Midnight Trilogy Box Set by Lisa Marie Rice

Author:Lisa Marie Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lisa Marie Rice
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

December 20th

Armand’s

“So…” Suzanne Barron said, with a snigger and a quick glance to make sure Bud was still talking on his cell phone in the restaurant’s elegant atrium. He’d excused himself from the dinner table to take the call. Obviously job-related. “You’re engaged. That was quick. I leave you alone for one weekend in your new house and I turn around and next thing I know you’re sporting a diamond ring.” She peered closely at the monster rock on Claire’s hand and shook her head in admiration. “And not just any diamond ring. Princess cut, flawless, no inclusions. At least two carats.” Suzanne was a woman who knew her jewels. “That’s one serious engagement ring.”

“Yes, it was quick.” Claire flexed her left hand with the enormous brilliant diamond on the ring finger and was nearly blinded by the reflections thrown off. The diamond was huge and made it difficult to wear gloves or to wash dishes. She’d already snagged dozens of stockings on it. It sat on her hand, a huge lump of diamond, a little like the hard lump of anxiety she sometimes had in her stomach.

When Bud found out that there was such a thing as a princess-cut diamond, he’d insisted that nothing less would be good enough for her. She’d have been happy with a Coke tab and here he’d paid a considerable portion of his annual salary for a huge gaudy ring she neither needed nor wanted.

“I’ll bet that sucker cost $10,000,” Suzanne mused.

“Ten thousand, five hundred,” Claire said glumly. She’d been appalled when Bud had insisted on spending so much money.

“Not to mention the walking hunk of sex that goes with it,” Todd Armstrong added, with another admiring glance at Bud over his shoulder. “Lucky, lucky you.” He swung his head back, the golden fall of shoulder-length hair belling out. Candlelight was reflected in the long gold crucifix in his right ear dangling from a chain. Todd, Suzanne’s friend and sometimes partner in interior decorating, was famous for his earrings and predatory dating habits. “Hon…if this—” he tapped her diamond engagement ring, “doesn’t work out, I don’t suppose he swings both ways?”

Claire laughed and Suzanne smiled.

“No,” Claire answered. “He is very definitely straight. I don’t imagine he could be enticed to the other side.”

“Pity,” Todd sighed. “I thought as much, but there’s no harm in asking. He is so yummy. All those muscles and that quiet air of power, like he could arrest you at any moment and do delicious things to you involving handcuffs. Yesss!” He shivered, eyes closed. “Oh, well. A guy can always dream.” He glanced over his shoulder again longingly, earring swinging. “Still…wow. That man is seriously sexy.”

“Yes,” Claire sighed, too. “He is.”

Bud’s broad back was to them, then he turned in profile, speaking soberly into his phone. Bud—Lieutenant Tyler Morrison—cleaned up very nicely. He looked like someone you’d bring home to mother but also like someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Or someone you’d want on your side if you did meet something nasty in a dark alley.

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