You Dropped a Blonde on Me by Dakota Cassidy Page A

continued to ring.
    Clearly her sister Lacey wasn’t giving up.
    Not that Lacey ever gave up when she wanted something. Like, for instance, someone else’s husband.
    With a clench of her teeth, she yanked the phone to her ear and spat, “Belle’s Will Be Ringing. This is Lenore Erickson. How can I help you?”
    “Oh, stop, Len. It’s Lacey and you darn well know it,” Lacey grated with her whirring whine.
    “Lacey, Lacey, Lacey. Hmmmm . . .” She let her voice wander as though she was puzzled by who exactly Lacey was. Then she smacked her lips. “Wait! Is this Lacey Gleason? The one who’s marrying that slimy prick Finley Cambridge before he’s even paid the blood money to his attorneys for a divorce from my best friend Maxine—you know, his wife ? Is that the Lacey I’m talking to?”
    A hiss of irritated air swirled from the other end of the line. “It’s not like that, Len.”
    Her eyebrow rose in disdain. “Reeeally? So you mean you’re not planning a wedding to a man who’s not even divorced yet? Wow. Guess you’re back in my will. You know what that means? You, yes, you , the Lacey who’s no longer an adulteress, get the gravy boat shaped like a pig. Festive, right? And pink. Very pink.” Len didn’t even attempt to hide her fury with her baby sister—her pampered, overindulged, lazy, husband-stealing sister. Each time she thought of the pain Lacey had caused, it made her gut clench into a hard knot.
    Lacey sniffed, resorting to tear tactics. “Please, Lenore. Can’t we try and get past this? What’s done is done.”
    Len scoffed in response. Loud. “Done? Is that old mule that’s almost three times your age divorced yet? No. No, I don’t think he is. Done implies that all those nagging loose ends like marriage vows have been tied up. Severed, I believe is what they call it these days. And last I checked, Lace, my best friend Maxine was still married to your rich fiancé, all while she lives in a retirement village with her mother and can’t even afford a gallon of milk because her husband—your fiancé —is a cheap fuck and won’t throw her a bone. So as far as I’m concerned, nothing’s done, lamb chop. I haven’t heard the fat lady sing. Not one note.”
    “I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did, Lenore! If Mason hadn’t screwed up—”
    “Mason? You’re blaming Mason? Please. Stop. It was you who wrote that engagement announcement, wasn’t it?” That Lacey still didn’t get the kind of damage she’d created, the kind of pain she’d inflicted, meant she had no conscience as far as Len was concerned.
    Lenore braced herself for her sister’s defense by gripping the edge of her walnut-stained desk with a white-knuckled hand. The defense that had absolutely no personal accountability and a whole bunch of pathetic justifications for some truly despicable bad behavior.
    “Yes, but I told him—”
    “Right,” she snarled, cutting her off again. “You told Mason not to print it for a month, and because it ended up in the wrong pile, or whatever the hell happens at a newspaper when glitches like this go down, and instead ended up in the society pages a month early, he screwed up?” Lenore gave the earpiece a hard knock with her knuckle. “Hey in there, brainiac! You should have never, ever written it to begin with, Lacey! Don’t you think it was just a little premature, dare I say, presumptuous, to do something like that, seeing as Finley hadn’t even told Maxine he wanted a divorce yet? Did you know that the man you’re engaged to, that teenybopper airhead dabbler, called the paper and almost had Mason fired? He’s our cousin, a cousin with two kids and a wife and no sugar daddy with a blanket of cash to cover up with if he loses his job.” Spittle had formed at the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with an angry thumb.
    “But he didn’t lose his job,” Lacey cried in protest, her voice holding that familiar plea, the one that was supposed to