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* * *

Coop: Anything I want to share?

* * *

Penny: Yeah. Just…anything you want to talk about. I’ll be up. I’m trying to binge-watch every season of Grey’s Anatomy before I give birth, and that’s A LOT of medical drama to get through in a month. I’m never going to get there if I go to bed at nine like a wimp.

* * *

Coop: LOL. Okay. I’ll text if I need to. But I’m sure everything will be fine. I know I’m new, but I’m familiar with the ropes by now.

* * *

Penny: Of course you are, and you’re very good. I promise I’ll get you more work after the holidays. Business always picks up in the spring. Then you’ll be able to stop working those other odd jobs and devote yourself to being an amazing fake boyfriend full time. At least until those losers pull their heads out of their asses and give you a teaching position.

* * *

Coop: Thanks, Penny. I’m glad I met you and Bash. You’ve made my first holiday season away from home a lot less lonely.

* * *

Penny: Aw! Of course, pumpkin. We love you, and Maggie will, too. Have a great time and say hi to her for me.

* * *

Coop: Will do.

4

Maggie

Back in the old days, when Lexi was an adorable eleven-year-old who joined me for high tea at the English Rose and talked my leg off during Sunday-afternoon wanders through the Metropolitan Museum’s Egyptian wing, I was positive I was the luckiest woman in Manhattan.

Nay, the world!

Somehow, I’d dodged the Raising Girls Is Bleeping Hard bullet.

Yes, I knew most mothers faced challenges with their daughters—their tweens, especially—but my Lexi was the exception. She was a delightful, curious kid, an all-around joy to be with from the moment she was born to the day she turned sixteen and decided to fit all her tween and teen angst into one year.

At least, I hope this only lasts a year.

If I have to deal with hormonal, thinks-I’m-a-mortifying-dork Lexi until she goes away to college, I might end up in the loony bin.

“But I need you to come with me,” she huffs from my bed as I rush around my room, attempting to put myself in ball-ready order. “I don’t want to walk all the way to Tenth Avenue alone. It’s creepy over there.”

“It’s not creepy,” I say, ignoring the voice in my head that insists I’m a terrible mother who should cancel her plans and personally escort her daughter to her gig and back home again.

But that voice is crazy. Lexi was raised in the city. She’s street smart and knows better than to put herself in danger.

Besides, 10th Avenue in Chelsea is hardly the hood.

“It is creepy,” she insists. “And the scaffolding around that warehouse on Twenty-Third always smells like urine.”

“It’s New York. Everything smells like urine.”

“Not like this. This is fresh. Like…always fresh.” She makes a gagging sound. “I keep expecting a serial killer with bladder control problems to leap out and stab me. And then like, pee on my body or something.”

“Then go down Twenty-Fourth.”

“But Hunter lives on Twenty-Fourth,” Lexi says, reminding me how glad I am her ex-boyfriend is no longer putting his slimy, DJ-wannabe hands on my daughter. “And the haunted mansion is on Twenty-Second.”

“It isn’t—ow.” I jerk my mascara wand away from my eye, grateful there doesn’t appear to be any lasting damage, just a smear I should be able to get rid of without redoing my foundation. “It just has weird windows,” I continue as I wipe at the black spot. “And the houses over there cost more than we’ll both make in our entire lifetimes. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

She sniffs and bats one of my throw pillows across the room into a chair overflowing with unfolded laundry. “Speak for yourself. I’m going to be a disgustingly rich rock star someday. Assuming I don’t get killed on the way to the gig tonight, of course.”

“Seriously, Lexi.” I turn to her, digging my pinkie finger into the bottom of my last tube of lipstick. “Stop it. We’ve talked about the passive-aggressive thing. It drives me insane.”

“I’m not being passive-aggressive.” She crosses her arms and juts out her bottom lip. Even dressed all in black and wearing enough eyeliner to give a raccoon a run for its money, she looks so much like her five-year-old self that it sends a pang through my chest.

Where did my little girl go? And why is the teenager who swallowed her annoyed with me all the time?

“I’m trying to tell you that I feel unsafe. And you aren’t listening,” she continues, arching a perfectly filled-in brow. “And I’m also trying to do you a favor. You’re going to have a horrible time at that ball. You always do. You shouldn’t go.”

I sigh and keep digging in the tube, hoping to get enough lipstick to cover both lips. “I have to go. I’m on the board.”


Tags: Lili Valente Erotic