Read Online The Real Mrs. Price by J. D. Mason - Free Book Online Page B

man’s car less than fifty miles from his second home with his second wife. But again, Marlowe’s ass was on the line. Not Lucy’s. More money? Another setup? Was Marlowe just a sucker? A victim? He wondered.
    Women were brilliant creatures. They put men to shame in the brains department, and as smart as Ed Price believed himself to be, as cunning, and as secretive, Plato knew from personal experience that a woman could crack the code on a man’s cell phone faster than any hacker, if she so desired. She could interpret cryptic conversations better than any intelligence specialist or linguist. And if indeed she did discover that there was another in your heart, then God bless you. Tag team? Enemies? He wasn’t sure. But if Lucy Price did bring her ass to Blink, then he’d soon find out.

 
    Can’t Buy a Thrill
    L UCY SAT IN THE LIVING room of Marlowe’s small bungalow, numbed by the experience of finally seeing this woman in person. Marlowe Price had been larger than life since Lucy had first seen her on the news, but nothing could’ve prepared her for actually meeting her face-to-face and seeing the very literal contrasts between herself and the other woman her husband had married.
    Marlowe was a curvy woman, slightly bigger on the bottom than on top, with a waist so narrow it hardly seemed sufficient enough to support both halves of her. She had a youthful face, round and smooth, with an explosion of hair that overwhelmed absolutely every other part of her except those hips. And all that was compacted into a body that couldn’t have been more than five four on a good day. Lucy stood five eight.
    The tension in the room was stifling, and for the first five, maybe ten minutes, all the two of them could do was stare at each other. Roman’s voice broke through the fog and snapped them out of this trance they’d fallen into at the sight of each other.
    â€œMind if I ask how you met Ed Price, Marlowe?”
    Without looking away from Lucy, Marlowe responded, “Cancun. I was supposed to go with my sister, but she passed away, and I decided to go alone after we buried her.”
    Lucy made note of the cadence in which Marlowe spoke, slow, steady, and even. Not a twang, but a drawl. Most Texans she’d met didn’t even have noticeable accents. But there were twangs. And there were drawls. And there was a difference. Why this mattered, Lucy couldn’t say. But with Marlowe, everything mattered.
    â€œHow long ago?” Roman asked.
    â€œA year ago.” Lucy responded with the answer because she’d remembered Ed going away for a week to an investors’ conference in Mexico. She remembered because the two of them hadn’t been married but a few months, and she was disappointed that he was going out of town without her. He’d started seeing this woman three months after he’d married Lucy.
    â€œHe came on to you?” Lucy asked, breaking the rules of the deal she’d made with Roman before they’d come here.
    â€œLet me ask the questions, Lucy. If you ask them, things could get heated,” he’d warned her. “Follow my lead, or we won’t do this.”
    â€œLucy.” He said her name with warning.
    â€œDid he?” Lucy asked again, ignoring him.
    â€œI was sitting on the beach, and he came over and offered me a drink. I declined because I don’t date white men,” she explained bluntly, “and then he asked me to dinner.”
    â€œSo you don’t date white men or accept drinks from them, but you have dinner with them?” Lucy asked callously.
    Everything about Marlowe Price was insulting to Lucy. Everything from her smug demeanor to her big hair to her unapologetic attitude that she purposefully seemed to be directing at Lucy.
    â€œMarlowe,” Roman interjected. “After the two of you started seeing each other, how did Ed explain his absences? He had to have been gone for weeks at a