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Fiction - General,
Romance,
Literature & Fiction,
California,
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Collins; Jackie - Prose & Criticism,
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Beverly Hills (Calif.)
Brigette and the series of losers who’ve latched onto her along the way. She’s fortunate to have survived.”
Brigette Stanislopoulos was Bobby’s niece, even though she was almost a decade older than him. Brigette was the daughter of Olympia – Bobby’s deceased half-sister – and the granddaughter of the long-dead Dimitri.
It seemed there were a lot of deaths on the Stanislopoulos side of the family. Bobby always kept the belief that he was more of a Santangelo.
He was extremely fond of Brigette, but from the stories he’d heard it seemed that she’d always fallen for the wrong men, and as a result she’d paid the price over and over again.
Because of Brigette’s example Bobby trod a wary path, especially with women.
He’d had many girlfriends, not one of them serious, all of them incredibly beautiful. Society girls, models, actresses. They came, they went. He enjoyed himself. Why wouldn’t he?
But none of them had meant anything, apart from Serenity – a woman he’d been hung up on eighteen months ago until she’d dumped him, had a one-nighter with his friend, Frankie Romano, then mysteriously vanished with her Russian husband to God knew where.
And then along came Zeena, a singing star known by one name. Zeena was the wrong side of forty with a body like Madonna, a bad girl attitude, and a cult-like following.
The woman was something else. An exotic beauty – half-Brazilian, half-American-Indian – she sashayed into Mood with her adoring entourage at least twice a week, always with a different young guy in tow, and yet somehow or other – much to Bobby’s extreme irritation – she usually managed to either flirt with or totally ignore him.
Zeena’s switches in temperament were driving him a little bit nuts. It was a miracle that he was keeping his infatuation to himself and not confiding in M.J. or Frankie – especially Frankie – who deejayed at the club, and was Annabelle Maestro’s boyfriend.
There were times Bobby couldn’t help wondering why he and Frankie were such close friends; they were so different it was ridiculous.
Frankie was into doing coke and getting high.
Bobby wasn’t.
Frankie was into cheating on Annabelle.
Bobby believed in monogamous relationships.
Frankie had an aversion to real work.
Bobby got off on making deals. Together with M.J. he was currently planning a franchise to open branches of Mood in Miami, London, and maybe Moscow.
In spite of their differences, Bobby liked to think that Frankie would always have his support and vice versa. Besides, they had a history together, and that would be Serenity, the beautiful Slovakian model who’d slept with both of them and then taken off.
Bobby still felt the sting of Serenity’s rejection.
Wisely, he chose not to trust either M.J. or Frankie with his latest obsession. If he told them about his thing for Zeena, they’d plague him to death with smart-ass remarks and sarcastic jibes; better he stay silent.
That didn’t mean that he couldn’t help having an urge to talk to someone about her – get an unbiased take on the situation.
Was she into him? Or did she get off on torturing him? Because she sure as hell knew how to do that.
He often wondered why the women he was most attracted to were the ones who rejected him. Lucky’s best friend, Venus – who’d treated him like a kid. Serenity – who’d treated him like an annoying lapdog. And now Zeena – what did she have in store for him? And why did he want her so much?
A shrink could go to town on that one.
To get his mind off Miz Superstar, he decided to take the weekend off and go on a trip to Atlantic City with Frankie and M.J. Frankie had been bugging him about it for weeks, so why not indulge in a little R&R?
Perhaps Zeena would miss not having him around, although being the woman she was, she probably wouldn’t even notice he was gone.
* * *
The drive to Atlantic City went by quickly. Frankie had been desperate to take his new red