No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 Read Free Page B

All
the more reason to pretend a hearing deficiency. I got as far as
the door of the private dining room before a hand landed on my
shoulder. “You will never have him!”
    I shook off the drunken
attack, sidestepping her poorly-aimed blows, but that only seemed
to invigorate her. She came at me head-on, so I took her by the
hands and pulled her into me, before I turned her around, stuck a
knee out, and she tumbled to the carpeted floor. That’s the benefit
of having brothers. You learn to protect yourself from the
unexpected lunge with a few choice moves.
    “I don’t know what your
problem is, but get over it,” I warned her, leaning down. She
looked up at me with unfocused blue eyes as big as saucers, and for
a brief moment, I thought saw surprise in her returning gaze. “I’m
not interested in you or your boyfriend. Now leave me
alone!”
    “He is mine,” she mumbled
into the carpet as she collapsed in a soggy heap. I thought back to
that meeting all those months ago. It was still an emotional
tornado in my mind, coming on the heels of the finalization of the
end of my marriage to Bosco, the beginning of what I thought was a
promising romance, and the start of the expansion of Dynamic
Productions into a company poised to head into the next decade as a
regional success story.
    “Bosco?” I looked across the
table at the man now taking frantic notes on his tablet. “I don’t
think this is about Somalia. I think it’s more personal than
that.”
    “Leave the judgments to me,
Dori,” he replied, barely looking up from his scribbles. “I’m the
forensic expert here.”
    “But it was me George ripped
off, and I don’t think he did it to get at you,” I tried to
explain. Bosco put up a hand, cutting me off
mid-sentence.
    “You concentrate on getting
packed. How do you feel about renting the house fully
furnished?”
    “Just leave everything
here?” The thought of other people using the furniture we had
collected over the last twenty years left me feeling disgruntled
and dismayed.
    “We’ll get more rent if it’s
fully furnished. We can do it as corporate housing. It’s not like
we’re inviting a group of frat boys in. More likely, it will be a
family on temporary assignment. We can limit it to six
months.”
    “Three,” I shot
back.
    “Three, with the option to
rent for another three, in case we don’t get your money back and
the mortgage straightened out right away. It’s the right thing,
Dori.”
    “It might be the right
thing, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it.” My hands on the
table, I examined my bare fingers. I hadn’t worn a ring since the
day Bosco and I met for the last time at the mediator’s office,
where we agreed the marriage was too damaged to be fixed and that
we had exhausted all avenues to repair it. Two days later, I signed
the divorce papers and dropped them off at Bosco’s apartment. My
rings went into the safe deposit box at the bank.
    “Look, Dori, I know this
isn’t easy for you. I get that. But you have to admit that with all
your money gone, you don’t have a lot of options. We’ll make the
best of a bad situation, babe. We’ll make it work.”
    “Is that even possible?” I
wondered. “What are we going to tell people, that I ran back to you
because I’m broke, because George is a con artist? Everyone will
think I’m an idiot.”
    “We’ll tell them we decided
to give our marriage another try.”
    “How will that solve
anything?” I wondered. “What happens when I get my money back and I
can leave? People will think I’m a fickle flake, unable to make up
my mind whether I want to be married or not. They still think I
kicked you out!”
    “You don’t need to make it
sound like my apartment is Leavenworth, for God’s sake! I’m not
planning to hold you prisoner and you’re not moving in as
punishment!” he growled. “Besides, what do you care what people
think about us? You didn’t care much what people thought when Lover
Boy moved