Bette saw Tina and Shane walking into the room just then, hand in hand.  Tina in the lead, Shane swinging her hand back and forth, looking the room over with a hungry glare.  Tina looked ravishing, her face fuller and her gait more assured.

            “Tina¼.”  Bette said softly, sighed at the sight of Tina making a bee line over to Susan Birch, who’d arrived alone, telling Bette¼who’d welcomed her with a cold hello, that her date was on her way.  Bette had smiled coolly and walked away.

            “Yes. Your ex, I hear?  She’s very…. alluring.  As is her young lover, Shane.”  Helena said, watching the knife twisting in Bette’s heart.

            “Please enjoy your evening, Helena.”  Bette snapped the conversation short, pivoted on her heel.  Looking around anxiously, she found Candace at the far wall, leaning there rather seductively, and made her way to her.

~*~*~*~*~*

            Lacey slipped into the CAC, fixing her hair as best as she could.  She hadn’t known that Dana was going out for the evening, much less heading here of all places.

            She was dressed in dark clothing, so she wasn’t too much out of place.  She scanned the room, seeing Shane looking as hot as always. 

            There was something else, she was darker, something in her green chipped eyes held onto something that was enveloped in darkness.  A small smile spread over Lacey’s face. 

            Good.  Shane needed to feel no happiness; she used women, she made them all in love…

            Then Lacey snapped the thought off, she wasn’t here for Shane, she was here for Dana.

~*~*~*~*~*~

            “Where is Doyle?”  Tina asked, Dana and Tonya walking in after her.  Dana was in the lead, walking well ahead of Tonya, who looked like a puppy dog trailing after her.  They weren’t wearing matching suits this time, a fact that Shane logged away into her memory.

            “She’s late.  She had something to deal with, a project she was finishing up before starting on C&C.”  Doyle’s services didn’t come cheap, and the woman was batting off business with a stick.  She could easily have expanded, but she was a one-woman operation and she liked it that way.