“It did.” On impulse she reached out and gave him a hug. “Best of luck. And remember when you’re asking that woman out that you’re a catch and she’d be lucky to have you. Trust me. I’ve learned the hard way that a good man is hard to find.”

“You think?”

Marie-Terese rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”

He smiled even more widely. “Thank you—I mean that. And I think I will ask her. What the hell, right?”

“You only live once.”

He was beaming and full of purpose while he left the bathroom, and as the door eased shut, Marie-Terese went back to staring at herself. In the light that shone down on her from above, all the smudged black makeup made her look like a bona fide Goth.

How ironic that on her last night in the club, she finally looked like a regular.

Leaning to one side, she snapped free a paper towel, thinking she’d tidy her eyeliner. Instead, she ended up rubbing her lipstick off, just ripping the glossy coat from her mouth. Never again. She wasn’t ever wearing that horrible gooey stuff again…or any of the rest of the makeup…or the ridiculous slutty clothes.

Done. This chapter of her life was done.

God, it was amazing how light she felt. Amazing and insane. She had no idea what she was going to do next or where she was going to go, so by all that was rational, she should have been panicked.

But all she could think of was how relieved she felt.

Turning away from the mirror, she reached for the wrought-iron doorknob and realized that she had gone from tears to smiling. Opening the way out, she—

Looked up into the grim face of Vincent diPietro.

He was leaning against the wall right across from the private bathroom, his arms crossed over his chest, his big body tensed up in spite of what should have been a relaxed pose.

His expression was of a man who’d just had his gut slit open.

CHAPTER
21

The problem was, he had no reason and no right to feel sucker punched.

As Vin stared at Marie-Terese, taking note of the flush on her cheeks and the fact that she didn’t have any lipstick left on her mouth, he shouldn’t have felt a thing. Same deal when that guy had come out of the bathroom with a smile on his face and his shoulders set like he was so the man—there should have been nothing unusual going on in the center of Vin’s chest.

This was not his woman. This was not his business.

“I need to go,” he said, standing up from the wall and turning away. One look at the thick crowd and he headed for the back of the club, for the hallway that, thanks to last night, he knew had a door at the end of it.