Black Widow Read Online Free Page B

And Liz’s fiancé. And he’s pals with Corey’s husband, even though Vance is a dick. They were
fraternity brothers
at Gainesville, for God’s sake. Summers, Michael and Elliot both worked for Beryl’s father, renovating old hotels. That’s the point. We are a tight little group. If one of our guys finds out, all the guys find out.”
    “I guess that makes sense.”
    “Does that mean I get an
A
?” she snapped. “I thought that part was obvious. How many times have you heard me talk about Michael and his buddies? Maybe
you
need to lie in the hammock and get some rest.”
    That quick, the tears were gone.
    “No reason to get mad.”
    “I’m not mad, just tired. We can talk tomorrow, but tonight? I don’t feel like repeating myself.”Abruptly, Shay was her alpha-female self, sliding into the car, impatient and eager to get going.
    She was also lying again. Why?
     
     
    I THOUGHT ABOUT IT as Shay drove away. I didn’t doubt she was protecting her bridesmaids. The video might contain shots of them that were equally graphic. But it was also possible that something else happened that night on Saint Arc, and the camera had captured it.
    Shay hadn’t lied about being intimate with a stranger. For a young bride, what could be worse? So it had to be something she considered even more incriminating. A crime . . . an accident . . . what?
    The pressure was getting to her. There’d been an edge of hysteria in her voice. Telling. The girl didn’t rattle easily.
    It worried me. On another level, it also disappointed me — my small, selfish reaction to the girl being human instead of the caricature I had created. I admired Shay Money, so I’d constructed that caricature to mirror my own conceits.
    The girl wasn’t exaggerating when she spoke of her toughness. Shanay Lucinda Money grew up motherless, servant to an abusive seven-foot, three-hundred-pound father who brokered dogfights and smuggled cocaine. Once, when Shay’s ninth-grade boyfriend misspoke, Dexter Money had stripped the boy naked, then forced his daughter to watch while he spanked the kid raw. The boy was so intimidated, he never told the cops.
    At sixteen, Shay single-handedly extracted herself from Dexter’s influence, moved out, moved on, and changed lives. She got her GED while working a full-time job, then continued studying her butt off until she was offered academic scholarships at the University of Florida. The troubled girl with the redneck accent gradually vanished, along with her name. Shanay Lucinda became Shay — just Shay.
    The reinvented Shay knew what she wanted, and where to find it. Even with the scholarships, she had to work nights, but she still found time to seek out the wealthy and the well-educated. She wangled invitations to their parties, then stayed quietly in the background, listening and remembering, until she’d learned the social niceties.
    Shay once said to me, “People who inherit wealth tend to inherit beauty. You ever notice that? But they seem less hung up on looks when it comes to choosing a mate. That’s not as true of people who pile up their own fortune — you know, guys who want trophy brides. Why, do you think?”
    The question was touching: Shay has a buxom, Southern, pheromone sensuality, but she’s not a great beauty, and the question implied that a man who’d inherited wealth would be more likely to find her attractive.
    I’d told her I was a biologist, not a social scientist. That was Tomlinson’s field. Even so, I was impressed by her gift for observation, and her unsentimental approach to mapping a future. Shay was soon an accepted associate of that interesting caste known as Old Money. Once married to Michael Jonquil, she would become a full-fledged member.
    I saw less and less of her, but she stayed in touch.
    Through the generosity of her new friends, Shay had spent two weeks skiing the Alps. She’d spent a jet-set summer attending parties in Italy, France, and Switzerland. During her travels,