Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (read with me .TXT) 📕

him, he’s my husband—but when I met him it was totally different. We were just having a laugh, you know? He’d come over from America for a holiday, and straight away he’d come to the pub, sometimes he’d even have his luggage with him, you know? Like, it was on his way to the house, he had to pass by, so he’d stop. And before you knew it, we was gassing and hooting and he was a right laugh, so he was.”

She paused, looking at Dehan, studying her face. When she spoke again, her expression was almost apologetic.

“I didn’t talk like this back then. I had the local accent. He didn’t care. He liked it. He said it was sexy. It was funny.” She glanced at me, then back at Dehan. “Happy days. But be careful what you wish for, right?”

She paused again. I ate and waited.

Dehan said, “What did you wish for?”

She sighed. “The stupid thing is, I wasn’t in love with him. He was a gas. He was real good fun. But I would not have dreamt in a million years of marrying him.” She sat up, wide-eyed, and spread her hands. “But then the daft git went and proposed! He was a fucking millionaire, for fuck’s sake! A multi-multi-multi millionaire! And I didn’t even own the house I was living in! What was I supposed to do?”

She slumped back in her chair. “At first I was going to tell him no. It was crazy. It was too much. I was actually scared of what would happen, of how much things would change. But my dad got really angry with me, and some of my friends. They were all thinking, you know, how it would benefit them. And in the end I was weak and I kidded myself it was a dream come true. When really what it was, was the beginning of a fucking nightmare.”

Dehan took a long pull on her beer and smacked her lips. “How come? I mean, I get he’s a bit eccentric.” She grinned. “Maybe a bit of a drama queen. But a nightmare? You’re rich, you can do whatever you like, can’t you?”

She shook her head. “The first thing he had me do, as soon as we were married, was change everything about myself: the way I dressed, the way I talked, the way I behaved, all my friends, I had to stop seeing my family so often. In exchange, they were shipped off to the mainland and put up in a big house with a monthly allowance, but I got to see them only once a year, in the week before Christmas. He completely isolated me and he completely erased the woman he said he had fallen in love with, to replace her with…” She gestured at herself. “This!” She shrugged. “Now, how does that make any sense? Why? Why did he marry me in the first place, if he wanted a different woman?”

Dehan shook her head. “People can be weird like that. Was it a power thing? Was he proving that he owned you?”

I couldn’t stop myself. I said, “Was he punishing his father?”

She sighed and shrugged. “Probably all of the above. I wasn’t a Gordon. We were originally from the mainland. My mum and dad came over when I was a wee baby, to run the pub. So as far as Old Man Gordon was concerned, I didn’t even exist. Well, he may as well have been right, because his son set about systematically erasing me.”

Dehan grunted. “That sucks, Pam. I can see why you’re mad at him.”

Pam snorted. “That was just the start of it. We got married just a week after his father died. It was like he couldn’t wait. He went kind of crazy. And where before he was wild, after his father was killed he became kind of eccentric, you know? He became arrogant and all kind of superior, where he had never been like that before. It was as though, now that his dad was dead, he had to take over from him. He insisted I had to be the ‘Laird’s wife’ and behave and speak appropriately. He even kind of anglicized his own accent.” She paused, staring at the tabletop, ignoring her untouched food in front of her. “But the worst thing of all, after I had done all that, after all the sacrifices I had made for him, the worst thing was when he started having his affairs.”

Dehan froze, like she hadn’t known all along. “Oh,” she said, and then, “Bee?”

Pam nodded. “Among many others. But Bee was special. It’s complicated.” She sighed, rubbed her eyes and suddenly the not-quite-perfect cut glass accent was back. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. I am intruding on your honeymoon and it’s unforgivable of me.”

“Hey, come on. You think I didn’t notice?” Dehan leaned her elbows on the table and looked her in the eye. “Us girls have to look out for each other.” She glanced at me and grinned. “No offence, Stone, man. But you understand, right?”

I raised an eyebrow at her that said she was overdoing the act. “Hey, I’m just sittin’ here groovin’ with my pie, sista.”

She told me with a wink that she didn’t give a damn, she was having fun. I kept on eating and she turned back to Pam. “It was pretty damn clear last night that CG Sr. was being a pain in the ass, and you’d had enough.”

Pam nodded. There was something tragic about the way she did it. “Sally is his latest. Women seem to find him fascinating for some reason. It must be the combination of his wealth, his power and his total lack of inhibitions.” She sighed, picked up her fork and prodded her food. “He was engaged to Bee’s sister, you know. She died a few months after he broke it