Touch of Heaven (St. James Sisters Book 1) by Maureen Smith

Author:Maureen Smith [Smith, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Kimani Press
Published: 2009-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Raina was miserable.

Nothing seemed to be going right in her life.

Her beloved spa was facing the very real threat of a hostile takeover. She’d received a ton of phone calls from people urging her to sell her land to Mayne Industries, and she’d heard pretty much the same thing from every business and community leader she’d contacted for support.

Her employees were worried about job security. That afternoon, Raina had caught one of her massage therapists surfing the Internet for openings at other spas. Trey was sulking and grumbling under his breath about the tragic demise of small businesses in America. Tina looked like she didn’t know whether to give Raina a hug, or ask her about the internship for her brother. Thankfully, she did neither.

Before Raina left for the evening, a forlorn Nikki informed her that she’d noticed a decrease in the volume of walk-in appointments that day. At any other time this news wouldn’t have generated too much concern, as the massage therapists were usually booked solid in advance and could barely accommodate customers who didn’t have reservations. But on a day like today, any news that even hinted at profit loss was like sounding a death knell.

Raina was furious with Warrick for waltzing back into her life after twelve years and turning her world upside down in a matter of three days.

So it was downright inconceivable that she could find herself feeling guilty—guilty!—about what she’d said to him during their argument that morning. Every time she replayed the words in her mind, a fresh wave of shame engulfed her.

I guess you can take the boy out of the gutter, but…Well, you get the point.

What in the world had possessed her to say something so malicious, so unforgivably condescending, to Warrick? No matter how angry or frustrated she was, there was no justification for the way she’d callously ridiculed the man’s background. Warrick could no more control growing up in the projects than she could control being born female. His strength and resilience, his unrelenting determination to overcome the obstacles in his life, were some of the many things Raina had always loved and respected about him. She’d never looked down on him or his family. Ever. If anything, she’d admired their closeness, their strong ties to the neighborhood and their ability to turn any occasion into a festive, joyous event where everyone, family and strangers alike, felt welcome.

Never in a million years could Raina have imagined using Warrick’s humble upbringing against him. She’d come off sounding like the stuck-up bitch Yolanda Mayne had once called her during a heated argument, for which she’d immediately apologized when she saw the wounded disbelief on her friend’s face.

But for months afterward, Raina had wondered if any of Yolanda’s siblings—namely Warrick—also believed that she was a snob, one who thought she was better than they were because her father was a doctor and her family lived in a nicer neighborhood.

Judging by the bone-chilling smile Warrick had given her that morning, he clearly hadn’t been surprised to hear such contemptible words come out of her mouth.

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