Only Pleasure(30)

"Your mother should be ashamed of herself for allowing you to hide as she has. I had a very interesting discussion with her last night, and Tessa and I have decided to take you in hand. Now, get your shower, and get ready to shop. Consider yourself in our hands and don't screw your face up like that. It isn't becoming."

Kia instantly smoothed the scowl from her expression, then frowned again when she did so.

"What does my mother have to do with this?"

"I love Celia like my own sister." Ella shook her head. "But it's obvious she had no idea what to do with you. I do."

"Do you now?" Kia crossed her arms over her breasts and regarded the other woman with mock curiosity. "What is that?"

"By informing you that you have allowed your ex-husband to win, you've tucked your fluffy little tail between your legs and disappeared."

Her fluffy little tail? Kia had an insane urge to reach back and see if she had somehow managed to add additional pounds there without meaning to.

Drew had dealt a blow to her pride that had been hard to overcome.

"So you care if Drew thinks he's won, why?" Kia tilted her head to the side as Ella continued making coffee in a kitchen that was not her own.

Ella Wyman had balls. Kia's mother had always made that statement accompanied by affectionate laughter.

"Sweetheart, if the only ones we care about are ourselves, then we're no better than that trash that tried to destroy you. Now, take that shower. I'm fixing breakfast and coffee, and then we're going shopping. It's girls' day out, so get prepared for it."

How long had it been since she had had a girls' day out? Years, in fact. She'd even refused her mothers invitations. But Kia and her mother disagreed on just about every article of clothing that Kia preferred for herself.

"You're only allowing Rebecca to believe she's won," Tessa inserted at this point. "That's a mistake in this town, Kia, and you know it. You never let them see you bleed. But even more, you never let them see you hide. And refusing to be seen in public with Chase Falladay after you were seen leaving a party with him is an even larger mistake. There were comments made when you weren't at the dinner club with him and the friends he meets with there."

Humiliation flared inside Kia.

"Perhaps I wasn't invited." She smiled coolly. "You're under the impression Chase Falladay and I have a relationship, Tessa. It's a mistaken impression."

Surprise narrowed Tessa's eyes as she glanced at her mother.

Ella was outraged, though she was careful to keep that knowledge from the young woman whose eyes flashed with pain and whose expression filled with quiet pride.

Tessa had unintentionally hurt her, but they had watched Chase carefully. He was cool to the women who approached him at that club, where he was rarely cool to any woman. Chase gave all the signs of a man involved. And even James had been smirking the night before the dinner that Chase was falling for the Rutherford girl. And James was rarely wrong.

"Well, we're all prone to mistaken impressions," Ella told Kia. "Go. Shower. Breakfast will be in an hour, and we're leaving soon after. The sales won't wait for us."

"Perhaps this isn't a good day." Kia stared back at them, all that hurt pride hidden beneath that cool little voice.

"It's the perfect day," Ella informed her. "And I won't be leaving without you. To get rid of us, I guess you'll just have to go shopping with us."

Kia felt as though her chest was going to erupt with the ache inside it. Already people were forming impressions, placing her with Chase. It was going to appear as though he had rejected her. As though she wasn't enough woman to hold his attention any longer than it had taken him to fuck her.

Her fists clenched as she turned and strode from the kitchen. Shopping was the last thing she wanted to do. Especially with two women who were witnesses to the fact that she couldn't even hold Chase's attention long enough for dinner with friends.

Damn her own stubborn, stubborn need for a man who obviously had no need for her.

She showered because it was the only way to release the tears building inside her. Because she was furious with herself and with Chase and with the damned society she couldn't seem to hide from, no matter how hard she tried.

Gossip had never bothered her. But her pride was always her downfall. It always had been. She would get ready, she would go shopping, and when it was over, she would decide for herself exactly how she would show Rebecca Harding how little her opinion mattered. And once she did that, then she would try to cure herself of this strange addiction to Chase Falladay. Before it destroyed her.

"Mom, are we the only ones under the impression that Chase Falladay has a thing for her?" Tessa asked after Kia was safely in the shower.