What Mother Never Told Me by Donna Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

week.”
    “Great.”
    Parris leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “Congratulations,” she whispered. “I think it’s perfect.”
    His gaze dipped into her soul and stirred it. “So do I.”
    Celeste stood a bit to the side, watching the exchange, nothing sexual but more intimate than if they’d stripped bare for each other. It was natural and easy and she envied the moment. She and Clinton Avery had been a couple for three years. They were engaged to be married and never in all that time did she ever feel what she felt in Nick and Parris’s presence.
    The sudden realization startled her before settling down to an acute sadness. Her life had been spent in the requisite two-parent home. Anything she’d ever wanted was hers for simply being the only daughter of Corrine and Ellis Shaw. Although she’d been showered with clothes, the best education, the right friends, cars and money, affection—at least outward affection—had been missing.
    But until now she didn’t know or care. Her parents never touched or passed soft looks between them and she mimicked their life with her own. And it was then that something flared inside her. An emotion so foreign she couldn’t give it a name. She’d never wanted for anything in her life. But she wanted what they had. She wanted to know what it felt like to have someone look at her with adoration—not possession—to hold her as if she might break, not because it looked good on camera. She wanted laughter to bubble up like uncorked champagne, not the artificial sound of practiced humor with delicate hands covering mouths. Laughter like the kind she’d shared with Parris and sometimes Leslie. And she thought perhapsbeing with them, that what they had, the magic that she coveted, could be hers, too.
    They both turned toward her and the spell was broken. Celeste blinked away the hunger in her eyes and spoke into her purse.
    “If you’re done looking around I guess we can go.” She glanced up.
    Nick checked his watch. “Wow, I didn’t realize how late it was.” He turned to Parris. “I need to catch up with Sammy. I can drop you off at the apartment if you want.”
    Samuel “Sammy” Blackstone was one of Nick’s best friends and a member of the band since its inception. Their years together dated back further than either could remember. They each had a different version of how they’d met that varied with the occasion and the company they were in.
    “If you’re in a hurry I can take Parris. If it’s okay,” she said to Parris.
    “Sure, if you don’t mind.” Parris offered a smile of surprised gratitude.
    “Not a problem.”
    They walked out, almost in step.

Chapter Four
    P arris settled herself into the lush interior of the Jaguar that still smelled like the showroom. “This was really nice of you to drive me.”
    “It’s not a problem. I’m done for today.”
    “I’m pretty much on my own, too.”
    Celeste flashed her a look as she pulled out into traffic. “Hungry?”
    “Starved.”
    They laughed in time to a Billy Joel tune that Parris realized she liked.
     
    The wind had kicked up a notch and the clouds overhead were thick pearl-gray threats by the time they found a parking spot at Amsterdam Avenue and 110 th Street. They stepped out of the cozy warmth of the car and the easy conversationinto the backhand of cold air that lifted skirts and sent cigarette butts flipping and tumbling down the street like untrained acrobats.
    Parris pulled the collar of her short wool jacket up around her neck. Even though she’d lived in New York for a few years, she still hadn’t gotten used to the onset of the bitter winters and days so cold that people could actually freeze to death on the street. Those lost souls, whose only source of warmth was the grates that covered the underground railroad, a macabre symbol of freedom in a way that could be as treacherous as lifesaving. Ironic if you thought about it.
    Celeste hooked her arm through Parris’s as if they