Chapter Twenty
Her desserts had been demolished.
After an afternoon of everyone lazing around in the sun, playing games, and sharing stories, there was hardly any food left at all. Everyone was just kicking back in beach chairs around the fire pit, relaxing.
As Jade was applying more sunscreen, her phone rang.
She pulled it out of her bag and saw a private number. Concerned that it was one of her suppliers calling about her merchandise, she answered the phone.
Big mistake.
Her stepmother’s high-pitched voice came over the line. “Jade, dear. How are you?”
She immediately got up and walked away from everyone, heading down the beach. She didn’t want them to hear her conversation in case she suddenly started screaming or swearing in anger. “Why are you calling, Cassandra?” she asked flatly. “You and I have nothing to discuss.”
The other woman was silent for a moment, as if she hadn’t expected Jade’s harsh tone. “We haven’t spoken in so long, darling. I was calling to see how you are. How are you enjoying South Carolina?”
She wasn’t buying a word of Cassandra’s faux concern for her welfare. It was always an act with her. There was always some kind of angle.
“Everything is fine,” Jade bit out. “Although you should already know that, since you and Lane have been keeping tabs on me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear.”
She scoffed. “Please. Lane called me two weeks ago. You two have been spying on me. But it won’t do you any good. You’re not getting a red cent out of me. So I suggest you leave me alone.”
Cassandra sighed, as though Jade’s words had hurt her. Bullshit. The woman had to have a heart to feel pain.
“I was only calling to invite you to my birthday party in a few weeks.”
That stopped Jade short. “What?”
“My birthday is in a few weeks and Lane has been planning a little get-together. It would be so nice to have the whole family together again, dear. To have my kids here with me would be the best birthday present I could ask for.”
Oh, that made Jade see red.
Cassandra had never treated her as anything but a squished bug on the bottom of her stiletto heel. She and her son had been cut from the same evil, greedy cloth. All they had ever cared about was money. Certainly, not Jade.
That’s it.
“Or maybe the money from my trust fund is the best present you could ask for,” she bit out.
A moment of silence, then, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Jade ground her teeth, tightening her grip on the phone. “Oh, I think you do. You’re trying to lure me up there so you and your asshole son can swindle me out of the money my father left for me. Lane’s attempt to muscle me into submission didn’t work, so what is this? Your way of trying to soften me up by acting like a mother hen? Because your acting needs some work, Cassandra. I’m not buying a word of it.”
Jade could hear her stepmother’s deep breathing over the line and smiled in satisfaction. Cassandra could control her temper for only so long. A leopard never changed its spots.
“You ungrateful little bitch,” she spat in Jade’s ear. “Here I am, trying to be nice and invite you into my home, and all you can do is be nasty and rude. I was your father’s wife. I deserve more respect than this.”
“Being married to my father doesn’t make you respectable,” Jade responded, raising her voice. “And certainly not my mother.”
Cassandra scoffed. “Well, knowing her daughter, the woman must have been a real gem.”
“Do not talk about my mother.” Jade wanted to reach through the phone and pull the woman’s hair out by the roots.
Cassandra must have understood that tactic wasn’t working. “I can’t believe you won’t even try to make amends with us. Your father would be so ashamed of you right now.”
Jade released a dark laugh, shaking her head and suddenly missing her father so terribly she could barely stand. “After all those years of being married to him, you still never knew my father. All you wanted was his money, and don’t pretend otherwise. If you think I’m stupid enough to believe that you would ever want to make nice with me, then you’re even dumber than I thought. I wouldn’t step foot inside my father’s house with you in it for all the wine in Italy. Don’t ever call me again.”
She hung up, seconds away from chucking the phone into the ocean.
Would she ever be rid of Cassandra and Lane? Or would she forever have to put up with their leering presence and snide remarks?
The whole scene had just been another reminder to Jade of how much pain and destruction could be caused from foolishly falling in love. The decision her father made to marry Cassandra had irrevocably changed their family. And had changed her father, who’d slowly seen the kind of woman he’d married and realized the mistake he’d made. He’d suffered over that. Who knew how long Jade would have to continue suffering for it?
She wouldn’t go so far as to say that love was always a lie. It hadn’t been with her mother and father.
But it didn’t last. One way or another, it always ended. And for the person left behind, it always ended in pain.
How soon would her situation with Hunter end? How fleeting were their feelings for each other? Because she had to admit, there were feelings involved. Whether she liked it or not.
For the first time in her life, she wished her realistic outlook on love and relationships was all wrong. She wanted to believe in fairy-tale romance. Wanted to believe that spending eternity with your soul mate was possible.
And more than anything, she wanted to believe she’d actually found her soul mate, and that he was within her grasp.
But she couldn’t do it.
Happily ever afters were just for the movies.