Page 2 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

Bella introduced herself first – American like Sienna, except she sounded posh and looked fancy; sleek and untouchable. Sienna instantly felt like a hick despite having worn her favourite outfit for what was meant to have been the most important meeting of her life.

Astrid sat opposite – a brunette with supermodel looks and an easy smile. The kind of smile that spoke of always having got your way, always being charmed just for being charming. Sienna ignored the uncharitable thought. Some people got it easy in life, others didn’t. That was just the way it was.

Paige was the British redhead, with freckles that danced over her nose and a face that was hyperanimated and expressive, so it seemed to move to illustrate whatever she was thinking and feeling. She’d be a terrible poker player but an excellent friend.

It was Paige who suggested the first bottle of prosecco and Sienna was all too willing to go along with that.

She had some sleeping tablets stashed in her purse for the flight, but a couple of glasses of bubbles would go a long way to taking the edge off her altitude anxiety.

It might even give her temporary Aiden-blindness.

‘Four glasses,’ Bella told the waitress. ‘And some water for the table, please.’ Yep, definitely fancy. Back where Sienna came from, drinking water with your booze was kind of frowned upon.

Except, it turned out, Bella wasn’t fancy.

She was lovely. A peach. So too were Astrid and Paige.

Even though Sienna had made it an artform to keep people at a very firm distance, something about their open natures, the anonymity offered by an airport restaurant and snow-delayed schedule, not to mention a couple of bottles of prosecco, made the time fly.

Two hours went in the blink of an eye and she’d only stared daggers at Aiden’s strawberry sundae photo a handful of times. Huh. That was progress.

She listened as Paige talked about her VA business, impressed by her obvious myriad skills, then moved onto talking about the wedding she’d been at.

‘Pavlova dress. Drunken best man’s speech.

Smooshing cake into each other’s faces. A handsy Uncle Chip.

’ Sienna stifled a giggle at the imagery, but beside her, Bella was in a totally different mood.

‘I’d rather not talk about weddings.’ Her voice was tenser than a tightrope. Concerned, Sienna glanced across at her.

‘Not a fan?’ Paige asked what they were obviously all thinking.

‘Absolutely not.’ Bella shuddered delicately.

‘Don’t believe in love?’ Paige was persistent and Sienna loved that.

‘I did. And then six months ago I stood up in front of 400 guests to let them know that my groom wasn’t coming.’

Sienna’s jaw dropped.

‘Holy mother of… you were jilted?’

‘Yup. By text. The morning of.’

‘By text? What kind of scumbag does that?’ Astrid demanded with an indignation Sienna felt in her soul.

In fact, courtesy of all the stories they’d shared and fizz they’d fuzzed, and maybe just a little bit because of the way Aiden was staring out at all and sundry and daring them not to fall in love with his perfect face, anger exploded through her.

‘Who is he?’ she heard herself demand. ‘Tell me. I’ll bring you his head. ’ Yes! Yes, she damn well would!

Everyone laughed, including Sienna, but inside she was livid.

‘He’s not a bad person really.’

Sienna almost rolled her eyes. Why did so many women make excuses for these dropkicks? She’d seen it time and time again while volunteering at legal aid. Hell, she’d done it often enough herself, first for Aiden and then for Cory.

‘He’s just a little clueless,’ Bella continued softly. ‘Had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He’s a bit of a Peter Pan and I made the classic mistake of thinking that it would be different with me. That I could change him.’

Sienna puffed out a defensive sigh and tried to soften her tone, even though she was pretty sure her expression was set to DEFCON 1. ‘Doesn’t excuse him leaving you standing at the altar.’

‘No, it doesn’t. That was truly a low act.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘Well.’ Astrid leaned closer to Sienna. ‘You can string mine up.’ Maybe she sensed that Sienna was now simply baying for, if not blood, a little payback.

‘Were you jilted as well?’

‘No. Unbeknownst to me, he’d already trotted up that aisle and merrily said “I do” to someone else.’

‘So… he turned you into the other woman?’

‘Too right he did. Made me feel like a piece of shit.’

It was like a faucet had been turned on and she didn’t know how to control it.

Anger was a wide spray nozzle, coursing through Sienna’s veins.

Her day had gone from bad to worse, but it was the culmination of a pretty shitty decade, and these women were suddenly the receptacle for every feeling she’d absorbed and muted over the years.

‘Are you freaking kidding me? He was already married?’

Bella’s cheeks had two pink spots. ‘What is wrong with these men? Doesn’t marriage mean anything any more?’

‘I don’t think men get the concept of commitment,’ Sienna muttered. ‘Even the ones who seem to are just faking it.’

Suddenly, three pairs of eyes were turned on her and she began to feel a little hot under the collar.

It was all well and good to be outraged on someone else’s behalf.

That was why she was pretty sure she was going to be a damned good lawyer.

But advocating for yourself was way harder.

‘Sorry.’ Her laugh was tight. ‘That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it? ’

But Bella wasn’t going to be put off. Like Paige, she was an excellent truth hound. ‘What happened?’

Melanie’s dad Cory was the one who’d really wronged her.

He was the one who’d used her for free childcare, just because she loved his daughter like her own.

But Cory had never really hurt her. Even though she could objectively see how badly he’d treated her, it hadn’t mattered that much, because she hadn’t loved him. Not like she’d loved Aiden.

Her eyes drifted to the poster and something tightened in the region of her heart.

Was she really going to open this can of worms?

Or was it that it had never been sealed shut before?

And when had she ever talked to anyone about it?

Never, that was when. She’d kept it all close to her chest, refusing to let anyone see how much he’d hurt her.

‘My ex’ – she frowned as she looked back to the squad – ‘kind of just discarded me.’ Her throat stung.

‘It wasn’t like some big, dramatic break-up.

’ Like that made a difference. ‘I didn’t even get the chance to throw plates.

’ Maybe she’d have felt better if she’d had a chance to fire up at him, to really lose her temper?

It was all so long ago, though. ‘I mean, we were just kids, but we were each other’s firsts, you know?

’ And now for the really big admission, the one she was loath to share because it showed how stupid and na?ve she’d been.

‘And I thought we were going to have a life together.’ A whole life.

A whole, long, happy life. Only, that was his plan for himself, not her.

It had never been about her. She dug her nails into her palm beneath the table.

‘But he hightailed it out of town without a backwards glance.’ And refused to speak to me, ever again. ‘Like nothing we had mattered.’

And it hadn’t.

He’d been dating someone else pretty soon, and his career had lit up like an arena.

Bella’s soft, manicured hand reached across to squeeze Sienna’s. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.’

‘Sucks ass,’ Astrid agreed in a tone that actually made Sienna laugh despite everything. God, she needed to stop thinking about Aiden.

Her eyes swept across the table, studying her new friends. What was it about these women that had inspired her to open up? Why this group? Why now?

But Paige had been conspicuously quiet during the ‘my ex is worse than your ex’ conversation, which only made Sienna wonder…

‘Can I bring you anyone’s head?’

She wasn’t actually about to go out and hunt these guys down but it was fun to imagine, for a moment, that such power (fuelled by prosecco) was within her grasp.

Paige hesitated, her lips parting a little, and Sienna wondered if she was going to change the subject or say something like, ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

But then she leaned in a little, and lowered her voice.

‘I broke up with my ex, Harvey, after a brief, intense relationship and then he posted naked pictures and videos of me online.’ Sienna cursed inwardly – the really bad words that her meemaw would have strung her up for saying. ‘He’d taken them without my knowledge or consent.’

Sienna gasped then clamped a hand over her mouth when several heads turned their direction. ‘Revenge porn?’ she hissed, her eyes spitting chips.

Paige nodded, her cheeks pink. ‘I’ve never felt so degraded.

’ She dropped her gaze to the table. ‘I met him at Oxford. He was studying IT and I was a third-year law student. It completely ruined my future career prospects. No prestigious law firm was going to take me on after that. Hell, not even a terrible law firm would. And I couldn’t bear staying on at Oxford.

Where everyone had seen the pictures. So I’ – she shrugged as she raised her eyes – ‘dropped out.’

‘What a bastard,’ Bella said, a little hesitantly for Sienna’s liking so she added:

‘Absolute bastard! What’s he doing now, do you know?’

‘He’s some kind of tech bro. Travels between London and Silicon Valley.’

‘Ugh.’ Sienna rolled her eyes. ‘Of course he is.’