The Hot Ladies Murder Club
A FEW DRINKS, SOME LAUGHS… WHAT COULD BE MORE INNOCENT?It's just a fun night out with the girls, with talk of men, sex and murder? Why not, when each of them has a lawyer who deserves to get his just deserts. And so the Hot Ladies Murder Club is born–made up of names written boldly in bloodred lipstick. Each lady has a diabolical plan in store for her lawyer. But the not-quite-what-she-seems Hannah Smith wouldn't mind the lawyer opposing her–the deliciously sexy Joe Campbell–winding up quite alive…and in her bed.WHAT COULD BE MORE DEADLY?Then the joke suddenly becomes national news when lawyers and Hot Ladies both come under attack. Hannah–who has a close acquaintance with fear already–knows her life could be in jeopardy. There's only one man whose help she dares accept…bad-tempered, ruthless and utterly drop-dead-gorgeous Joe Campbell, who insists he's in charge of protecting his life. And hers!
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WHY CAN’T I EVER LEARN?
Joe Campbell was yet another dark prince. She should walk away, leave him alone, but when her tears and rage at herself subsided, what did she do? Like an idiot, she punched her answering machine play button again.
“Look, I’m sorry for the way I behaved. I wish…I wish we’d met under different circumstances…. Because I like you.”
She made a fist and brushed the tears from her eyes. You can’t let yourself want him. You can’t love him or save him. You can’t save anybody. Haven’t you learned anything?
Frantically, she dug the phone book advertisement that had his picture on it out of her trash can, smoothed it out and lost another piece of her soul the second she glanced into his fierce, predatory black eyes.
Because I like you.
Joe Campbell was a lost soul. Just thinking about him made defeat slump her shoulders.
“I like you, too,” she whispered. “But don’t you dare tell anybody.”
Also by ANN MAJOR
MARRY A MAN WHO WILL DANCE
WILD ENOUGH FOR WILLA
INSEPARABLE
To my readers:
Love doesn’t transform. It forms.
What if we smashed the mirrors And saw our true face?
ELSA GIDLOW
Contents
Prologue
Corpus Christi, Texas
The wages of sin must always be paid. That’s what his headmaster used to say right before he tied him up and locked him in that awful cupboard. It came as a pleasant surprise that the familiar phrase, as well as thinking about her punishment, could give him such a thrill.
Yesterday the handsome, debonair Sir Dominic Phillips had lunched at his club in London. Today he was sweating like a pig in a nondescript rental car in a shadowy parking garage in south Texas contemplating his wife’s murder.
Please…Please, sir, let it be her.
He used to say please, pretty please to the headmaster. It had been part of their ritual.
This wasn’t the first time Georgina had tempted him to murder. The trouble with murder was the risk that it would catch her unawares. That wouldn’t do.
He wanted Georgina to feel the blow coming, to dread it with a morbid, soul-destroying anticipation. That was part of the game. He wanted to overwhelm her in death as he had in marriage. He wanted her last dying thought to be that her precious, darling Georgia, whom she’d unwisely favored over him, was now his to do with as he pleased. And Georgina knew his tastes when it came to little girls.
His heart beat in a frenzy. Maybe it was the late-summer, south Texas heat that had him so feverish and crazy. Even in the dark garage the sun seemed to scream out of a too-bright, almost-hostile blue haze. Two minutes ago he’d turned off the air conditioner. Two minutes, and already his Savile Row suit that was a blend of silk and wool was dripping wet, and his fine silk shirt was sticking to his armpits. It wouldn’t be long before he stank, too.
Even though he’d rolled the windows of his car down, he was suffocating. He wiped his damp brow with his soaked handkerchief.
Had he found her?
According to Morrison’s report, she was to be deposed at three o’clock by an unscrupulous, hotshot local attorney, Joe Campbell. Apparently, Campbell had been run out of Houston for his shady legal dealings with a CEO by the name of Rod Brown. Together they’d looted Brown’s company and run off with the funds. Brown was living it up in a mansion in the British Virgins while Campbell was exiled to this backwater hellhole doing personal injury law. The creep was representing former clients of Georgina’s, who were suing her for not disclosing mold growth in a property she’d sold them.
Georgina, or rather Lady Phillips, a Realtor—here? How appalling!
As always Morrison had been painstakingly thorough. So thorough, Dominic nearly laughed out loud as he thumbed through the detective’s report.
And she’d thought she could hide. If the plain-looking woman in Morrison’s grainy photos really was his dazzling, wild Georgina, he now knew everything about her new life, her address, little Georgia’s school—everything.
When he heard her ancient Mercedes rumble up the ramp of the parking garage, he felt as devilishly excited as a child playing hide-and-seek. As he was about to crouch behind the wheel, a woman laughed close by. She was short with red hair. Walking toward her car, she fumbled in her purse for her keys.
Bugger. This could ruin everything.
A man in the truck that she climbed into started the engine and drove toward the exit. Dom held his breath until he heard Georgina’s Mercedes, closer now.
With her fear of dark, enclosed places, he hadn’t expected her to dare the garage even in broad daylight. Nevertheless, just in case, he’d parked in a reserved spot two floors beneath Campbell’s plush offices, so there’d be no danger of her parking anywhere near him.
