Read Online Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie - Free Book Online Page A

is what you get for dating infants.
    "I'll get somebody," Gabe said and went to find Chloe in the tearoom. She was opening the oven behind the counter. "Can you do a decoy tonight?"
    "No." Chloe said. "I hate those things. They mess with my karma."
    "Right." Gabe said. "Have you seen our new secretary?"
    "Nell? No." She pulled a cookie sheet out and then nudged him out of her way with her hip to put it on the granite counter.
    "She didn't seem like the type to take a long lunch," Gabe said.
    "She doesn't seem like the type to take lunch at all," Chloe said irritably, shoving a sweaty curl out of her eye. "Not that you'd notice."
    "What did I do now?" Gabe said. Chloe shook her head and waved him away, but he stayed. "Chloe, do you remember much about my dad?"
    She stopped, her irritation evaporating. "Patrick? Sure.
    He was good to me. And he was crazy about Lu, remember? I hated it that he died so soon after she was born. He loved her so much."
    "Yeah," Gabe said, trying not to remember. "Do you think he was bent?"
    Chloe put the spatula down. "Like a crook?"
    She hesitated, and Gabe thought, Oh, hell. He'd been hoping she'd say, "No, absolutely not, are you crazy?"
    "More than you," she said finally.
    "Me?" Gabe looked at her, dumbfounded. "You think I'm bent?"
    "I think you do what you need to when you need to. I don't think you've needed to do anything particularly shady for a long while, but I think you're capable of it. I think you're capable of almost anything if the motivation is right."
    "Jesus," Gabe said.
    "Your dad was, too," Chloe said. "Except I think he liked money a lot more than you do. I think he liked women more than you do."
    "Hey," Gabe said, insulted.
    "Well, you've been faithful to me and you're not even particularly interested in me," Chloe said. "Your dad would have cheated on me on the honeymoon."
    "We didn't have a honeymoon," Gabe said. "God, I love this conversation. So I'm crooked and undersexed?"
    "I didn't say undersexed," Chloe said. "I said that wasn't a motivation for you. What's going on?"
    Gabe felt the gloom close back over him again. "I think my dad may have done something really wrong. Something he didn't want me to know."
    "Wow." Chloe leaned against the counter. "He told you everything. It must be pretty bad."
    "It's something to do with the car."
    "Really." Chloe tilted her head at him. "Something to do with your mom?"
    "My mother?" Gabe frowned at her. "I don't-"
    "You always said she left because of the car," Chloe said. "I never knew her, but I know you, and you don't get whatever morals you have from your dad. So maybe he did something really bad, and that's why she left and not because of the car."
    "She left because he treated her like hell," Gabe said. "She left a lot of times because he treated her like hell,"
    Chloe said. "The car was the time she didn't come back."
    "Maybe she just got fed up," Gabe said. "He did a lot of cheating and yelling."
    "He shouldn't have been married." Chloe picked up her spatula again. "And from what he told me, she did things to get even with him and that made it worse. Marriage can be so awful."
    "Thank you," Gabe said. Chloe began to take the cookies off the sheet, and Gabe inhaled the almond scent and thought, That's always going to remind me of her.
    "Well, it's a gamble," Chloe said, as he picked up a cookie. "For women, anyway. Men can always start over again. The value of the male is based on money. The value of the female is based on youth and beauty. Men can always get more money, but women can't get back those years when they're gone. That's why they take men to the cleaners in a divorce."
    "Cheap talk," Gabe said around a bite of cookie. "You wouldn't even take alimony."
    "I wanted to be independent," Chloe said. "But I wanted Lu to grow up with you, too. I knew what you were doing when you bought the house next door for us, but it was so good for Lu. And then you gave me this place to run, and that was fun, too. But I should have said