Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t trash. I was going to get ahead and I didn’t much
care what I had to do to make that happen.
    “One afternoon after class I was sitting
out on the rotten porch steps looking at the empty bottles Pop kept tossing into
the yard. The scrawny black mama cat I used to feed came up for some attention,
so I scratched under her chin. I liked it when that cat rewarded me with a
loud, contented-sounding purr.
    “It doesn’t take much to make a cat happy
but I wanted way, way more. As the sun set and it got dark, I heard the sounds
of speeding traffic on I-4. I’d seen the garish, flashing lights before but
hadn’t really noticed them much until that night, those lights that promised
paradise to passing truckers.
    “‘Hot Pussies,’ the sign promised as
human-shaped neon cats danced in the background on the billboard, animated
temptations to lure lonely men far from home. I watched that sign for a long
time.
    “I studied it hard, seeing it with a sense
of inevitability. Had I been missing the opportunity that had flashed in those
glittering lights every night for as long as I could remember?
    “As I sat there petting that mama cat, I
asked myself if that club could be the opportunity for me. Could I could earn myself
a future by using my body—the same one that elicited catcalls and lewd
propositions from my classmates and passersby on the Plant City streets?
    “Why not? I asked myself. Sure, I can come
up with plenty of reasons now that I shouldn’t have done it, but back then I
was desperate. So desperate that I started out on a path that I‘ve been
following for eight long years. Until last week when Wayne and I agreed to put
an end to the joke that is our marriage.
    “JD, the charade began one night a couple
of months after that, the night that Pussycat Paradise burned to the ground.”
Lanie shuddered, not certain she could or should go on. Surely by now she’d
disgusted him to the point that he’d want nothing to do with her.
    JD, who had been sitting at the table, passively
listening, rose and came to her, lifting her chin and cupping it in one big
hand. “You did what you felt you had to do, sweetheart. You have nothing to be
ashamed of.”
    “Oh, but you haven’t heard it all.” Oh no,
the best—or worst—was yet to come. For eight years Lanie had tried to forget
that fateful night. Now she had to recall it in all its shameful detail and
find a way to admit it to this man she could so easily love. “After I’ve told
you the rest, I won’t blame you if you hate me.”
    * * * * *
    She remembered that night as though it were
yesterday. The August heat had been killer, even hotter and more humid than
usual. Storm clouds gathered in the western sky, hanging over Tampa’s skyline
like a promise of coming retribution.
    Retribution for the decision she was about
to make.
    She was going to do it. Yes, it was wrong,
but she wouldn’t give up her dream. Not for the eight hundred measly dollars
that stood between her and a year’s college expenses at University of South
Florida in Tampa.
    Eight hundred dollars. Less than what I
paid for the Christian Louboutin pumps I bought last week at Neiman Marcus. Then, though, eight hundred dollars had seemed like a fortune…
    The most she’d calculated that she could
earn dancing in one night, even one when business was brisk, was five hundred
dollars—and that was a very optimistic estimate. More likely she’d make less
than half that after paying the bouncer, the DJ and the waiters. There was just
one way to get what she needed.
    She’d hesitated. But then she’d made herself
buy in to the idea that hooking was just a skip and jump away from stripping,
as one of her coworkers liked to say.
    A blast of cold air hit her as she opened
the door to the strip club where the manager kept the air-conditioning cranked
up so high that the place felt like a refrigerator. From the number of cars and
trucks she’d seen in the parking lot, it looked as though the