To Love and to Cherish by Lauren Layne

Author:Lauren Layne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books

Chapter Seventeen

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL, sunny day in Florida at the utterly gorgeous Ritz-Carlton.

“How dare you call my family broken, you overprocessed tart. At least I have a family. You’ve got nothing but silicon and another woman’s husband.”

“Ex-husband, you shriveled-up, ice-for-tits—”

Annnnnnnnd then there was this.

“Okay, wow,” Alexis said, maneuvering between her mom and stepmom. “How about we bring it down about five hundred notches, hmm?”

“I told you not to let her come,” Cecily Morgan hissed at Alexis.

“It wasn’t up to me,” Alexis said smoothly. “It’s Roxie’s wedding. Roxie wanted Dad here, and where Dad goes, Tawny comes.”

“And yes, I certainly do,” the other woman said, purring like a cat for Cecily’s benefit.

“Okay, and you,” Alexis said, turning to Tawny. “Why is it that you go from perfectly nice to a little vicious every time you’re around my mother?”

Tawny laughed, revealing perfect white teeth, stark against her fake-tan skin. “Oh, honey. When you get married, you’ll understand.”

“Like you’d know,” Cecily sniped. “I was married to Jack for twenty years and bore his babies.”

“Yeah? Where’s the ring?” Tawny lifted her own three-carat monster to prove her point.

Alexis held up both hands before they could go at each other again. “Enough. For real, enough. I’m not going to ask you two to get along, because, impossible, but I’m going to demand that you stay out of each other’s way for the duration of our time in Florida. Especially when Roxie’s around.”

“Yes, where is Roxie?” Cecily frowned, glancing at her watch. “She was supposed to meet me for lunch.”

“Puking up her guts with morning sickness,” Alexis said. “You and I will do lunch.”

“Morning sickness? But it’s not morning,” Tawny said in confusion.

“Morning sickness is just a phrase; the nausea can happen at all hours,” Cecily said, speaking slowly and over-enunciating as though she were addressing a child. “Clearly you’ve never borne children.”

Tawny ran a hand over a figure that was darn impressive for a forty-eight-year-old. “Clearly.”

“Yeah, okay,” Alexis sighed, pulling out her phone and making the call.

“Dad?” she said the second he picked up. “Come collect Tawny.”

“Can’t, sweetheart. About to tee off.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s more important,” Alexis said. “I’ll just leave the dead bodies of your ex-wife and current wife in your suite, then?”

Jack Morgan sighed. “Tell Tawny to take a spa day. On me.”

She rolled her eyes. Tawny had quit her job the day she met Alexis’s father. Alexis was pretty sure most everything expensed in Tawny’s life was on Jack.

“Fine.” She hung up with her father without saying good-bye. “Tawny, take a spa day. All day. Dad’s orders.”

“I remember when Jack and I used to vacation together, he used to want to actually spend time with me,” Cecily said pointedly, examining her fingernails.

Actually, that wasn’t even remotely true, but loyalty to her blood relation kept Alexis from saying so.

Alexis plastered on the megawatt smile she reserved for her most problematic brides and turned to her mother. “Mom, lunch? I could use a glass of wine.”

“Yes, you could,” her mother said, giving her a once-over.

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