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Aunt Laura spun; a wooden spoon covered in cake batter dropped to the floor as did her expression. “What are you doing up so early?”
“What are you doing dancing when you couldn’t walk straight yesterday? Surgery complications, huh?”
She bent down and retrieved the spoon without limitations. “Gig’s up I guess.”
“You’ve been faking it all this time?”
“No, I did have hip replacement remember?”
“And the doctor said it would be months before you could return to work. That’s why I’m here. To take care of you. Why I’m not back at home with my fiancé.”
Aunt Laura’s lips folded down. “Then you told him yes.”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I haven’t told him anything yet, but I’m going to now.” Scarlet spun on her heels, returned to her room, yanked her suitcase from under the ruffled bed skirt, and tossed it onto the mattress.
“What are you doing?” Aunt Laura stood wearing the apron Scarlet made her in the fifth grade. The ruffles on the arms were crooked, and there were moth holes in the skirt, but the woman never wore anything else in the kitchen.
Scarlet yanked open a drawer and grabbed a load of sweaters and tossed them into her luggage. “I’m packing.”
“I can see that, but why? You have two more weeks.”
“Because you don’t need me, and it’s time for me to get back to my life.” She scooped her T-shirts out of a drawer and tossed them into her bag, then went to the closet to grab her dresses, but when she returned the shirts were gone.
Aunt Laura stood with her mischievous, twitching eye.
“Stop that.”
“What?”
“Manipulating and lying and using anything you can think of to get what you want.” Scarlet tossed her dresses into the empty suitcase with hangers and all.
“You don’t need to leave. You were ordered to return within two weeks.”
“Ordered?”
Aunt Laura crossed her arms. “It’s what it was. You say I’m manipulating, but whatever trickery I choose is because I’m doing what I think’s best for you, not myself. Can you honestly stand there and say that this man—”
“Henry.”
“That your Harry is what you really want in life or what you tell yourself you deserve?”
The clock chimed in the hall, so Scarlet decided her non-packing could wait until after she met with Duke and helped with his business plan. The minute she finished, she could get out of here and far from her meddling aunt.
“You know he loves you. Always has. And I’m not talking about Hank.”
“Harry. I mean Henry.” Scarlet threw her hands up in the air and stormed out of her old room, but Aunt Laura trailed behind her all the way down the steps. Steps that she took like a three-year-old chasing after a candy cane. “And you’re wrong.”
“Am I? Then why’d he make that special library box for you? Do you know how many women in this town would fall at his feet for such a gesture?”
Scarlet spun around to face her. “I know you told him to build that. You manipulated him just like you manipulated me. No matter how much you try to keep me here, it isn’t going to happen. He doesn’t love me.”
“What if I can prove it?”
Breath caught somewhere between Scarlet’s throat and words, so she clamped her mouth shut in faux anger.
“I never told him to build that for you. He came up with that all on his own. I simply told him that Harold told you to get home by the 25thor you were done.”
“Har-Henry. What’s your point?”
