Read After the Last Dance for Free Online Page B

if she deferred to him in all matters, when no one had ever deferred to him in his life. She turned to Barbara. ‘He gets so proud and British.’
    Leo squirmed under their collective, condemning gaze. ‘I do. I can’t help it but I refuse to argue with my beautiful bride when the ink’s still wet on the marriage contract.’
    There were smiles and glasses of champagne all round. They even ordered another smaller bottle just before they left and insisted that Jane and Leo stay and drink it.
    â€˜It’s still an awfully big bottle of champagne.’ Jane stared at it with some trepidation. ‘What on earth should we do with it all?’
    â€˜Get good and drunk,’ Leo said as he poured more champagne into their glasses. ‘Sound like a plan?’
    Jane wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve never been good and drunk. Maybe the good bit…’
    â€˜I’ve definitely been drunk. I can give you pointers.’ He’d been waiting to touch her again ever since they’d sealed the deal with a kiss. Now he gently nudged her with his elbow. ‘I bet you’re a fast learner.’
    She nudged him back hard enough that he spilled half his glass over his jeans. ‘Maybe I could teach you a thing or two as well.’
    It turned out that the only things Jane could teach him were the kinds of things she must have picked up at an expensive Swiss finishing school. She knew how to address a baronet, the correct way to serve oysters and how to buy the perfect thank you gift. ‘It’s very important to include a handwritten note. Very important. I’d be absolutely no use in a plane crash but if you get invited to lunch with a baronet and he serves oysters, then I really come into my own.’
    She was slumped against him, his arm comfortably around her shoulders. ‘Being drunk is a lot more fun than being good, isn’t it?’ he said.
    â€˜Ask me that tomorrow when the hangover kicks in,’ Jane said and whatever she was, gold-digger or scam artist or even an orphaned almost-tech-wife, Leo liked her. He liked her a lot.
    But despite the amount he’d drunk, his jaw was tight and clenched. He could feel the itch starting. With difficulty, he extricated himself. ‘Just got to go and powder my nose,’ he said.
    Jane pouted. ‘Promise you won’t be long,’ she said, but she waved him off with a smile and soon Leo was resting his fogged, pounding head on cool marble tile. Then he locked himself in one of the cubicles – nothing as plebeian as urinals in here.
    He still had the little baggie he’d managed to scoop up, along with his clothes, when Melissa’s husband had come home unexpectedly. He must have had his suspicions, suspicions that were entirely founded as Leo had had his cock halfway down Melissa’s throat when they’d heard Norman clomping up the stairs and jawing on his mobile.
    He was too old to climb out of windows, shimmy down drainpipes and leap over security gates. He was also too old for chopping out lines on a spotless toilet cistern with a credit card that had been cancelled three years ago.
Too old
never seemed like a good enough reason to stop.
    Leo rolled up his last ten-dollar bill with the skill of a virtuoso. Two hard sniffs and he could feel the coke cut through the fog, the champagne haze. Feel the acrid, acid taste at the back of his throat which he tried to swallow away. He straightened up, shook his head twice, blinked and exhaled.
    That was a whole world of better. He felt more like himself, but sharper, smarter, funnier. Like he could go back to Jane and dazzle her with his wit and charm because what she’d had up until now was a fraction of what he’d got to offer. She might even fall in love with him.
    He ran the tip of his index finger over the white porcelain, to gather up what he’d missed. Then ran his powder-coated finger over his gums, winced at the bitter taste.
    As