Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [78]
Wonder what little words or phrases she was using to describe him these days, he thought idly. It sure as hell wasn’t salt of the earth, or anything even near as nice.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d cursed him, then cursed herself for having given birth to him. That had been a little hard to take, having his own mother damn him to the fires of hell and mean it.
Yeah, okay, so he fucked up. He probably should have dealt with Diane some other way. He was ready to admit that now. Killing her and the boys had not been the best way to resolve the custody dispute. But she had just made him so goddamned mad with her bitching at him in court, right there in front of everyone, talking about how he lost his temper with her and the boys, about how he’d slapped her around now and then. Okay, so maybe sometimes it had been more than a few slaps. Didn’t a man have the right to keep his woman in her place, remind her who she had to thank for the roof over her head and the clothes on her back? Not that he’d have allowed her to work. Uh-uh. Not his wife.
And then that damned advocate, that Douglas woman—the one appointed by the court to review everything and make recommendations about the boys—got involved. Stuck her two cents in. Next thing he knew, that bitch of a judge was yapping at him and telling him he couldn’t so much as set foot in that house he’d worked and sweated his balls off to buy.
Yeah, right. Like that was gonna happen.
Well, she got hers, hadn’t she? The judge? His buddy Curt Channing had seen to that. Curt had screwed up where the advocate had been concerned, but hey, he’d gone two for three, hadn’t he? Besides, Vince was almost finished with his three. Then he’d take care of Mara Douglas on his own. Gotta be careful there, though. That one would be too easy to trace back to him. Everyone knew he hated her guts and would blow her away as soon as look at her.
She had been something to look at, though.
Well, he’d think of something where she was concerned. He’d heard she’d taken up with some slick FBI agent, though. And now that Vince thought about it, wasn’t her sister some FBI type, too?
Better let that one go for a while. He’d have to wait. He could wait. He had all the time in the world now.
Besides, hadn’t he read something in the prison library that someone had said something like revenge was a dish best served cold? Vince took that to mean that he’d be better off just letting it go for a while, letting things cool down, and then, someday, some long time from now, he could do her and no one would suspect him. That’s what he thought it meant, anyway. It sounded like good advice to him.
He painfully turned his head to look at his watch. It was almost seven. Dolores was going to be getting home anytime now. Last night she’d said her last client today would be a cut and color at six and she probably wouldn’t get home until seven-thirty or so, and it would be closer to eight by the time she got to the Dew. He was going to have to tell her he’d been called out of town for a few days. On business.
Yeah, business. The business of putting my jaw back into alignment.
Who’d have thought that little slip of a thing could pack such a punch? He sure hadn’t. Damn, she was fast. And tough.
Yeah, well, she won that round, but next time—and there would be a next time—he’d be ready for her. She’d just caught him off guard, that was all.
In spite of the pain and the humiliation of having had her get the best of him, he almost smiled.
Derek England had been all too easy. One quick pop and he was history. One down, two to go.
Marian had been more lively, true, and much more rewarding, all things considered. But there’d been no real sense of sport to it. The old veni, vidi, vici thing. But Amanda, well, she was something else altogether.
And then there was the little matter of knowing that her big brother, that hotshot detective, would never know she’d gone down at the hands of Vincent Giordano.
Hot damn. This was going to be so sweet. The fact that he and Detective Crosby had a history, well, that