Made for Breaking (The Russells Book 1) by Lauren Gilley

Author:Lauren Gilley [Gilley, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-08-26T23:00:00+00:00

“Seconds, Tony?”

The lawyer, dressed down in khakis and a white Ralph Lauren button-up, waved away Cheryl’s offer of another round of Key Lime tartlets as she cleared their dishes from the table. “Oh, no. It was delicious, but no. I’m gonna be on the treadmill an extra hour as is.”

She rolled her eyes as she turned away from him. There’d been a time when Tony had limped up the stairs to their old apartment in holey shoes with pizza stains on his Fruit of the Loom t-shirts, and now he was the picture of a posh Alpharetta attorney, brand conscious and image savvy. It made her a little bit nauseous, to be honest.

“Dinner was great, baby,” Ray said behind her as she turned on the tap and passed their dessert plates beneath it. She smiled, but faintly, because it wasn’t just a compliment, it was a request that she leave them alone to talk for a bit.

“Good,” she acknowledged, and stowed the dishes in the washer. She didn’t turn it on, though, not yet, because as she left them with a smile and slipped into the family room, she didn’t want the chugging and sloshing of the ancient old Whirlpool to drown out their voices.

The house, relic that it was, was chopped into small, secluded rooms rather than open, free-flowing spaces like their previous house in Alpharetta. Cheryl had batted at tears with her lashes when she’d sold her furniture – the furniture she’d only dreamed of all her life – but she’d swallowed that ridiculous grief and selected more economical pieces that would be better suited for the antebellum floor plan. The parlor opposite the dining room in the front of the house was full of Russell family pieces: the striped wingback chairs, the leather settee, the secretary she’d refinished the summer before. But here in the family room, deep, cozy corduroy sofas and a chair big enough for two encircled Ray’s flat screen. The built-in bookshelves were full to bursting and disorganized, barely enough room to walk between them and the arms of the couches. But it was a homey, comfortable space. And the walls were thin, poorly insulated.

Cheryl picked up her sketch book from its resting place on the sofa table that flanked one wall. The wall that separated family room from kitchen. She had a chair there with a cross-stitched seat full of roses, and a pack of watercolor pencils in a drawer. She sat, flipped to a clean page, and her fingers began to conjure a kitchen while her ears picked up on the conversation.

“…happy here?” she heard Tony’s voice.

Ray’s response was tepid. She could imagine his accompanying shrug. “Cheryl wants to decorate houses. And God knows what Lisa really wants to do, but it’s not slinging beers and keeping books. They’re as happy as they can be, I guess.”

“You take good care of them.”

“I know.” Ray snorted. “But maybe if you’d ever get married you’d figure out that women want a lot of things, and being ‘taken care of’ isn’t at the top of that list.

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