Randall #01 - The Best Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

discarded clothes and hanging them in the closet.
    “Please, you’ve got to take me away from here! I can’t spend another minute in this house. Let’s drive to Virginia today. Together. You can fly back tomorrow.”
    “I’d love to, darling.” Plant gave a lopsided grin. “But I’m afraid I’m a little short of cash—and Edmund has confiscated the credit cards.”
    She hugged him tightly. “I have plenty. Please come. I need you. Really. Plant.”
    He gave her another kiss—a longer one this time, sweet and soft. Why couldn’t she meet a straight man who could kiss like that?
     Plant retrieved a Perry Ellis dress from the floor and hung it carefully on a hanger.
    “Only if we’re taking the DeLorean,” he said. “And you have to let me drive.”
    “I’m absolutely taking the DeLorean. It’s all I have left of…Dad.” She choked on the word. “He never had time to spend with me. Now I think I never knew him at all.”
    “Maybe no one did,” Plantagenet said quietly. “Maybe he didn’t want them to. Some people are like that.” He hung an Yves St. Laurent gown over his arm and stooped to pick up its matching jacket.
    “But why?”
    “Some people can’t say who they really are—even to themselves,” he said, as he carried his burden slowly back to the closet.
    ~
    Camilla wrote a quick note for Despina to give to her mother.
    “Decided to leave early,” she wrote. “To avoid the snowstorm.”
    She figured a simple lie was preferable to the complicated truth.
    It was probably best forgotten. After all, she wasn’t likely to run into Mr. Stokes again. He was not—as Plant put it—their sort.
    ~
    A few hours later, as they zoomed across the Tappan Zee Bridge, singing along with a staticky-radio Bruce Springsteen, the incident with Mr. Stokes had faded to a kind of icky dream world, along with all the other horrible things she didn’t want to think about—like her father and the banking scandal.
    But one image wouldn’t go away. Mr. Stokes in the barn with her father. The gun. She was sure the toxic Mr. Stokes was capable of anything. She buried the picture as far down in her brain as she could. It didn’t bear thinking about.
    At first she hoped she could talk about Lester Stokes with Plant, but he was working so hard to keep the mood cheerful, she hated to bring up something so nasty.
    She’d never been able to tell Plant about the bad sex with Aldo, either. Some things were too embarrassing to talk about.
    Which must have been the way he felt about his fight with Edmund, because he still hadn’t explained his rumpled condition.
    “Tramps like us, baby, we were born to…damn.” Plantagenet eyed the other side of the Hudson with dismay. “I’m afraid we haven’t missed the storm, after all.”
    The landscape looked as if it were about to be swallowed by a dark, malevolent cloudbank. Large, wet flakes gathered on the windshield and traffic slowed as the snow continued and night approached. By the time they reached New Jersey, Plantagenet’s body was hunched with tension as he tried to make out the road ahead. The radio still played, but it had become an annoying distraction. Camilla punched a button, hoping to hear a local weather report, but instead, a deep-voiced country singer sang something painfully sad about trucks. His accent sounded so much like Lester Stokes’ that she clicked off the radio with a shudder.
    Plantagenet gave a sudden howl so loud that she immediately restored the radio to the suffering trucker. But he didn’t seem to be shouting about the radio.
    “Perth Amboy!” he shouted. “New Jersey!”
    His face stretched into a demented grin. Maybe his mind had snapped. She’d been selfish not to ask him about his problems with Edmund.
    He sang in a crazed Wagnerian tenor. “Piz-za! Piz-za! Pizza with pep-per-oni!” His hand fell heavily across her shoulders and pulled her body against his. “No-o goat cheese for me. No-o truffles or Brie, just pep-per-oni