Read Online Sin on the Strip by Lucy Farago - Free Book Online

reasons Shannon made a fantastic attorney.
    â€œOf course not.”
    â€œGood. We are not breaking any laws. Don’t go all Mother friggin’ Teresa on me.”
    â€œHey, I can be bad.”
    â€œYes, but when you’re doing bad, it’s for the greater good. So guess what? Doesn’t count,” Shannon said, accentuating the Ts.
    Maggie wasn’t Mother Teresa. She had her flaws like everyone else. And she doubted the holy nun had ever watched women shake their ta-tas. “You’re not very nice.”
    â€œThey don’t pay me to be nice.” Shannon laughed. “Hey,” she said, turning serious, “you made all the arrangements? Do you need any help? I’m almost done here.”
    Shannon, of course, referred to the funeral. Maggie’s throat tightened. “No thanks, I’ve done everything. I hired this amazing tenor. I bought Heather a plot, open to the sky. I had a little trouble with the headstone.” Maggie’s breath caught and she had to gather her composure before she continued. “Rhonda helped. It’s a fairy, her wings fanned out, to protect her.”
    â€œHas the date been set?”
    â€œNo.” Maggie swallowed hard, clutching the pen on her desk. “They haven’t released the body yet.”
    â€œI figured it would take at least a week. If there’s anything you need, you know who to call. I sent you a text earlier, but you didn’t answer.”
    â€œSorry, I haven’t checked any of my texts. I need a new phone. It keeps freezing up.”
    After Shannon criticized her choice in cellphones, they said good-bye.
    What was becoming of her life? At thirty, several years older than Heather, if she needed a reminder that life was short, this was it. But it didn’t stop her urge to hide under a rock every time she considered returning to the work she’d loved. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself it was over, that she’d survived and he’d gone to jail, the piece of her psyche that was still held hostage on that dock refused to listen. Unfortunately, with each passing week, listening grew harder. All these years and still, a war raged inside her. Her inadequacies made her leave the people she’d been working with behind. Some had gone to jail, others lost their children. She was not only a coward, but a failure. Maybe what she needed was to actually get back on the streets, the old bicycle/horse thing.
    Shannon would kill her. Alice and Wendy, the other half of their quartet, would have her for lunch. In college, Wendy had considered Maggie naïve enough to require a babysitter at parties. At the time it had irked her; now she knew Wendy’s protective streak came from a good place. She was no longer that innocent freshman, but she liked that her friends still had her back.
    She thought about picking up the phone and calling her mom. But what would she say? Her mother didn’t approve of her lifestyle any more than her father did. Of course, they differed on the why of it. Her mom feared for Maggie’s safety; her father, his reputation.
    Maggie couldn’t remember the last conversation she’d had with the man, but she was certain it hadn’t ended well. They never did. She’d be able to come up with a couple of choice words to describe her dad’s behavior. Her mom, however, had taught her never to take the Lord’s name in vain, and while she didn’t have anything against the occasional swear word, cursing was something she made an effort not to do.
    With Rhonda’s hard-rock music ending, Maggie had twenty minutes to check on her staff before Crystal’s number was cued. A Polish immigrant, she’d come to the proverbial land of milk and honey and found poverty, hunger and the streets eager to claim the young beauty. This was Crystal’s last week at the club. After graduation, her teacher had offered her a position at his wife’s French