“Gross.” I went to buckle my belt but stopped.
A woman was walking down the street, carrying a shopping bag—and a puffball.
Bill saw her a moment later. “Merda!”
“I have to talk to her,” I breathed, shooting out of the car as the henchman shouted at me. Vibrant Italian curses cut the air like the crack of a whip.
But I was already in her path, intercepting my stepmother. “Carole! Hi, how are you?”
“I’ll call you back, Jessica.” One long, acrylic nail tapped on the phone screen. She pulled the Bluetooth from her ear as her eyes went wide. “WhereHAVEyou been?”
I shrugged. “Where I said I’d be. Why?”
“Why?” Carole’s perfectly manicured brows tried to shoot upward, but her forehead wouldn’t allow it. “WHY?”
Chandler sneezed.
The image of my cats hunting him like lions with a hyena distracted me for a moment. They would shred him to pieces, smiling while doing it.
“What’s happened?” I said innocently.Come on, let’s see what you know.
“You ungrateful child,” she sniffed. “When Archy told me that he had two little girls, I didn’t let it stop us from dating. I tried to be a good mother to you, I did! And this,thisis how you treat me?”
I let her vent. If she was here, there was a possibility Dad was in town. I wanted to glean anything useful to tell Vincenzo. We needed to anticipate my father’s next moves. He was the constant antagonist in our story. While Steven and the warlord Varga were evil, they were only in our lives because Dad invited them.
“What did I do this time?” I demanded.
“You ruined everything,” she wailed. “Archy is considering bankruptcy, because you couldn’t just marry the yummy British boy.”
Bankruptcy was actually a solid plan to regroup after financial disaster. Not that Carole understood how businessmen used it as a loophole. No, to her brain, it was probably the type of bankruptcy that destroyed middle-income families.
“His businesses are that bad?” I felt…nothing. No, that wasn’t right. There was a kernel of glee threatening to pop inside me at the thought of my father struggling. How the tables had turned. This news would have had me working without sleep to help him save face and his investments. Now, I was going to step back and watch him fall.
“Well, if you’d pick up the phone, you would know,” Carole huffed. “We’ve been calling and calling and calling.”
“No one’s called me,” I countered hotly, done with her accusations.
My stepmother gave me an ugly look. It started at my head and scanned down to my shoes. “Clearly, you’ve been too busy buying pretty clothes to answer. Did your other outfits get a little tight?”
The muscles of my tummy tightened. “No,” I snapped. “And the staff inside Cielo said I had one of the trimmest bodies they’d seen. Couldn’t believe it was natural.”
There. That was a snub to her constant need for a surgeon’s blade.
Carole’s eyes flashed wide. “Cielo?”
She looked at me, looked at the spa beside us, and then back.
“I have a standing appointment.” I couldn’t help the triumphant barb.
Carole leaned over, looking behind me. “Oh, the wedding planner. I see where you’re getting that kind of money.”
Frowning, I shot a look to Bill, who leaned against his car. Wedding planning was a lucrative business, but if she thought it was a large enough price tag to have me accepted into one of the most exclusive spas, she was dumber than she looked.
“Wait until your father hears about this,” she sniffed.
“You’re one to talk.” I jerked my chin at the shopping bag. “How are you affording Dior when Dad’s going bankrupt?”
Carole clutched the shopping bag possessively to her chest. “Mind your business, Amanda.”
