Private Lies

“Maybe. God knows I’ve been tempted.”

Roxanne’s gaze jumped to Toni’s. “To cheat?”

Her friend grinned. “No, to jump Gage Dabon’s bones.”

“Be serious.”

The smile wiped from her face, Toni angled her head. “I am. I’m seriously pissed. Why aren’t you?”

“I am.” No, you’re not, Roxanne. You’re scared. Bone-deep scared. You knew you’d never hold him.

“Stop.” Toni tugged a strand of Roxanne’s long, corkscrew-curly red hair. “You’re quite a catch yourself, Foxy Roxy.”

Roxanne didn’t bother to deny Toni had guessed the direction of her thoughts. They’d been friends too long. “He’d be better off with someone like you,” Roxanne said. “Someone more outgoing.”

“Hell, Rox, we haven’t had near enough wine for a pity party.” She frowned at her water glass. “We haven’t had any wine.” Shrugging, Toni polished off the last bite of her salmon, then handed her plate to a passing waiter. “And, no offense, but Gage’s too tame for me. Hunky, yes. But banks, blue suits and dark ties? No, thanks.”

You haven’t seen that body without the suits. Then the implication of Toni’s words sunk in. “I like tame. There’s nothing wrong with tame.”

“That’s because you grew up with excitement, not Miss Manners lessons twenty-four hours a day.”

Roxanne didn’t want to go anywhere near the subject of Toni’s intimidating, uptight mother. Talk about scary.

Thankfully, Toni tucked a strand of her shaggy blond hair behind her ear and rolled on. “And, speaking of annoying relatives, you have to remember the way Gage stood up under your family’s scrutiny. Any man who’d do that has to want you pretty badly.”

“True.” Roxanne’s father, brother and sister were all cops. Nobel, brave and strong. They stood for the weak and defenseless; they worked tirelessly so other families could be spared the kind of tragedy that Roxanne’s had suffered—her mother dying at the hands of a paroled murderer, who’d sought to punish Roxanne’s father for sending him to prison.

Roxanne had felt abandoned without her mother and had no desire to run into the kind of people who had killed her. Accounting, not law enforcement was her calling. Numbers didn’t lie, numbers made sense…numbers didn’t die.

Wimpy, her sister had once accused. Practical, Roxanne had argued back. Of course, practicality was obviously missing from every Lewis’s genetic makeup except hers.

“So, what’s the plan?” Toni asked, leaning forward, her blue eyes twinkling with anticipation.

“What plan? I’ll ask him what he was doing in the Quarter last night and why he didn’t bother to call me. Or come home.”

Toni tapped her long, acrylic nails—currently painted hot pink with green palm trees and bright yellow suns on each one in anticipation of the busy summer-tourist season—against the table. “Uh-huh. You? Miss Nonconfrontation. You’re going to ask Gage why he lied, who he was meeting.”

“Yes.” She banged her fist against the table, knowing she needed this pep talk to urge her on. “Do you think I should act angry and demand an answer, or be sly and attempt to catch him lying?”

“You’ve already caught him in a lie, and I think you should be angry.”

“I am.”

“Then why are your hands shaking?”

Sighing, Roxanne immediately linked her fingers. “I can’t help it. I won’t know what to say.”

“Where the hell were you last night, you lying bastard? works for me.”

“Be reasonable, Toni.”

“Why?”

Roxanne rubbed her temples, unable to come up with a reasonable argument at the moment. She’d no doubt think of something hours from now, but the impact would be lost. How did people train themselves to think on their feet? After a lifetime of friendship with Toni, shouldn’t some of her sass have rubbed off?

“Since you don’t have a plan, mine is perfect.”

Roxanne instinctively shook her head. Oh, no. Toni’s past plans had included everything from giving the dog the keys to her mother’s brand-new Mercedes—which he’d promptly buried in the backyard—to sawing off the legs of Sister Margaretta’s desk in the seventh grade, to disguising the two of them in black wigs and red lipstick to sneak into fraternity parties at Tulane.

As usual, Toni ignored Roxanne’s protest. “I think we should follow him.”

“No.” If Toni was surprised by her direct, one-word refusal, she didn’t show it. And, dang it, she’d been practicing.

“You have a right to know what’s going on,” Toni continued.

“I will. I’ll ask.”

“And if he denies it?”

“I’ll—” She stopped, breaking her friend’s direct glare. Gage was smooth, sometimes almost too smooth. Roxanne had no doubt the man could say he’d been called into New Orleans for an hour, then directed back to Mars, and somehow effectively convince her that was the absolute and complete truth.

“Come on, Rox. We’ll disguise ourselves. It’ll be just like college. I’ve got the perfect disguise picked out at the shop already.”

The shop—aka the Tacky Diva. When she’d attended the splashy opening of Toni’s store, Roxanne was sure Toni had used her trust fund to open the lingerie, costume and party-clothes store just to piss off her conservative family. But her friend’s shop had survived for nearly ten years and was now courted by the trust-fund babies for ammunition in catching the perfect husband, then those same women shopped for their wedding trousseaux.

Roxanne often wondered how many seasoned trust-fund lawyers blanched at the Visa charges from the Tacky Diva, instead of Saks.

“No disguises,” she said firmly—she’d been practicing that tone. “No following. No videotaping. No tracking devices. No bugs.”

“Why the hell not? You have a right to the truth.”

“A sentiment undoubtedly not shared by Sister Katherine after you bugged her office phone, then told our tenth-grade English class she’d been dialing 1–900–HUNKMAN in her spare time.”

“I can get a bug so small it’ll slide alongside the battery of his cell phone.”

Roxanne’s stomach rolled. This morning she’d been blissfully happy, planning her wedding, and now she was contemplating bugging her fiancé’s cell phone? “No. And isn’t bugging someone’s property without their knowledge, or a court order, illegal?”

“Why in the world would you bug someone with their knowledge?”

“I—” That girl was nearly as slick as Gage. Roxanne fought hard against the urge to run back to her office and hide under the desk until this whole storm passed. She didn’t want to spy on her lover. She didn’t want to confront him. She wanted…

To be a fool.

“Just think about my idea,” Toni said, her usually animated face dead serious. “Remember, with my plan you can avoid confronting him for the moment. You can find out the truth.” She squeezed Roxanne’s hand in a gesture of complete fidelity and understanding. “You deserve the truth.”

“I know, but—”

“Speak of the devil.” Toni leaned back against the red, leather-covered booth. Her face relaxed, but her eyes narrowed at a spot over Roxanne’s shoulder.