I accidentally dug my nails into Jessie’s arm, causing him to wince. Either that or that was his “Vanessa smile.”

I hated it.

I hated her.

I hated that she’d touched him.

I hated that she’d wrecked him.

I hated that a part of him would always be hers.

I hated so damn much.

And I didn’t know what to do with the hate, because it was such a foreign feeling. The last time I felt this angry was when Wayne cheated on me, then admitted it and asked if we could get back together.

Yeah, because that sounded like the perfect life plan! He even had the nerve to say this was expected with men in his position and that I shouldn’t berate him for being attracted to multiple women.

At.

A.

Time.

God, he was such an asshole.

Vanessa flicked her eyes in my direction, then glanced back at Jessie. “It feels like you’re stalking me.”

Jessie smirked. “The world doesn’t revolve around you. I know how disappointing that may be, but I’m actually here with my friends.”