LITMIR.BIZ

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consumer investigation before I change toothpastes. Can you actually see me hopping into bed with the first good-looking guy who nods my way?”

      “Uh-oh,” Tess warned. “Speaking of bed hopping, here comes Cassandra.”

      Abby sighed and watched her mother, who was wearing a skintight miniskirt and three-inch heels, take mincing steps across the playground toward them, a glass of champagne clutched in one hand, a skinny dark brown clove cigarette in the other.

      “Well, at least she’s minus the boy toy,” Tess observed.

      “Thank God for small favors.”

      “You know what?” Tess said, springing up off the swing as Abby’s mother drew closer. “I think I’m going to call your travel agent about cashing in your honeymoon tickets to Aruba. We could take off tonight on an exciting adventure. Vegas, New Orleans, Miami. Let’s cut loose. Whaddaya say?”

      “I’d say you’re just running off so you won’t have to talk to Cassandra,” Abby accused.

      “Well, there is that.” Tess grinned. “Want me to leave the tequila? You might need it.”

      “She’d probably just drink the entire thing.”

      “Good point.” Tess tucked the bottle under her arm. “The tequila stays with me.”

      Tess and Cassandra gave each other fake smiles as they passed. For some reason her best friend and her mother rubbed each other the wrong way. Abby had never said anything to either one of them, but she’d always figured their animosity toward each other stemmed from the fact that they were two peas in a pod, both of them flamboyant, impulsive and audacious.

      “Hi, sweetie.” Her mother, smelling of her signature honeysuckle cologne and the clove cigarette, plunked down on the swing Tess had just vacated.

      “Hello, Cassandra.”

      She reached over and gently touched Abby’s shoulder. “You can call me Mom today, if you want.”

      Abby shook her head. After her mother had left her father, she’d insisted Abby call her Cassandra so the guys she dated wouldn’t know she was old enough to have an eight-year-old daughter. As Abby grew older, Cassandra raided her closet for hip clothes and flirted with Abby’s boyfriends.

      All except for Durango. Abby had never introduced him to her mother.

      “How you holdin’ up?” Cassandra polished off her champagne and then set the flute on top of the adjoining slide.

      “I’m doing okay.”

      “Your father seems to be having a rough time of it. He’s apologizing to the guests like he’s the one who did something wrong.”

      “Ken was his campaign manager and now he’s going to have to fire him. That’s causing him grief. Plus, Daddy feels responsible because he was the one who got us together and he really likes Ken.”

      “Yeah well, birds of a feather,” her mother muttered.

      “Please, don’t even go there.”

      “You’re right. No need to get petty, but I’m betting your father lost the sticker price of a showroom BMW on this failed shindig. And I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he’s more worried about you than how this is going to reflect on him with the voting public.”

      Abby poked her tongue against the inside of her cheek. She’d had years of practice mediating truces and cease-fires between her parents. That skill had actually been excellent training for her job as a public relations specialist for a large nonprofit organization and she’d learned her lessons well. She refused to rise to Cassandra’s dangling bait.

      “Nobody cares that I got stood up. Daddy’s running for governor, not me. And you needn’t worry about the cost of the wedding.” As if her mother would. “Daddy took out wedding insurance.”

      “But of course he did.” Her mother gave a dry laugh and took a drag of her cigarette. “Wayne is nothing if not sensible.”

      She said “sensible” as if it was a dirty word.

      They sat in silence. Her mother smoking, Abby kicking more dirt onto her slippers.

      “You wanna go shoe shopping or something?” Cassandra asked. Bonding over a sale on Manolo Blahniks was her mother’s answer to everything.

      “I’m doing okay.” Abby forced a smile. “Honest. You can go back to Tahoe with Tad, guilt free.”

      “It’s Tab, darling.”

      “Whatever.”

      Her mother reached over and brushed a lock of hair away from Abby’s forehead. “Ken wasn’t right for you. You do know that.”

      “I think I sort of got the clue when he didn’t show up at the altar.”

      “You are much too passionate for a dullard like him, my dear.”

      “Apparently Ken isn’t all that dull. He caught Racy Racine’s attention.”

      Cassandra waved a hand. “That won’t last. The stripper is just out for his money. Soon as she discovers he’s as exciting as watching paint dry she’ll abscond with his wallet and he’ll come crawling back to you. But don’t you dare take him back. Like I said, you’re much too lusty for the likes of him.”

      Abby laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, right. I’m so lusty even dull Ken deserted me.”

      “You just hide your passion because you’re scared that if you let yourself go you’ll turn out like me.”

      “I’m not like you. Not in the least,” Abby protested, and then she sneezed.

      “Deny it all you want, sugar babe. That sneeze says it all.”

      “I have allergies!”

      “Then how come you only sneeze when the topic of conversation turns to passionate feelings?”

      “I sneeze at other times.”

      “Do you really?”

      “Yes.” No.

      Cassandra just smiled knowingly. “Like it or not, my hot Gypsy blood courses through your veins and those sneeze attacks are nature’s way of trying to get you to realize it.”

      Abby thought of Durango and a flame of fear leaped into her heart. Could it be true? Was she sitting on a volcano of passion that was just waiting to erupt and spew disaster on everyone in her path?

      She swallowed. “It’s nothing a good antihistamine won’t cure.”

      “You wish. Truth is, you’re just aching to express your secret inner desires. Deep down inside, you know that’s the case.”

      “You’re wrong. I have no secret inner desires,” Abby fibbed, and crinkled her nose to keep from sneezing.

      “Then why do you have Tess for a friend.”

      “Because I like her.”

      “And why do you like her?”

      “Because she’s fun.”

      “Exactly. You made her your best friend so you can live through her vicariously. She does all the things you’re afraid to do and you tag along. But sooner or later, no matter how hard you try to sublimate it, that passion of yours is going to come bursting out. Just like it did with me.”

      “Not if I refuse to give in to it.”

      “It’s bigger than your will, darling. God knows I tried to be a good wife to Wayne and a good mother to you. I tried to live the suburban lifestyle, but it just wasn’t possible. I felt suffocated, smothered, invisible. I had to be me and I won’t apologize for that.”

      “You don’t have to justify yourself.”

      “I’m

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