Playing Dirty by Susan Andersen Read Free Book Online Page A

Father’s party.”
    A sigh came down the line, but her mother restrained herself to a stern, “I expect you to supervise them carefully.”
    “Uh-huh.” Didn’t she always? “An eight to midnight timeframe, then?”
    “Yes.”
    “All right.” She made note of that as well, added additional reminders for a few things she’d have to follow through on, then shut down her app. “That will get me started. I’ll send you an email to confirm what we justtalked about, but I need to hang up now, Mom, or I’m going to be late for my real job.”
    “Mother,” Jacqueline Spencer corrected her automatically. “And really, dear, you’re a businesswoman in high demand—must you sound as though you’re off to flip hamburgers on the weekend shift?”
    Ava laughed. “Sometimes I think that would be more relaxing.”
    “What am I to do with you?” Jacqueline said, and Ava could envision her mother shaking her head. “Well, I shall let you go, I suppose. But do keep an eye on the mail—I’m going to send you an appropriate dress to wear to your father’s party.”
    Ava’s smile dropped from her lips as ice rimed her veins. “I’m not twelve anymore. I can find my own dress, thank you.”
    “You’ll like what I select,” Jacqueline said serenely, ignoring, as she always did, Ava’s wishes on the matter.
    “No, Mom, I won’t. You constantly buy me things that I don’t have a prayer of fitting into and I never wear them. Save your money.”
    “You simply need to lose a few pounds and my money won’t be wasted.”
    She tried counting to ten again but only got as far as six. “How I handle my weight is not your decision to make. I have curves. I’m always going to have curves and will never be rail-thin like you. Deal with it.”
    “I don’t believe I like your tone, Ava.”
    “And I don’t like being treated like an incompetent child.”
    “I don’t do that!” Jacqueline sounded both shocked and affronted. A heartbeat of silence passed before she added stiffly, “I was merely trying to help.”
    God save me from your help, Ava thought in despair,but only said, “I appreciate that. But I’m thirty-one years old. Allow me to dress myself.”
    The pleasantries they exchanged after that were few, awkward and doubtless left her mother feeling, as they did her, not so pleasant. It was a relief to finally ring off, and Ava carefully reseated the receiver in its stand on the kitchen counter.
    All the while painfully aware that her first inclination was to hurl it across the kitchen.
    God, she was tired of this. She knew her mother loved her, in her own self-absorbed way. But wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to get through a conversation that didn’t leave her achingly aware of the conditions Jacqueline placed upon that love? That didn’t raise the issue of her damn weight?
    Instead, their conversations generally left her feeling anywhere from vaguely to DEFCON Alert–level dissatisfied. Not to mention not all that great about herself.
    She knew it was ridiculous—that only her opinion ought to count. It didn’t change the fact that when she swiveled on her stool and caught a glimpse of herself in the sound-facing bank of windows that the interior lights and stormy weather darkness outside had turned into a mirror, she saw herself through her mother’s eyes and thought, Cow. Didn’t change that—
    “ No, dammit.” She wasn’t going down that road again. She had things to do—even more things, given the addition of her father’s party, than she’d had fifteen minutes ago. She didn’t have time for this inadequacy crap.
    Turning back to the counter, she tossed her cell phone into her purse and plucked her black draped cardigan from the back of the stool to pull it on over her wrapfront beach-blue dress. She stepped into her heels and crossed to the closet for her coat.
    Then, picking up her Kate Spade purse as she sailed past the tiny entry table, she let herself out of the condo and, bypassing