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“Sit here, Aunt Tara.” Laura patted the sofa cushion next to her.
Obediently Tara sat down beside Laura while Jessy reluctantly joined them in the living room, her temper at a low simmer.
“Go ahead and open it, sweetie,” Tara urged while Jessy looked on from her post by the living room’s overstuffed armchair.
Eager fingers tore into the package, making short work of discarding its pretty bow and ribbon. Laura ripped off the bright paper to expose a slender white box. With barely contained excitement, she pried it open and pushed aside the tissue.
Deflated by what she saw, Laura turned her disappointment on Tara. “It’s panties.”
“Very, very fancy ones.” Tara picked up the top one, a silky looking pink-flowered pair with fussy lace edging. “You’re too old to still be wearing those plain old white ones.” She tipped her head closer to Laura’s blond curls in a confiding attitude. “We girls should always have beautiful underthings like this to wear.”
“Do you wear them?” Laura asked, still not sure how thrilled she was with the present.
Nodding that she did, Tara whispered, “Today I’m wearing ones that are mint green. See?” Delicately she pulled aside the collar of her blouse just enough to give Laura a glimpse of her bra strap, then took another item from the box. “And you have a little undershirt to match your panties, too.”
Laura’s mouth rounded in a little “o” as she began to embrace this new fashion idea. “I’m gonna put ’em on now.”
When she started to grab for them, Tara held them just out of her reach. “But you must remember that after you put them on, you must never show them to anyone. Pretty undies like these are a secret just between us girls.”
“I promise.” All in one motion, Laura took the underclothes from Tara, pushed the box off her lap, and scrambled off the couch.
“You forgot something, Laura,” Jessy prompted, to remind Laura of her manners.
After a brief hesitation, Laura swung back to Tara and flung her arms around her. “Thank you, Aunt Tara.”
“You are welcome, darling.” She kissed the child lightly on the cheek, then gave her a p
ush toward the stairs. “Go put them on.”
Needing no second urging, Laura raced upstairs to change. Jessy waited until she was out of earshot, then let some of her temper boil over.
“I could throttle you for this, Tara,” she said, her voice thick with contained anger. “Every morning she argues with me over what she’s going to wear. Now I’ll have to fight with her over underclothes.”
“Laura has a natural sense of fashion, doesn’t she,” Tara remarked with a feline smile that seemed to take delight in Jessy’s anger.
“No more presents,” Jessy stated, determined to lay down the law. “You are not to bring Laura one more thing unless it’s her birthday or Christmas. If you do, I swear I will take it from her and burn it. I don’t care how big a fit she throws. Is that clear?”
“Don’t you think you are overreacting just a bit?” Tara chided ever so mockingly.
“Probably. But that seems to be the only way I can get my point across to you,” Jessy replied, gripped by a steely calm now. “If you should choose to ignore me and attempt to give Laura something behind my back, then understand that you have set foot on Triple C for the last time. And I hope you know that isn’t an idle threat.”
Tara’s lips thinned in a tight line of displeasure. “You would be just mean enough to do it even though you know it would break my heart not to see Ty’s children.”
“There are times when I have serious doubts whether you have a heart.” Remembering all the misery she had created for Ty, Jessy grew angry all over again.
As if sensing this was not the time to push Jessy, Tara rose from the couch. “But even you can’t question that Sally has one. And she is the real reason I’m here. The present was merely an afterthought. I never dreamed you would be this offended by me giving Laura something so trifling as matching underwear.”
“It wasn’t the underclothes; it was the fashion lessons that came with them.”
“You wish that she would wear jeans all the time and be a little tomboy, just like you probably were. If that were Laura’s nature, nothing I might say would influence her. But that isn’t the case, and that is what really galls you, isn’t it,” Tara stated with infuriating certainty.
Jessy wasn’t about to give Tara the opportunity to point out her lack of fashion knowledge. “What about Sally? You said she was the reason for your visit.”
Tara’s smug smile said she knew exactly why Jessy had changed the subject. “When I spoke to Cat yesterday, she mentioned that Sally seemed on the verge of collapse. Cat felt that Sally is finding it much too difficult to cope with being surrounded by constant reminders of Chase. Cat thought that Sally should go away for a while.”
“I agree, but Sally won’t hear of it.”
“I understand that better than anyone,” Tara said and let her gaze roam familiarly about the room. “It is impossible to be in this house without feeling their presence. There is pain in knowing they’re gone. At the same time, you feel oddly close to them here. And more than anything you want to feel close to them again.” She leveled her gaze once more at Jessy, a faint sparkle of challenge in her dark eyes. “Whatever else you might think about me, Jessy, I did love Ty very much.”
