Page 79 of Storm in a D Cup

‘That’s tremendously generous of you, sweetheart,’ he croaked, his eyes welling up again as he kissed me again and again. ‘I know that Joey is a little… difficult…’

‘She’s not difficult,’ I defended. ‘She’s alone and without any support. She needs a family beyond Genie Stacie. She needs her father and her siblings.’

His face lit up. ‘Really…?’

‘Of course. As a matter of fact, why don’t you in the meantime ask Genie Stacie if we can have Joey for the summer?’ I suggested.

‘Great idea. Maybe she’ll mellow toward you a bit. She’s a bit insecure around you, you know…’

‘Ha! That’s so rich! Her, insecure around me!’

‘She is,’ he assured me.

Probably because I was married to the one man she wanted.

But Julian was my husband and we’d been through thick and thin together. I wasn’t going to dump him for all the money in the world. Well, if I have any say at all in this, she can’t bloody have him.

But getting back to being able to so gleefully, unwarily trusting him like I had in the past, was another issue. To be able to trust him to not hurt me ever again was going to take time.

*

And so came the moment for Genie Stacie and me to address the pink elephant in the room, and by that I did not mean me, as she might have suggested. No, sorry, I was acow, not an elephant.

‘Genie Stacie, can I talk to you for a minute?’ I asked her as politely as I could as I approached her while she sunned herself on the terrace.

She bristled and planted her sky-blue eyes on me. ‘About what?’

About your starving daughter? About the way you spread yourself like strawberry jam all over my husband? About the way you totally blank out the fact that he’s married to me now?

I coughed. ‘Julian told me about Joey…’

She glared at me, but when she saw no animosity (boy,Ishould have been the actress, not her) she cooled down. ‘Oh.’

‘Julian and I would like Joey to spend the summer with us. To get to know her a little. Plus, we think she’d be much happier with kids her own age.’ And not on the umpteenth movie set, I almost added.

Genie Stacie shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll leave her here then. Just as long as you don’t overfeed her while I’m gone.’ Then she threw me a disdainful look. ‘I want her to still have a neck when I get back.’

I told myself not to take her bait. Tomorrow morning she’d be out of my house and hopefully out of our lives as well. At least for a while. But it still bothered me tremendously.

*

It was lucky for Julian (and for the entire family) that I had never stopped loving him. Not even for a minute. And now that I knew he still loved me, for better or for worse, there was still hope for us. If you didn’t count the blonde fly in my champagne.

‘She’s so insensitive to other people’s needs!’ I vented to Julian, ripping off my clothes as he sat on the edge of the bed (welcome back!) watching me with a new-found lust in his eyes.

‘I know. She always was. That’s one of the reasons we broke up.’

‘Gee, I can’t imagine what the other ones could be,’ I continued, dragging my hair into a ponytail. ‘Just how the hell do you put up with her? I personally would like to drag my fingernails across her face. But you already know that, don’t you? And oh – by the way – the next time she touches you? I will.’

Julian snorted. I stopped and pinned him with my hairy eyeball. ‘You think this isfunny? I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown here! I really will kill her if she doesn’t stop!’

‘She’s leaving tomorrow. Then we won’t see her for at least six months.’

‘Amen. I wish it was six years.’

‘And now how about we think about ourselves for a while?’ he ventured.

I stopped, unsure. I wanted to, of course. But somehow I’d morphed into a Mama Bear and couldn’t think of anything else besides helping Joey. ‘Uhm, now?’

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