You Dropped a Blonde on Me by Dakota Cassidy Page B

bring the house down. “I made sure Finley took care of it.”
    “That was real sporting of you, Lace. But you forgot to ask him to take care of his kid—who read that announcement right along with Maxine—in a newspaper . What do you suppose it felt like to find out your husband and the father of your child was leaving you for the friggin’ receptionist at an automobile dealership?”
    “If you would just listen to me!”
    The sobbing.
    Lacey was a whiz at sobbing, with big, wide, tear-filled blue eyes while she wrung her dainty hands, all put-upon. Lenore’s own eyes rolled upward as her fingers flipped through swatches of tablecloth samples. “Listen to what? Listen to you tell me how your panties just fell off your pert backside when you hopped into bed with another woman’s husband? If that’s what I’m listening to, I’d rather listen to oh, I dunno, someone’s skin being peeled from their living body. So save it.”
    Not an inch. She refused to give Lacey an inch. All of her short life she’d been treated like someone had stamped “Fragile” on her forehead. If Lacey’s lower lip trembled in displeasure even a little, their parents were assholes and elbows to rectify and pacify. When Lacey wanted something, no matter the cost financially or emotionally, their parents provided. Lacey never went without.
    Well, not this time. Maybe, had she not been so spoiled, had she been required to pay even the slightest consequence, she’d have thought twice before she wonked Lenore’s best friend’s husband. Like maybe a whole two minutes after said best friend had kindly secured a job for Lacey at Finley’s dealership. The job Lenore had begged Maxine to give her sister who had no purpose and no plans for the future other than to hook up with geriatrics that had fat bank accounts and belonged to someone else.
    How she hadn’t seen the dalliance coming could officially be filed under the Seven Wonders of the World. Never would she have thought Lacey would cross a boundary so un-crossable—so sacred. Her sister’d done some shady things in her time. She’d weaseled, manipulated, used her beauty and body to garner whatever it was that she wanted at the time, but this, in Lenore’s mind, was unforgivable.
    So unforgivable Lenore had finally put her foot down and refused to help with a single wedding plan, thus creating the biggest family brawl at Sunday dinner six months ago, making World War Two look like nothing but a wee spat.
    “Lenore, you’re my sister. How could you not be involved in my wedding?” Her tone took on that of a petulant child, which wasn’t any huge surprise. Lacey was almost twenty-two years younger. A surprise gift from God, as her parents had put it. It was as though her parents had forgotten how to parent when Lacey came along, or maybe they were just too tired to put the kind of effort into disciplining her that was required to teach a child the entire world didn’t tip on its axis just because you made the “pouty face.”
    “You plan weddings for a living. What’ll it look like if you don’t plan mine?”
    Ah. She was busting out the familial card. Nice. Len scowled. “It’ll look just like what it is. It’ll look like I think what you’ve done to Maxine and her son is disgusting. It’ll look like I just can’t support planning a wedding before a divorce has even happened. It’ll look like I’m ashamed that my own sister would slink off with a pig of a man while my best friend and her kid are penniless!”
    The raspy sigh of Lacey’s aggravation that the not quite ex-wife of the man she was marrying had the audacity to inconvenience her plans grated in Len’s ear. “God, I’m so sick of hearing about Maxine and how broke she is. She’s not your sister. I am! And if she needs money, why doesn’t she just get a job?”
    “That’s a good question, Lace. One you might ask yourself. But you don’t apply for jobs, do you? At least not the ones that require you do