Shame on Me

“Oh, pipe down, lawyer. I’ve got this under control.”


Lorelei puts her hands on her hips and stares angrily at Dallas. “Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t even work here.”

Dallas crosses his arms over his chest and stares her down. “I’m the guy who’s going to get you out of this mess. Don’t you have a case to try or something? Go away.”

Lorelei huffs indignantly, and if she wasn’t such a lady, I’m sure a whole bunch of profanities would be flying from her mouth right now. For some reason, Lorelei and Dallas have never gotten along. He thinks she’s too uptight, and she thinks he’s a Neanderthal.

“You are a pompous jerk!” Lorelei shouts.

“Really? That’s the best you can do? Are all your clients on death row now?” Dallas taunts.

“Can we please get back to the problem at hand?” I interrupt. “What are we going to do about Andy?”

Dallas looks at Lorelei smugly one last time before turning his focus to me. “We wait for Andy to call back with the drop-off location. In the meantime, you need to figure out a way to get a hundred thousand dollars by the weekend.”

“You can’t be serious,” Lorelei says. “We need to call the police.”

“Woman, I’ve already talked to the police, so don’t get your panties all in a bunch,” Dallas replies with a roll of his eyes.

“You did NOT just call me ‘woman’!”

Ignoring the fight in front of me, I turn to look at Matt and see the worry written all over his face.

“I’ll give you the hundred grand,” Matt tells me.

I shake my head at him and put my foot down. “You are not going to help me with this. He’s my ex and I’ll deal with it. I’m not some poor, defenseless female who constantly needs rescuing, contrary to my actions last night.”

Matt puts his hands on either side of my face and forces me to look up at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t lump me into the same category as Andy. I have never treated you like you were defenseless or weak. You are one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. I care about you, Paige. And I’m just worried about you. I don’t want anything happening to you.”

Bringing my hands up to rest on top of his against my cheeks, I sigh and smile at him.

“I’m a private investigator, Matt. I may not have a lot of experience in the field, but this is what I do. If I want people to take me seriously as a PI, then I need to be able to handle my personal life on my own. I am not going to let you bail my ex-husband out of the mess he got himself into. It’s not your problem.”

“It’s not your problem either, Paige,” he tells me softly.

“But I’m going to take care of it anyway, on my own.”

More shouting interrupts our moment.

“Stop being such an egotistical brute!”

“At least I’m not an uptight bitch!” Dallas yells back to her.

“You two need to just have sex already,” I mutter with a shake of my head.



I can’t believe I’m doing this again. I swore I was done with this business when I left Andy, and yet, here I am, sitting in a chair getting poked and prodded with curling irons, mascara wands, and tubes of lipstick. Five minutes back in this business and I already feel only good for one thing.

My agent, Penny, comes bustling up to me with a huge grin on her face.

“Darling, it’s so good to see you back doing what you do best. Didn’t I tell you that police-officer thing was silly?”

Moving away from the makeup artist with a brush aimed at my eye, I turn to look at Penny. “I’m not working as a police officer. I told you, it’s a private investigation business.”

Penny laughs and checks her reflection in the mirror in front of me, fluffing up her hair and wiping a smudge of lipstick off of her teeth.

“Same thing. Stick with what you’re good at, darling. You’ll only have your looks for so long.”

Satisfied with her reflection, Penny pats me on the shoulder and walks away to shout orders at the photographer and his assistants.

“Can I have a few minutes, please?” I ask the makeup artist, whose name I didn’t get.

“I’m finished. Just don’t get your face wet or go outside. It’s windy, and it will take me forever to get those curls just right again.”

She walks away quickly in a huff. It’s always the same thing at these photo shoots. Everyone treats me like I’m an idiot.

“Wow, you look—”

“Don’t say it. Please don’t say it,” I warn Matt as he comes up behind me and stares at my reflection.

I really don’t need to hear him tell me how beautiful and amazing I look. It’s not really me. It’s just makeup and hairspray. And besides, they’re going to Photoshop the heck out of me anyway.