One Night: Sensual Bargains: Nine Months to Redeem Him / A Deal with Benefits / After Hours with Her Ex. Jennie Lucas
in.
Madison had appropriated the place of honor at the long, candlelit dining table, with Jason on her right side and Edward on her left. Edward saw me, and his expression sharpened.
“You’re here,” he said, motioning toward the place to his left. Avoiding his gaze, I slid quietly into the chair beside him at the table.
Glancing at me dismissively, my stepsister didn’t break stride in her story, which was mostly explaining the unbearable burdens of being young, rich, famous and beautiful. “You’d think I’d be used to press junkets by now,” she finished with a sigh, moving her hands gracefully over the long, gleaming table, to make her enormous diamond ring sparkle in the candlelight. “But the one this morning was especially exhausting. They barely let me plug the movie. They just wanted to know about our engagement.” She gave Jason a flirtatious sideways glance. “They wanted every detail. How he proposed, when the wedding will be...” Madison turned to me. “Why did you take so long, Diana? We’re halfway through our dinner.”
It was worth it, to miss most of your story, I thought. But I didn’t have the nerve to say it.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and reaching for the silver tray at the center of the table, I pulled off the lid and served myself some rosemary lamb, herbed red potatoes and vegetables. Then I saw the basket, and gave a happy smile. “Mrs. MacWhirter made fresh rolls!”
“I asked her to, this morning,” Edward said, smiling back. “I know they’re your favorite.”
“Bread makes you fat, you know,” Madison said.
But skipping bread makes you mean, I thought. I said only, “Aren’t Damian and Luis joining us?”
“They’re eating in the kitchen with the staff.”
“Smart,” I mumbled.
“What?” Madison said.
“Nothing.” I sighed. I felt Edward tighten up beside me. I could almost feel his glower.
I tried to eat, but sitting with Madison and Edward I could barely taste the food. Even the freshly baked white bun tasted ashy.
“Anyway,” Madison continued, “sometimes I just get tired of all the attention.” She yawned in a showy way, stretching her hands upward, showing off her figure to clear advantage. Then she flashed her beguiling smile, her trademark that no man could resist, first at Jason, then—at Edward. “Our engagement is news all over the world. My fans everywhere are thrilled... They’re so sweet, sending congratulations and gifts.” She gave a tinkly laugh that sounded like music. “Though I’ve had a few male fans threaten to throw themselves out windows unless I cancel the wedding. You know how it is, I’m sure.” Reaching out, she patted Edward’s hand. “How difficult it is, when people want you constantly.”
My eyes went wide as I stared at Madison’s perfectly manicured hand. Patting over Edward’s. Slowly. Languorously. Like a dance.
Pat, pat, pat.
With the same hand that held the ten-carat diamond engagement ring given to her by another man.
She wanted Edward’s attention now, too, I realized. Why was I surprised? It had happened all our lives. Madison always had to be the center of male approval. Even when we were teenagers, and my mother was dying, Madison had snuck away with the pool cleaner and smashed her father’s car into a palm tree—effectively pulling Howard’s attention away from my mom.
All our lives, I’d tried to look out for Madison. I’d tried to treat her like the sister I’d always wanted, back when I was a lonely only child. But she’d just taken from me, and taken more.
But as I watched her hand with the huge diamond ring pat Edward’s on the table—pat, pat, pat—I suddenly couldn’t stand it one second more.
“Are you seriously flirting with Edward now?” I said incredulously. “What the hell is wrong with you, Madison?”
She stared at me, her gorgeous pink mouth a round O. Then she ripped her hand off Edward’s as if it had burned her. “I wasn’t flirting with him! I’m an engaged woman!” She glared at me, then turned to give her fiancé a tender glance. “I’m in love with Jason.”
“Are you? Are you really? Do you even know what it means?”
“Of course I do—we’re engaged!”
“So what? You’ve been engaged five times!”
“Really?” Edward said, looking at me with growing joy.
“Five?” Jason gasped.
“You’re crazy!” she said in outrage. Then, as the two men stared at her, she moderated her expression and said more calmly, “I haven’t been engaged five times.”
“No? Let’s see.” I tilted my head thoughtfully. “That punk rock musician you met on Hollywood Boulevard...”
“You call that an engagement?” Glancing at Jason and Edward, she trilled a little laugh. “I was fifteen! It lasted six days!”
“But Rhiannon never talked to you again.”
Madison tossed her head. “He loved me, not her. She should have accepted that.”
“Yes. He loved you. For six days, till his band left for Las Vegas. For that, you destroyed a friendship you’d had since kindergarten.” I lifted an eyebrow and inquired coolly, “How many friends do you have left now, by the way, Maddy?”
She looked at me in wide-eyed fury. “I have plenty of friends, believe me!”
“Friends. People who suck up to you,” I murmured. “People who need something from you. People who laugh at your jokes even when they’re not funny. Are those really friends? Or are they employees?”
“Shut up!”
Picking up my fork, I idly traced it along my plate, crushing my potatoes against the gold-rimmed china, creating a pattern like tracks through snow. “Then when you were sixteen, there was the man who cleaned our pools...”
“A pool cleaner? That wasn’t an engagement, it was a cry for help!”
“Right.” I gave her a tight smile. “You were trying to get Howard’s attention. He’d been neglecting you, spending so much time at my mom’s deathbed. Drove you crazy.”
She tossed me an irritated, petulant glance. “You make me sound selfish, but for months and months it dragged on. A girl needs her father!”
The casual cruelty of her words took my breath away. For months and months it dragged on. Yes. It had taken my mom months and months to die. Months of her fighting her illness with courage, long after hope was gone. Months of her fading away, so sweet and brave, still trying so hard to take care of everyone, even Madison. My jaw hardened.
“I know. I was there. Every day. All day.” I ticked off another finger in a violent gesture. “Third engagement. My agent.”
“Your agent?” Edward said in surprise.
“Yeah.” I looked at him. “We met at Howard’s wrap party for a film. Lenny signed me when I was almost seventeen. I worked on a soap opera for about six months before Mom got sick.”
“You were on a television show?” he said incredulously.
“I quit to stay home with her.” And I’d quit without regret. I’d missed my friends, and the tutor was a poor replacement for school. I’d felt lonely. “I didn’t try to act again until months later, when my agent sent me a script. He wanted to pitch me as a ‘fresh new face’ to star in a Disney show for preteens. My mom convinced me to go to the audition. But on my way there, I got a message from Howard that Mom had just had a seizure. He wasn’t sure she’d make it....” My lips quivered at the edges. “She did. That time. But when I went back to do the audition two days later, the part