I smiled, too close to sleep to speak.
“Beautiful.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Fucking Samantha. If the woman was on fire, I’d make s’mores.
After so gracefully passing out on the kitchen floor, I’d woken up on a bed in the spare room this morning. Everything hurt. I’d stumbled into the kitchen in search of water and seen the latest disaster through the glass doors. My almost-mother-in-law had been busy. Real busy.
With Vaughan’s cool dude aviator sunglasses to guard against the brain-piercing morning glare, I searched the backyard for my belongings. A bra here, a pair of panties there. You never knew what you might find hidden in the long grass.
Why, it was just like a treasure hunt minus the map.
And the fun.
My green silk blouse hung high in a tree and it wasn’t alone. God knows how she’d gotten it all up there. Unleashed her flying monkeys, perhaps? Wicked witch was about right.
A box of books and another filled with personal mementos had been dumped straight over the fence as if they were garbage. I didn’t have the heart to look inside and see what was broken. Every muscle in my jaw ached. I wanted to scream and rage, to let it all out. Again. Only if I started, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop.
A pounding head and queasy stomach didn’t much help matters. I’d done a quick search of the kitchen and come up empty on the Advil front. Tequila, like Samantha, was clearly not my friend. And it had to have been her who’d chucked my stuff over the fence. Chris would have simply paid someone to deliver the lot to the front patio. Thrown cash at the problem to turn it into someone else’s. Such was his style.
No, only his mother would delight in this type of fuckery.
“Vindictive bitch,” I muttered, adding a pair of boyfriend jeans to the growing pile at my feet. Each item retrieved fueled the fury.
There’d better be a special level of hell to reward her for such spite. One without Botox, where no matter what you did, your dark hair roots showed and the only clothing option was unwashed secondhand sweats. That’d teach her.
Insert insane cackling here. Yep, I was losing it. Lucky for me, there were no witnesses to my descent into lunacy.
Oops, I spoke too soon.
I hadn’t heard her arrive, but a woman stood watching from the back deck. Her strawberry-blond hair shone in the sunlight and she was covered in tattoos. Behind her, the kitchen door was open, meaning she’d come through the house and therefore had a key. Interesting.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi. I’m Nell, Vaughan’s sister.” She made her way toward me, holding out a hand for shaking.
I shook it. “Lydia. A new friend of Vaughan’s.”
“Nice to meet you.” A sweeping glance took in my clothing and one of her eyebrows went up. Probably because none of what I wore was mine. Vaughan had left some clothes on the end of my bed, bless him. Soft gray sleeping pants rolled up at the bottom on account of being made for someone much taller and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. Loved the way the tongue and mouth slogan stretched over my assets. Such a tasteful statement. Luckily, a bra had been the first item on this morning’s treasure hunt adventure. Out-of-control breasts were not something I needed.
A hard kind of curiosity filled Nell’s eyes. “A new friend? Not that it’s any of my business…”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I agreed, crossing my arms over my chest. “But yes. Just a new friend. I’m in between homes so he let me crash here last night. My belongings had a little accident.”
It was one way of describing it. Sort of.
“Yeah. I was going to ask about that. Normally yard sales happen out front.” With a finger, she hooked a pair of underwear from down beside her feet. Awesome. Black lace boy shorts. At least they were a nice pair. Definitely not embarrassing to have a stranger checking out my undergarment styling at all.
“Thanks.” I added them to the pile, my friendly smile frozen to my face. “Issue with the ex.”
“Men.” Her lips thinned.
“Mm.”
“Think they can get away with anything just because they have something to swing between their thighs.”
I snorted. “Pretty much.”
“Raging assholes, all of them,” she growled, cheeks pink with anger. “We’d be better off if they were just jettisoned into space en masse.”
Clearly, Nell was still stuck in the bitter stage of a relationship breakdown. I was moving on to moving on. The damage was done. Now I just wanted to get my shit together and get out of this town. Seek a life somewhere else. Pretty or not, this place hadn’t been kind to me.
“Men do suck,” I said. “But actually, this was his mother’s handiwork.”