Secrets of a Shoe Addict Read Online Free PDF

know damn fucking well what it is.”
    Something in Abbey cracked. Actually, it might be more accurate to say something
on
Abbey cracked, because the façade she’d been wearing since meeting Brian—polite, mild-mannered, your basic Clark Kent personality—felt like it was crumbling into rubble at her feet. “We’ve got
no business
, you jackass!”
    Damon rose to the occasion immediately. “Look,” he snarled. “You
owe
me.”
    “I don’t owe you anything.”
    Damon’s eyes, which used to seem like hot, molten chocolate, were now dull black slits. “You’re just lucky I didn’t tell the police how involved you were.”
    Panic coursed through her. What was the statute of limitations on being an accomplice to a felony? “You’ve got no proof.”
    He laughed. It was an ugly sound. Cruel. “You wish.”
    Did he? Could he? Well, of course he could. She wasn’t careful in those days, not about anything. There were probably any number of things she could still be arrested for. “You don’t scare me.”
    There was still a smile pasted across his face, like a smudge of pink on a bad painting. “Baby, I spent twelve years in the slammer thinking about you. I know every expression, every movement you have. And the way you’re trying to look down on me? The way your hands are moving in and out of fists? The little shake you hope Idon’t see? You’re fucking terrified.” He chuckled. “And you should be.”
    “What do you want, Damon?” But she knew what he was going to say.
    And he did. “I want the necklace back.”
    “I don’t have it anymore,” Abbey snapped. This was rapidly turning into a nightmare.
    Damon snorted a laugh. “Right. You just happened to, what, lose it?
Sell
it?”
    “I gave it away.”
    For just a fraction of a second he looked shocked. Then skeptical. “Like you’d give away a necklace worth eight grand.” But there was a question in his voice.
    She nodded. “I did.” It was true, though she wasn’t above lying to scum like Damon in order to get him off her back. “I gave it to the church.”
    His skepticism exploded into outright disbelief. “You . . . church? Right.”
    “I did.” She didn’t want to tell him about Brian. She didn’t want him to know anything about her life now. “It seemed like the right thing to do, so I did it.”
    “Somehow I can’t picture it.”
    Her anger grew disproportionately, and she had a little momentary fantasy about punching him in the face with brass knuckles. “I don’t give a damn if you can picture it or not. We’re finished here.” She turned to walk away.
    “Not so fast.” He grabbed her arm, hard, probably leaving a red mark behind.
    She whirled to face him, shaking his arm off her. “Do
not
touch me,” she warned.
    He rolled his eyes. “Or what? You’ll create a scene and I’ll have to contact your husband at one-four-one-one Lamplighter Lane and tell him about your dirty, dirty past?”
    Abbey felt the blood drain from her face, and hated the fact that she couldn’t control such an obvious giveaway.
    He saw it, too. “You used to have a better poker face than that, babe. A little better. Not much.”
    “You used to be nicer.”
    He shrugged, a slight movement that somehow suggested sharp anger. “That was before my girl let me down and sent me to jail.”
    The designation of Abbey as “his girl” sickened her, even if it was true once. She wanted to punch him in his doughy gut. “Like I already said, it’s not my fault you went to jail for your crimes.”
    “Actually, yeah, it is.” He nodded and looked off into the distance. He might as well have been chewing a piece of straw and contemplating if it was going to be a rough winter for the crops. “And I think the price for that should be nine thousand. Eight thousand for the necklace you won’t give back to me—”
    “I don’t have it!”
    “—and another thousand we’ll call interest. Maybe we should make it two. A nice even ten grand.”
    If