Page 3 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

It was all just so unfair! Again her eyes shifted to the picture behind the bar, and at the precise moment a couple of women stopped to take a photo with it.

Both beautiful and glossy, just the kind of arm candy that superstar NHL player Aiden would no doubt go for.

The wave of jealousy surprised Sienna. It had been ten years, for God’s sake.

But Aiden had become a sort of slap-in-the-face for Sienna.

He’d gone on to become everything he’d ever hoped, and she’d been left behind, treading water just to get by.

She jerked her attention back to the table with renewed determination. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.’

Astrid spilled some prosecco as she connected her glass to the tabletop with a little too much gusto. ‘Damn right they shouldn’t.’

Sienna had felt impotent for a long time, and she’d felt alone for even longer.

What else explained why she’d put up with Cory?

He hadn’t been much, but at least he’d been someone to do things with, someone to talk to at the end of the day, someone she could pretend cared about her…

But these women were like steel being liquified and poured into her spine.

For the first time in a long time, she felt strong.

She felt empowered. And it was all thanks to them.

‘What if we… look, I know this sounds crazy.’ Her eyes fell to her empty prosecco glass.

‘And I may be a little drunk.’ Out of nowhere, she hiccupped and the other women giggled.

Sienna laughed too before refocusing her attention on the idea she’d been about to share.

‘What if we took it upon ourselves to exact some… revenge?’

Silence.

Crackly, hard-to-read silence.

Then, Bella queried, with a quiet caution that was very wise, ‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t mean murdering them or anything,’ Sienna clarified quickly.

She’d been visiting her dad in prison every Saturday for more than nine years and was determined never to see the inside of a jail cell herself.

‘I mean, look. These guys have had everything go their way, right? They got to walk all over us. Or walk out on us. Why should they just get to live their best lives while we’re picking up the remnants of ours? ’

Astrid’s excitement was visible. ‘Yes. I like where this is heading.’

Sienna nodded. ‘Why not have a little fun at their expense?’

Bella though was still wary. ‘What kind of fun?’

‘Nothing serious,’ Sienna promised, the idea bursting in her mind like fireworks.

‘Stuff that would inconvenience them, that we can have a laugh over. Like…’ She wracked her brain, trying to think of something suitable.

‘Signing them up to hundreds of mailing lists. Or putting a dead fish in their wheel hubs. Buy them a cow and have it delivered. Switch out their clothes for a size or two smaller. Change all the names in their phone contacts to Dr Seuss. That kind of thing.’

She felt the collective stares of the group and wondered if she sounded as though she’d lost the plot.

‘Wow.’ Paige, though, sounded truly impressed. Scared, but impressed. ‘Remind me to never get on your bad side.’

‘Some of those things would require us to get close.’ Bella picked up the threads of the idea.

‘They’ll know it was us. There’s no way we’d get away with it.

’ But Sienna, an expert at reading people, could tell from her tone that she was in.

She was working out the kinks but in a way that showed how much she wanted this to happen.

Confidence lurched inside Sienna. She hadn’t lost the plot, she’d damn well found it for the first time in a decade. In a migraine-inducingly pink bar in an overcrowded airport, but so what? ‘That’s why we pick someone else’s ex!’

The other women went deadly silent. Sienna could almost hear their cogs turning.

‘It’s an excellent plan.’ Astrid was the first to speak. ‘So good I wish I’d thought of it.’

Bella nodded. ‘Me too. Very Machiavellian.’

Paige was the holdout, the last juror to be convinced. ‘Okay,’ she said, slowly, evidently still thinking. ‘Maybe.’

Astrid though was already taking Paige’s acceptance as a foregone conclusion.

‘Who would you pick?’ Her excitement was contagious and Sienna knew exactly who she wanted to crush like a vile little bug.

‘Harvey the Horrible.’ That rat deserved to pay, big time.

‘If he spends time regularly in the US I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out something. You?’

Astrid was also quick to reply. ‘I’d take your heartbreaker. Any guy who’d just walk out on a sweetheart like you deserves to be played a little.’

‘And I’d take your cheating, married, bastard ex,’ Bella threw out there.

‘Which leaves you with Olly.’ She turned to Paige, tapping the side of her lip thoughtfully.

‘And that’s perfect because he slunk back to England after the wedding, to his dad’s place in Cornwall.

How’s your sitting schedule for the new year? ’

Paige’s eyes were deer-in-headlights wide. ‘I have a few things lined up in Jan, Feb that aren’t set in stone. I have a month-long gig in Edinburgh starting in March.’ She looked at the three of them, her lips parting softly. ‘Is the place big enough for two?’

‘Yes! It’s very spacious,’ Bella promised. ‘And right on the beach.’

Paige tilted her head to the side. ‘How would he feel about a guest?’

Bella looked like all her Christmases were coming at once. ‘He does like his privacy.’

‘I know exactly how he feels,’ Paige muttered with a hint of an eye roll before shaking her head, as if to clear the cobwebs. ‘I don’t know… are we really going to do this? Maybe it’s just the alcohol talking…’

‘Good point.’ Bella’s smile slipped.

There was no lack of certainty with Astrid though. ‘Well, I sure as hell am. I don’t know about you, but I’ll sleep a little better knowing Horrible Harvey is getting his comeuppance.’

Paige’s face briefly crumpled with emotion, as though she wasn’t used to having people go to bat for her. Which only made Sienna more determined.

‘Look,’ she said, gently, seriously. ‘This only works if we all agree. And nobody should feel pressured into doing it if it doesn’t sit right.’

Bella hit her glass to the table a little emphatically. ‘Definitely.’

‘God, fuck, yes.’ Astrid visibly notched her commitment down. ‘The last thing I want to do is browbeat my new co-conspirators. Sorry. Besties.’

Sienna didn’t look at Paige. She was the one who was struggling and Sienna definitely didn’t want her to feel pressured. Instead, she glared at the poster with laser-like anger.

‘I do love a cream tea,’ Paige blurted out, then glanced at Bella. ‘I’d be safe there?’

Sienna’s heart damn near broke. What this woman had been through was just beyond – trust once destroyed was almost impossible to rebuild. Sienna would move heaven and earth to exact revenge on the prick who’d done this to her.

‘Definitely. For all his commitment-phobe tendencies, he’s a true gentleman and I know he feels terribly guilty about the jilting. Which I’m perfectly okay exploiting to get you in there. I still have his number.’

‘Oh, yes!’ Astrid’s enthusiasm was back to off-the-charts. ‘That’s a great plan. You could text him now.’ She batted her lashes then glanced at the clocks on the wall. ‘It’s six in the evening over there.’

Sienna could sense Paige’s ambivalence shifting to acceptance. ‘Look, how about this?’ She pulled her long blonde hair over one shoulder, running her fingers through the ends in a gesture of deep thought. ‘What if Bella texts, and then… we leave it up to the universe?’

‘The universe?’ Astrid looked sceptical.

‘Yes, you know. Fate. Kismet. If he texts back while we’re all still sitting here at this table we randomly ended up at, then it’s a go. If he doesn’t? We’ve all had a laugh and filled in a few hours. No harm, no foul.’

‘Oooh.’ Astrid’s nod underscored her enthusiasm. ‘I like that.’

‘Me too,’ Bella said.

Paige nodded firmly. ‘Okay, yeah. Okay.’

Bella set about drafting a text to Olly, reading it aloud as she wrote, and then they all sat very still, and very silent, and waited.

And waited. Because this felt like a monumental shift, in the middle of pink central, a fork in the road for all of them.

And then, ping.

Bella scrambled for the phone and read to the group, ‘Is she a Roger Prendergast groupie?’

Sienna tilted her head, confused by the reference. She’d adored Roger Prendergast even as a young girl.

‘The actor that died a little while ago?’ Paige asked.

Bella nodded. ‘Yep. Roger was his dad.’

A kaleidoscope of butterflies launched inside Sienna.

When she thought of Roger Prendergast, she instantly visualised kind eyes and a ready smile.

The idea of getting payback on his son made her insides lurch a little.

But then she remembered the hell Olly had put Bella through and strengthened her spine.

Paige denied any stalkerish obsession with the late actor and Bella sent word back to Olly. A moment later, with eyes that were round like saucers, Bella gulped. ‘He says fine.’

Paige glanced from one woman to the next, a smile twitching the corners of her lips and Sienna felt it. A connection, a shared sense of purpose and finally, the hint of fun and mischief. God knew she needed that. ‘Okay then. Looks like I’m off to Cornwall.’

Sienna wasn’t going to let the moment pass without celebration. She let out a whoop and got the attention of a passing waiter, holding up four fingers and calling for more prosecco. When it arrived, Astrid grinned, holding hers aloft. ‘To just desserts.’

To just desserts indeed…