Ladies' Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

My mom lives over on Cortez. I’ll head over to her place. You couldn’t pay me to spend another night here, now that I know what’s been going on right under my own nose.”
    “I could hang around,” Pete Strivecky said, gesturing in the direction of the house. “Make sure he doesn’t try anything tricky.”
    “He won’t,” Grace said. “He’s a douche bag, like you said, but he’s not a dangerous douche bag.”
    He turned to go.
    “Officer Strivecky? Pete?”
    “Yeah?” he said, pausing at the edge of the pool, glancing down at the submerged Audi.
    “Do you mind if I ask how old you are? You look too young to be a police officer.”
    He laughed. “I get that all the time. It’s the red hair and freckles. I’m twenty-six. Been on the force for three years now.”
    “Twenty-six,” Grace said wistfully. “So young…” She nodded her head in the direction of the house. “Seems like a long, long time ago.”
    “Yes ma’am,” he said.
    She had an idea. “Hey. Send me a photo of your bathroom after you’re done, will you? For the blog? I’d love to see how it turns out.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said. “And you take care.”
    *   *   *
    An open bottle of Chivas Regal stood on the kitchen counter. She could hear the sound of the television coming from the media room. The door was firmly closed, but he’d turned up the volume on the surround sound, and she recognized Bruce Willis’s voice. He was watching one of the Die Hard movies again. For Ben, watching the bad guys blow up buildings and try to shoot down airliners just never got old.
    She ran up the back staircase to their bedroom. On her side of the his-and-hers bathroom suite, she peeled out of her sopping wet shorts and T-shirt, stopping only to drape them neatly over the towel bar beside her Jacuzzi. She grabbed a cosmetic bag from a drawer in her dressing table and swept in some random toiletries: her shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, and her vitamins. Her hand hovered over the Clomid pill bottle. She’d been scheduled to start her second round of the fertility drug at the start of her next period, in two weeks.
    It had taken Grace two years to talk Ben into seeing a fertility specialist. An only child herself, she’d always wanted children. Ben claimed to want them, too, although he didn’t see why they couldn’t just “wait and see” if she’d get pregnant what he called “the natural way.” Finally, two months ago, he’d relented. “Now or never,” was the way Ben looked at it.
    “Never,” Grace said now, tossing the pills into the trash. She wondered if he’d already started sleeping with J’Aimee when she’d begun taking the Clomid. But she couldn’t think about that right now. What was done was done. And she—and Ben—were done.
    Standing in her walk-in closet, she dressed quickly in a pair of white jeans and a favorite navy-blue knit top. She slid her feet into a pair of Jack Rogers sandals. Opening a suitcase on the top of the island that housed her folded clothes, she dumped a handful of random things: panties and bras, some shorts and tops, and a pair of jeans. She threw her running shoes and socks on top of the clothes, then zipped the suitcase.
    Grace stepped into the bedroom and looked around. One last time, she told herself. At the silver framed photos of her and Ben in happier times, at the paintings she’d collected and hung on the walls, at the gorgeous custom-made linen drapes. It was the nicest room she’d ever owned, and she was getting ready to walk right out of it.
    She found her purse on the tufted velvet bench at the foot of the bed and slipped the strap over her shoulder. Picking her suitcase up, she made her way back down the stairs. She stopped in her office, shoving her laptop computer and a handful of file folders into an oversized tote bag. She dumped her camera bag on top, hefted the tote onto her other shoulder, and made her way awkwardly to the kitchen door.
    The Chivas