Ladies' Night Read Online Free PDF

bottle was gone from the kitchen counter and the door to the media room was still closed. From within, Bruce Willis was kicking ass and taking names.
    Grace paused by the door. She raised her hand to knock, but changed her mind. She went out the kitchen door, walked to the garage, and got into her own car, a four-year-old Subaru. “Now or never,” she whispered aloud.

 
    3
     
    Grace was idly switching channels on the big wall-mounted television at the Sandbox, her mother’s bar on Cortez, a spot only seven miles, but light years, away from Grace’s house on Sand Dollar Lane.
    “Leave it on channel four,” Rochelle said. “Please.”
    Grace gave her a look. “You know I always watch the morning news on four,” Rochelle said. “I hate that weather guy’s hair on channel eight.”
    Grace gave a martyred sigh and did as she was told, turning back to her mother’s favorite channel, just in time to see a reporter standing in front of her very own front yard.
    “Holy crap,” Rochelle whispered. “Is this what I think it is?”
    “Good morning,” said the reporter, a black woman who’d been a local television mainstay for as long as Grace could remember. Camryn Nobles. Grace stared at the television. How the hell had Camryn Nobles gotten past security?
    “I’m at the exclusive gated community of Gulf Vista on Siesta Key, where police were summoned this morning to what they termed an escalating case of domestic disturbance. But what makes this story newsworthy, in fact, fascinating, is that the principals involved in the incident are a nationally known domestic goddess—and her husband—or is it safe to say, soon to be ex-husband?”
    The camera panned to show a pale-pink stucco two-story Spanish colonial revival mansion with red tile roof sprawling across a swath of emerald green lawn dotted with colorful beds of tropical flowers and half a dozen black-and-white Sarasota County sheriff’s deputy cars, as well as a fire truck, an emergency rescue ambulance, and a large black tow truck. A traffic helicopter from the Tampa CBS affiliate droned overhead.
    “You’re a media event,” Rochelle said, and Grace shot her another look.
    “If this palatial house and grounds look familiar to many of you,” Camryn Nobles said, her voice lowering to a confidential tone, “it’s because this is the home of lifestyle blogger Grace Stanton, who writes the wildly popular Gracenotes blog. The house has been featured in numerous national publications, and Ms. Stanton has been a frequent guest on network shows like Oprah, Ellen, and, yes, even the Today show, and of course our own Suncoast Morning! where she’s been practically a fixture over the past two years, as a lifestyle expert.”
    Now Camryn was talking again, strolling around to the side of the house, down a long coral-rock driveway toward the rear of the Stanton mansion.
    “Grace Stanton is a successful interior designer and a hometown girl who grew up in modest circumstances in nearby Cortez,” Camryn said. “After moving to South Florida and marrying, she had a thriving design practice before moving back here to the Suncoast in 2009. Husband Ben, forty-four, was an advertising executive who gave up his career two years ago in order to devote all his energies to maximizing his wife’s burgeoning lifestyle business. Grace and Ben Stanton are fixtures on the local social scene; in fact, they hosted a charity party for the local children’s shelter right here in this lovely poolside setting back in October. But authorities say this bucolic scene turned ugly sometime after midnight. Here’s the tape police have released, of the panicky 911 phone call they received at one fifteen A.M. from Ben Stanton. And we want to apologize to our viewers, in advance, for the somewhat graphic language in this tape.”
    “Yeah, I’m gonna need some assistance here. My, uh, my wife, she’s out of control.”
    The female 911 operator sounded bored. “ Sir, are you in