Page 29 of Without You
“I’m coming!” She turned to Terrence. “Go, and I’ll send them to you later.”
“I’m not leaving this property without my shoes.”
“Fine! I’ll find them once I settle her down, but that might take a while.”
“I’ll wait on the back deck, and you can bring them to me.”
“Okay. Go.” She pushed him out the French doors and locked up. The motion lights came on, and his figure moved across the grass in the direction of the kitchen.
Charisse hurried toward the bedroom door and tripped over one of Terrence’s shoes. “Wonderful. There’s one of them,” she muttered.
She opened the door and Chelsea scowled at her. “The door was locked. I couldn’t get in,” she said in an accusatory tone. She swept in like the princess she believed herself to be.
Charisse sighed. They were creating a monster.
Chelsea climbed into the bed and under the covers. “Was Daddy here?”
Charisse stopped in her tracks. “What?”
Chelsea sniffed the pillowcase. “The pillow smells like Daddy.”
“Go to sleep,” Charisse said.
She climbed into bed with her daughter, and Chelsea snuggled up next to her and flung an arm over her throat. Within a few minutes, she was fast asleep.
Charisse waited a few more minutes to make sure that she was in deep slumber before she slipped out from under her arm. Tiptoeing around the room, she located Terrence’s discarded shoes and then quietly left the room and closed the door.
In the kitchen, she opened the back door and let him in, handing over the shoes. “It’s safe to come in now. She’s asleep.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly. He closed the door and locked it. “You know you need to put a stop to her, right?”
“Yes, I know, but it’s hard.”
“How hard can it be? You tell her she has to sleep in her own room. She never did this when you and I were married. She knows she can get away with it because you let her. See where all this princess talk got you?” He bent over to put on his shoes.
“Me?” Charisse said in an incredulous whisper. “You’re the one who bought her three tiaras. That’s what started the downward spiral into princess entitlement.”
“If I started it, I’ll put an end to it. I’ll have a talk with her.” Terrence straightened, now fully dressed. “I better go. You got any bottled water?”
“Chilled or room temperature?”
“Chilled.”
“I should have a few in the fridge.” Charisse shuffled over and checked. “Flavored or unflavored?”
“Unflavored. What’s this?”
She removed one of the bottles and faced him. He picked up the proposal for the landscaping design that the yard guy brought over. “Something Tony put together for me. I want to spruce up the yard.”
“Have you gotten any other estimates?” Terrence flipped through the pages.
“No.I let Tony handle everything. You know how I am. I don’t like to deal with that kind of thing, and he was really nice and helpful with the whole process.”
She tried her hand at being an entrepreneur several times, and Terrence invested in every one of her failed businesses during their marriage—a hair salon, a children’s boutique, a coffee shop, and a lingerie store. All failed miserably because she simply didn’t have the managerial skills or the business acumen to make them work.
“I bet he was.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I don’t understand why I haven’t seen this before. It’s dated three weeks ago. You know what, never mind. I’ll have Kamisha do some checking and make sure Bob hasn’t inserted a commission into these quotes for hishelp.” He took a gulp of water. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about your plan to do work on the yard.”
“Because I’m paying for it.”
