Page 20 of The Love Losers

“Bit of a mouthful, don’t you think?” I ask with a grin. I like that she wants to go back there. I like that she’s been helping Dom pursue his dream—even if his dream is simply to get more people drunk.

“I didn’t want to crush Dom’s spirit. He’s been losing sleep over this.” Her mouth quirking up, she adds, “Who would you have setmeup with?”

“I guess you’ll have to wait to find out until you lose our next bargain.”

Her smile pulses with life, and it feels as if it wraps around me and squeezes. “Oh, Mr. Darcy, I never lose a bargain. I’m not afraid to fight dirty.”

I believe her.

CHAPTER SIX

ANTHONY

According to the clock sandwiched between the urns and the portraits, five minutes have elapsed since my talk with Rosie. We’re all sitting in the living room now, most of us with drinks in hand. The exception is Damien, who says he doesn’t drink on the job. His wife seems to have no such compunction.

Rosie looks a bit nervous now, perched on an ottoman in the far right corner of the room, nearly hidden by the Christmas tree. She has a glass of whiskey, but she keeps playing with the purple streak in her hair, lifting it to her lips and ruffling it through her fingers. My gaze tracks the movement helplessly.

My mother is, at her own request, double-fisting.

“Could Roark be behind this?” Jake asks, drawing my attention away from Rosie.

Edmund Roark is Jake’s former employer—a con artist and thief whom my mother apparently had an affair with over thirty years ago. As potential culprits go, he’s probably a better guess than Nina, and I’m not sure why the possibility hadn’t already occurred to me.

Likely because I’ve always made a valiant effort to stay out of my mother’s love life.

“Probably not,” Nicole says with a snort. “We’ve been keeping that dude running scared. Damien’s friend hacked into his Alexa, and we’ve made it do all kinds of crazy shit. Just last night it started playing ‘I Can See You’ at midnight.”

Damien gives her a fond glance. “She likes Taylor Swift more than you’d think.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Rosie puts in, leaning forward. “We could have a lot of fun with that for The Love Fixers.”

“Let’s not get off-track,” Damien says, looking at my mother. “Is there anyone else who might hold a grudge against you?”

My mother laughs appreciatively, setting one of her drinks down on a side table next to her. It’s one of the vintage Smith House pieces—old wood. Tired looking, but thick and sturdy. Everything in this house looks about two decades past retirement. “At least three quarters of this town. They loved my husband Adrien, and theyloatheme. Most of them still think I killed him. None of them think I deserve to live in Smith House. So we’ll have to cast a wide net, I’m afraid.”

“What about your other husbands?” Nicole says after taking a sip of her drink. “Anyone hold a grudge related to them?”

“Mark kept to himself, and Tony was a miserable bastard,” she says of her first husband, whom I’m named after. “No one liked him.”

I hold back a laugh. “Thank you for that.” Turning to the P.I.s, I ask, “If it’s someone who holds a grudge against my mother because of what happened to my father or one of her other husbands, why wait so long? Mark died at least ten years ago.”

“Fourteen,” my mother corrects.

“Because this obviously has something to do with your inheritance,” Nicole says with a cat-like grin. “The three husbands jab is a false flag.” One of her shoulders lifts.“Probably. It’s totally possible for someone to hold a grudge for thirty-plus-year. This old dude once asked Damien and me to help him find dirt on his former mailman.” She raises a hand. “Now, I know what you’re going to say. You think the mailman was banging his wife. Nope. Nuh-uh. His issue with this dude was that he always went to his house last. That’s the grudge he’d been hanging onto for thirty years. Anyway. I’m guessing whoever’s behind this knows you’re looking for a wife and doesn’t want it to happen. Who loses if you get the money in the trust?”

I chew on this news, welcome—because I don’t want someone gunning for my mother—and unwelcome—because if there’s anything I despise, it’s being the center of gossip. “Nina might hold a grudge,” I admit, even though my mother already threw out the possibility.

“Oh, I’m guessing she absolutely does,” Nicole agrees. “And I very much look forward to interrogating the shit out of her. Who else, though? Who gets the money if you don’t?”

“There’s a list in Adrien’s will,” my mother says. “I’ll have to consult the copy I keep in the safe.”

“Yeah…we’ll need a copy of the original from his attorney’s office,” Nicole says. “No offense.”

My mother shrugs, probably because she’s suspicious enough to have made the same request if the positions were reversed. “That can be arranged.”

“And you should put a list together too,” Damien tells me, “of people who might hold a grudge against you. Because, odds are, this haseverythingto do with you.”

“This is how it’s going to go down. We’re going to invite all of the suspects to Anthony’s wedding,” Nicole adds with a grin, hoisting up her drink. “It’ll be a human game of Clue.”

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