Strapless

Read Strapless for Free Online

Book: Read Strapless for Free Online
Authors: Leigh Riker
obviously wanted Darcie to recite this part of the old litany, and one of Darcie’s hot buttons. It wasall about security, a safe place for their firstborn daughter to live. Darcie felt she could take care of herself.
    â€œThere’s a third? You go ahead, Mom.”
    Janet squirmed in her chair. She pursed her lips, then just as quickly stretched her mouth to erase the tension. Toying with her cup of Darjeeling, she avoided Darcie’s all-knowing gaze. Darcie let the moment—and her own chance to escape her bad mood—build. Until her mother surprised her.
    â€œWe wanted you—” Janet cleared her throat “—to keep an eye on her.”
    â€œThere’s a new slant. I’m supposed to baby-sit my eighty-two-year-old grandmother?” Darcie paused for effect. “Mom, she’s had more dates in a month than you and I combined, in our entire lives. You should see the guys she comes up with.”
    Janet turned pale. “You’re joking. Aren’t you?”
    Sure, but why let her off that easy? “I tell you, those men are already wearing a path in the brand-new carpet she had installed in December—a trail from her front door to her bedroom.” Let her tell you what’s in Julio’s pocket.
    Janet plucked lint from her navy Talbot’s suit, straight from the Kenwood Mall store in Cincinnati. “You’re trying to upset me.”
    â€œGo see for yourself.”
    Janet looked around the narrow shop, at the various array of Saturday-in-Times Square characters, as if only just aware of them, and wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t cross the river to stay with her. I’m not welcome. Eden has always hated me.”
    â€œ Hate ’s a strong word.” Darcie couldn’t even use it on Merrick yesterday.
    â€œI’m sorry we ever suggested you share her apartment for a few months.”
    With the seemingly casual statement, Darcie’s instincts went on full alert. Uh-oh. Checking up on her wasn’t the issue, but neither was Eden’s sex life. Darcie had lived in Fort Lee for her four years in the East. Both she and Gran liked the arrangement. Although Darcie planned to get anapartment of her own, in the meantime, except for Sweet Baby Jane, they didn’t get in each other’s way and Gran was as tolerant of Darcie’s lifestyle as Darcie had become of hers. She liked to think Eden’s social life was mainly invention (good grief, she’s my grandmother ) even when she knew better. But obviously, she’d missed something. Janet had still other ideas.
    â€œPerhaps we should find you a place now. With your pay increase—”
    â€œIt’s not that much.”
    Which seemed to play right into her mother’s hands. “You could get a roommate to share the rent. A real roommate.”
    â€œMmm.” Darcie remembered her college days sleeping with the lights in her face because her art student roomie needed to finish a project. All night. Tripping over someone else’s clothes, someone else’s boyfriend. Finding used tampons on the dresser and spent condoms on the rug. “I’ll pass. At Gran’s I have my own room and no one bothers me.”
    Janet was undaunted. “When you get back from Australia, we’ll see.”
    â€œSee what?” Darcie shook her head. “Mom, I don’t need help.” Not from her Midwestern parents anyway. “What’s this really about?”
    â€œYour sister,” her mother finally murmured, sending Darcie’s sharpened senses into another spin. Janet studied her lap. “She graduated from Smith last June. Seven months ago.”
    â€œNow there’s a tragedy.” UC—the local university—for Darcie, the Ivy League for her kid sister. “I was at the ceremony. What’s she done?” Darcie smiled to soften the words. So Annie was the bottom line here. Annie, who didn’t give a damn what

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