“I’m saying that so long as your relationship with Mickie is not a sexual one I would never try to make you choose between me and her.” Tasha took a breath and knew she needed to choose her words very carefully now. “But what I am saying is that I won’t have her at my wedding and in the event that she is there then I won’t be.” She breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“I would hate to hear you making ultimatums if that wasn’t one,” he said dryly.
“It wasn’t, James. I’m just trying to be as honest about how I feel as I can be,” she explained. “I don’t need her to like me or want to be my friend but someone who offers me money to leave you and calls me a whore is never going to feature highly on my guest list,” Tasha said, revealing for the first time the details of Mickie’s private conversation with her at the auction.
“What? When did she say that?” Jim sounded as shocked as Tasha had been at the time.
“At Lenny and Sara’s auction thing. She intimidates me, Jim,” Tasha confessed.
“Mmm,” mused Jim for a few seconds. “So assuming we leave Mickie off the guest list do I now get to see the list and have Kayla willing to discuss our wedding with me?” He suddenly sounded calmer again.
“Of course,” replied Tasha then quickly added, “but that doesn’t mean we play tit-for-tat with the guest list where you try to negotiate Mickie’s reinstatement or I lose one of the few guests I’ve invited.”
“You are very suspicious, Miss Winters, but I was right when I said that nobody knew me as well as you do.” He let out a single laugh. “Which could be bad news for me, but good news for our marriage.”
“I do hope so.” She sighed, a long drawn out sigh.
“Tasha, what is wrong, baby?” He was concerned again, knowing there was something. Something else. Something she wasn’t telling him.
“Am I too young for all of these complicated decisions?” She sighed again. It was almost becoming a reflex.
“Explain what you mean to me or tell me what these decisions are and I can at least give them some thought.” His voice was gentle, calm, reassuring.
“I really have to go. Lucy is waiting and I need to call Pippa.” Tasha tried to brush him off.
“Baby, this is important, but if you really have to go promise you will at least text me before you go to bed and while you’re sleeping I can maybe help you with some of these decisions that need making, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed. “I do love you very much.”
“That is all I need to know and I love you too, now go and see Lucy,” he told her.
“I’m sure you have far more important things to do than listen to me anyway.” She smiled as she thought that any one of the three things she could now cross off her list could have caused a major row, but they hadn’t, not one of them.
“Tasha, when will you get this into your head? There is nothing more important to me than you, but I do have people waiting to see me so we will speak later.”
After only two glasses of wine with Lucy consumed, Tasha already felt rather drunk courtesy of a lack of food.
Lucy refilled their glasses while eyeing Tasha with concern. “You sure you’re okay though.”
Tasha nodded. She was, well apart from being a little merry, although she knew what Lucy meant. She meant the wedding, the new life, the change in home, Jim, becoming a stepmother which in turn meant Lizzie and the exchange she’d witnessed. Lizzie had reluctantly agreed to Pippa joining them on the shoot and to her staying with them until they all flew back, not that there was ever really a choice. Tasha felt even more like piggy in the middle as she negotiated the next week’s plans with Lizzie but she couldn’t and wouldn’t allow Pippa to be pushed out any more that she would have allowed Pippa to do the same to Lizzie. Lizzie who had tugged at her heart strings further when she’d said,but I thought this week was going to special, just the two of us as you’re going to be my step-mom.
Lucy had been most supportive and pointed out that it had been special and would continue to be so, but with Pippa too, Pippa who had pretty much lost her big sister for most of the time to Jim, L.A. and of course Lizzie. This seemed to make Lizzie feel better, or possibly slightly more important and higher ranking in Tasha’s life, but had made Tasha feel like a really bad big sister.
Lizzie had gone to bed to text some friends back home leaving Tasha and Lucy to discuss the wedding dress.
“Come and try on the one I’ve done and we can tweak it from there,” suggested Lucy.
Tasha nodded her agreement. “But not tonight. Lizzie will get abducted by aliens or lured into a cult movement if I leave her alone and then Jim will have final prove of my poor judgement and knack for making inappropriate choices.”
Lucy laughed despite the fact that Tasha wasn’t entirely sure she was joking.
“Tomorrow, after dinner then and we can leave her and Pippa watching TV with Ryan while you try your dress on.”
“That is a plan,” declared Tasha, genuinely excited to be doing this.
Lucy had been gone about an hour when Tasha woke from a brief snooze in front of the TV and found a message on her phone from Angie.
