Elvira cut me off. “Nope, you don’t know us. That’s the damned truth but I’ll tell you, from what I hear your girl sayin’, it’s intervention time and we all got tits and ass—except Camille, she’s just got ass, but lucky for her, God gave her plenty ’a that—so we’re in the club and anytime a member gets herself in a situation where she needs an intervention, it’s our duty to kick in even if we don’t know the sister,” Elvira stated then her eyes scanned the table and she asked, “Am I right?”

I stared at Elvira, not happy to admit that what she was saying was sheer lunacy but it was also right as most anything that had to do with women was. And this included her observation that Camille was light up top but she made up for it by being generous on the bottom.

“You’re right, Elvira,” Tracy chimed in.

“I think—” Camille started but Elvira talked over her.

“Spill,” she ordered me. “This Jake back?”

“Kind of,” I found my mouth saying, and Elvira’s eyebrows shot together in a scary way.

“Kind of? How can a boy kind of be back?”

“Um…” I muttered, avoiding Martha’s eyes since she was right. I didn’t share anything about what had happened with Brock, Damian, and being investigated by a multiagency task force that came together to dismantle my ex-husband’s drug operation and I was seeing, just then, this was probably something girlfriends shared.

Elvira yanked off the top of the cocktail shaker and then extended her arm across the table, offering it to me. “Suck some of that back, girlfriend, and let ’er rip.”

That was when I found my hand reaching for the cocktail shaker. Then, as told by a somewhat scary Elvira, I took it and sucked some back.

She made good cosmos.

I handed it off to Tracy, who was standing beside me so she could partake, and I pulled in a breath and started.

“Okay, well, see, I didn’t tell you…” I turned to Martha, “because I… well… it was messed up.”

“Oh boy,” Gwen muttered again.

“Keep talking,” Martha said quietly, her eyes on my face, her body braced, and I knew she was worried.

Damn.

“His name isn’t Jake Knox. It’s Brock Lucas,” I whispered and felt something weird and tense coming from the table but since Martha was blinking at me and looking more worried, I hurried on. “He was… okay, here it is. Damian is a drug kingpin and he called me nine months ago, lying to me that his dad was sick. I met him for lunch and he told me he wanted to reconcile.”

I stopped talking mainly because Martha shrieked a very loud, “What?”

I put my hand on her arm and talked quickly. “Honey, it was… it was nothing.”