CHAPTER 1
Do I look okay? Am I showing enough cle**age?”
Lorelei stares me up and down, and in an uncharacteristic move from my slightly uptight best friend, she reaches out and unbuttons the top button of the already-plunging neck of my halter vest. I was almost popping out of my top as it was. Now I’m going to have to hold my breath to keep the girls contained.
“There, that’s better. Let’s go.”
As we walk side by side into Sean O’Casey’s Irish Pub, I put on my game face. Tonight, I’m not Paige McCarty, world-renowned model; I am Paige McCarty—man bait. My best friends Lorelei Warner and Kennedy O’Brien and I own our own private investigative firm called Fool Me Once Investigations, which was started after we were all screwed over by the men in our lives.
My ex—he threw away our entire life savings on his gambling habit. Do you want to know how I found out that Andy had a gambling problem? I had just found a pair of Christian Louboutins that were TO DIE for. Seriously. Black slingbacks with a peep toe, silver spike embellishments, and a black bow with spikes right by the toe. I almost cried. Actually, I did cry when all three of my credit cards were declined when I took the shoes up to the counter to pay for them. Maxed out. Over the limit. No more shoe purchases that day, or maybe ever. I figured it was just some sort of mistake until the snotty store clerk handed over the phone when she called the credit card company. Six hundred thousand dollars’ worth of debt. I know I have a slight problem when it comes to buying shoes, but not a six-hundred-thousand-dollar problem!
I confronted Andy that night when he got home from work, and the weasel broke down sobbing in the middle of our living room. He racked up that much debt in just three short months. Three months of flying to Vegas and Atlantic City when he was supposed to be in Silicon Valley at software conferences.
Lying sack of shit.
But right now, I don’t have time to think about how much I still want to strangle my ex, because I have a job to do. I have a cheating husband to catch in the act. A man by the name of Matt Russo.
“All right, so according to his file, Matt is a graphic designer and his wife, Melanie, says he’s been spending too much time away from the house and not enough time with her.” Lorelei fills me in as we walk through O’Casey’s.
Lorelei has been doing some light surveillance of him the past few weeks: staking out his place, following him to work—that sort of thing. Since his wife swears she’s seen texts from another woman on his phone, and he’s been extra secretive around her lately, it’s time to up our game. Lorelei never saw him doing anything suspicious like sneaking out at lunch with his arm around a bimbo.
And this is where I come in: the bimbo.
“I already hate the bastard and I haven’t even met him. Why do men feel the need to lie? If you’re not happy, just tell us. We’ll help you pack,” I complain.
My heels click on the floor of the pub as I make my way over to the bar. Tonight I’m wearing one of my favorite bait outfits: a nice little ensemble I like to call “my eyes are up here, moron.” My top is a gray pinstripe halter vest: completely backless and held together in the front with just four tiny buttons. Well, three buttons now, thanks to Lorelei. If I make sure not to take deep breaths, my all-natural 34Cs should stay put.
“I see him—over there at the end of the bar, nursing a beer,” Lorelei says quietly next to me.
My gaze zeroes in on our subject and I take a moment to watch him unnoticed. He looks exactly like his picture in the file. Black hair, short on the sides and messy on top; dark stubble around a jaw that I can’t deny is a little delicious to look at; and a pair of black, trendy glasses perched on his nose. My ex wore a pair of those glasses. He didn’t need glasses, but he thought they made him look cool.
They didn’t.
Matt is wearing a blue-and-white-striped button-down with a navy blue V-necked sweater over it with a pair of khaki dress pants. Nerdy chic. Super. It’s like someone packaged up Andy and stuck him in this bar just for me. Remind me again why I picked this job instead of the easy subpoena delivery that Lorelei got?
“Wow, he looks a lot like Andy,” Lorelei says, stating the obvious.
“I know. Don’t remind me. I kind of want to slam his face into the bar right now.”
Lorelei pulls a small Nikon camera out of her purse and checks the zoom lens.
“Please refrain from beating up the subject until I can get a good shot of him making out with you,” she tells me in a bored voice before putting the camera back in her bag.
Right. The job. Fool Me Once Investigations was started because the three of us wanted to help other women avoid looking like fools when the men in their lives played them. We take other cases to help pay the bills, but coming to the rescue of our fellow woman scorned is what we prefer. I need to remember that this is just a job and not a way for me to channel my anger at Andy through someone else. All I have to do is make nice with the little cheater, chat him up, buy him a few drinks, and then get him to kiss me. Piece of cake and bam, the wife is vindicated and can happily take her photos to her lawyer. I’ve done it a hundred times.
Oh, don’t look at me like that—I’m not a whore. Even though my mother seems to think I am whenever I tell her I’m out on another job. They say you have to kiss a few frogs before you meet your Prince Charming. Well, I’m kissing a thousand frogs to show other women that Prince Charming will screw you over the first chance he gets.