Free Out of the Game3 by Kate Willoughby Page B

no way she could spend the next few days with him if he thought of her as a greedy financial vampire.
    “I need to get something off my chest,” she said.
    “Okay.” He sounded wary.
    “I just want you to know when I chose my lawyer for the divorce, I purposely did
not
choose the one who wanted to wring Vic dry.”
    “Ah...okay.”
    “That woman seemed like she was on a religious mission to make all the men pay, no matter what. She was absolutely certain Vic was hiding assets from me and I was absolutely certain he wasn’t. If I’d let her go after him, Vic would have had no choice but to fight back and then it would have probably gotten really ugly. But we divvied everything up in a civilized way.”
    “Well, that’s great to hear. In my line of work, sometimes the divorces get really nasty.”
    They passed Nellis Air Force Base and Claire felt a lot better. He might think she was weird for having thrown all that information out there, but she was okay with him thinking she was weird. Better a weirdo than a money-hungry bitch, especially when she’d struggled so hard with the temptation. At first, she
had
been bitter and angry. Vic had cheated on her. Didn’t that mean he owed her? For pain and suffering? That lawyer had assured her the answer was yes and that if they played their cards a certain way, Claire could have been set up for life.
    But after a lot of deliberation, Claire decided she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but she sure wasn’t going waste it sitting around doing nothing but spending Vic’s money. College wasn’t at all appealing. She’d thought about becoming an interior designer. It had been fun helping Tim fix up his apartment after he’d moved here from Chicago, but she wasn’t sure she really wanted to take that up as a profession.
    She was lost in thought when Alex pointed to a sign.
    “So we are officially leaving Las Vegas. Did you see that movie?
Leaving Las Vegas
?”
    “No. Never heard of it.”
    “It was pretty good. Not as good as
The Hangover
though. That is my all-time favorite Vegas movie. Did you like that one? I about shit my pants laughing.”
    “I thought it was funny, but I liked
Ocean’s Eleven
better. But not the sequels. Twelve, thirteen...How many of there were there?”
    “Too many, I agree. But I bought them anyway.”
    “You bought them?”
    “Yeah. I have a big collection of DVDs.”
    “So you’re a movie buff.”
    “Hey, I come by it honestly. You spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, you watch a lot of movies.”
    “Like
When Harry Met Sally.
”
    He glanced at her. “Why do you say it like that? It was a good movie.”
    He then surprised her by admitting to having watched more chick flicks like
Friends with Benefits
,
The Proposal
and even
Sense and Sensibility
.
    “You’re pulling my leg,” she said. “You do not like Jane Austen.”
    “I didn’t watch it because of Jane Austen. I watched it because of Alan Rickman. The man was one of the most kick-ass villains in movie history. Hans Gruber. I wanted to see him in a prissy costume drinking tea and shit.”
    “Hans Gruber?” Claire shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
    Alex gasped. “You don’t know Hans Gruber!” he said in a laughable, unidentifiable foreign accent. “
Die Hard
. The original.” He looked at her, then back to the road. “Gruber is the terrorist who holds the building hostage.” He looked at her again, a question in his raised eyebrows.
    She shook her head. “Sorry.”
    He glanced up at the ceiling of the car. “Okay, get my iPad out. It’s in the back. You can watch it right now.”
    She undid her seatbelt and turned to get the tablet. “But you’re driving. You won’t be able to see it.”
    “I’ve seen it a million times. I could fucking
recite
it for you. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine just listening.”
    Claire followed his instructions and they rented the movie wirelessly. She