“Because she confronted me in the powder room and accused me of ruining her father’s life with this investigation.”
“For crissake, Alex, Joe Wallace is a big crybaby. Stacey mothers him. I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s whined and carried on about you something awful in front of her. It’s a ploy to get her sympathy. They feed each other’s neuroses. Don’t worry about it.”
Alex didn’t like Junior Minton very much at that moment. His cavalier attitude toward a woman’s—any woman’s—love reduced him in Alex’s eyes. She’d watched him tonight, doing just as Stacey had described, moving from woman to woman. The young and old, attractive and homely, married and unattached, all seemed to be fair game. He was charming with each, like a mall Easter bunny working the crowd, doling out treats to greedy children who didn’t realize they’d be better off without them.
He seemed to take their fawning as his due. Alex had never found that kind of conceit commendable or appealing. Junior took for granted that he would elicit a response from every woman he spoke to. Flirting was an involuntary action to him, as natural as breathing. It would never occur to him that someone might misinterpret his intentions and suffer emotional pain.
Perhaps if she hadn’t had the conversation with Stacey, Alex would have smiled indulgently, as all the other women had, and accepted his suaveness as part of his personality. But instead, she now felt irritable toward him and wanted him to know she couldn’t be so blithely dismissed. “It wasn’t just the judge Stacey took issue with. She said I was stirring up memories of her marriage to you, airing her dirty linen. I get the impression that being your ex has been a real trial for her.”
“That’s not really my problem, is it?”
“Maybe it should be.”
Her harsh backlash surprised him. “You sound mad at me. Why?”
“I don’t know.” The flare of her temper had been short and sweet. Now, she felt drained. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s just that I always pull for the underdog.”
He reached across the car and covered her knee with his hand. “An admirable quality that hasn’t escaped my notice.” Alex picked up his hand and dropped it back onto the leather seat between them. “Uh-oh, I’m not off the hook yet.”
She resisted his smile. “Why did you marry Stacey?”
 
; “Is this really what you want to talk about?” He wheeled the car up to the breezeway of the Westerner Motel and shifted the gear into Park.
“Yes.”
Frowning, he cut the engine and laid his arm along the seat, turning toward her. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“You didn’t love her.”
“No shit.”
“But you made love to her.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Stacey told me that you’d been lovers for a long time before you got married.”
“Not lovers, Alex. I took her out every now and then.”
“How often?”
“You want it plain?”
“Shoot.”
“I called on Stacey whenever I got horny and the Gail sisters were busy, or had their periods, or—”
“The who?”
“The Gail sisters. Another story.” He waved off the questions he could see rising in her mind.
“I’ve got all night.” She settled more comfortably against her door.
“Doesn’t anything escape you?”
“Very little. What about these sisters?”
“There were three of them—triplets, in fact. All named Gail.”
“That stands to reason.”