All for You Read Free Page A

had left Tess looking so green. She studied her sister for another moment or two, then frowned again. “Did you say something to a client?”
    “I didn’t say anything,” Tess said quickly. Then she paused. “Well, I tried not to say anything.”
    Peaches sat down abruptly on the trunk, crunching the parts of the faxes her sister hadn’t already done damage to. Things were getting clearer, but not more pleasant. “Who did you not say anything to?”
    “Whom,” Tess said miserably.
    Peaches found it in her to glare. “
Whom
did you not say anything to?”
    “Brandalyse Stevens.”
    Peaches felt the room begin to spin. She suddenly found herself with her head between her knees. That didn’t help any, and it was exacerbated by Tess’s unwillingness to let her up.
    “I tried my best,” Tess said, sounding rather faint herself, “I really did. But when she started in on your coming back to England and not being there to help her sort her thongs … well, I had to say something.” Tess paused. “I suppose I probably shouldn’t have started off by telling her she had a stupid name.”
    “Probably not,” Peaches wheezed. So much for hoping all the communiqués she was sitting on were just a bad joke. “And?”
    “I told her it was probably about time she learned to sort her own damn thongs.” Tess began to pat her absently on the back. “And really, Peach, once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop myself.”
    Peaches fumbled behind her for her sister’s hand only because Tess was getting a little too enthusiastic in her patting. She thought she might have bruises soon. She sat up, waited until the stars cleared, then leaned her head carefully back against the stone and looked at her sister. It was difficult to believe that Tess had been the catalyst for the utter ruination of a very large part of her life, but it was very hard to deny.
    “You couldn’t stop yourself?”
    Tess shook her head slowly.
    “What else did you say?” she managed.
    “I’m afraid I might have expressed an opinion or two on how many great guys Brandalyse has stolen from me—er,
you
, rather, because I was pretending to be you. That took a while.”
    Peaches closed her eyes briefly. “Great.”
    “I also might have insulted her blog.”
    “Did you criticize font or content?”
    “I told her that her font was ugly and the pictures of all the interiors she’d designed were Photoshopped.” Tess swallowed convulsively. “She asked me if that was it.”
    “And you told her no, that wasn’t it, because she had the single worst highlight job you’d ever seen and that it really showed up on camera during every morning show she did.” Peaches looked at her sister. “Is that about right?”
    Tess’s eyes widened. “How’d you know?”
    Peaches pulled the stack of papers from beneath herself and her sister, then handed the top one to Tess. On it was scrawled,
My roots don’t show on camera, you stupid—
    Tess frowned. “Her language is rather salty.”
    “You should see the others.”
    “I’m not sure I want to.” She looked at Peaches. “I’m so desperately sorry.”
    “So am I,” Peaches said. “That I didn’t get to hear it.”
    “I recorded it.”
    “Then what’s there to complain about?” She thought about tossing all the faxes into the air in a defiant gesture of freedom, then thought better of it because the only thing that would accomplish would be leaving her a mess to clean up.
    Tess took the faxes from her, then flipped through them. That took quite a while, but that was because Peaches had quite a long client list.
    Had
had, rather.
    She leaned back against the cold stone wall of her sister’s guardroom and contemplated her life. There were several truths to examine at present, and since she had quite a bit of time on her hands—that stack of faxes was rather thick, after all—she thought she would take advantage of it.
    The thing was, she needed a change. She’d known for quite some time that