Kiss Mommy Goodbye Read Free Page A

expect too much.” She began to scratch at the top of her left hand above the thumb.
    “Rash back?” he asked.
    She stopped scratching. “Something you forgot to mention this morning. Oh, well, the day is still young. I’m sure you’ll get around to it.” She wanted to stop but couldn’t. “Oh, and you forgot to tell him I have hemorrhoids fromreading on the toilet despite all the times you warned me against it.” She slapped her hand. “Bad little girl.”
    He grabbed her hand. “Donna, please. Look what this is doing to you.”
    “Please let go of me.”
    He let go reluctantly. “I just want to spare you any further pain and humiliation this whole mess is going to cause you.”
    “Are you going to drop the custody action?”
    He looked genuinely distraught. “You know I can’t do that.”
    “You don’t seriously believe I’m not fit to raise my children?” she almost shouted. Mel and Mr. Stamler looked in her direction, Mel instantly moving toward her.
    “They’re
my
children too,” he reminded her, “and I’m only doing what I feel is right.” Mel was at Donna’s side.
    “You won’t win, you know,” Donna said with more conviction than she felt. “The judge will hear my side of the story. He won’t let you take my children away from me.”
    Victor looked from Donna to Mel with undisguised hatred. When he looked back at Donna, any concern his face had once held had vanished. His voice had lost any trace of Southern gentility, was unabashedly Northern and cold like a biting Chicago wind. “I promise you,” he said, spitting the words into the air between them, “that even if you win, you’ll lose.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Donna asked, but his back was already to her, and seconds later he was gone from the courtroom.

TWO
    S he had let the phone ring three times before it became obvious that no one else in the office was going to answer it. “McFaddon Advertising,” she said clearly, picking it up. “Donna Edmunds speaking. Just a minute please. I’ll see if he’s here.” She leaned across her desk to the one directly beside hers. “For you, Scott,” she said, placing the caller on hold. “Are you here?”
    “Male or female?”
    “Definitely female,” she said, smiling.
    “Sound sexy?”
    “Definitely sexy.”
    “Then I’m definitely here.” He pressed the correct button on his desk phone and Donna replaced her receiver as Scott Raxlen uttered his first breathy hello. “Oh, yes, of course, Mrs. Camping. Could you hold on just one minute please,” he said, quickly pressing another button and turning angrily in Donna’s direction. “Thanks a lot. You didn’t tell me it was a client!”
    “You didn’t ask.”
    “Nice person! You know I have a headache.”
    “A hangover.”
    He smiled. “Hell of a party,” he said, turning back to his desk and resuming his conversation with Mrs. Delores Camping.
    “How late did you stay?” Irv Warrack asked, coming up behind Donna. “What’s that you’re working on, anyway?”
    “I left before you did,” she reminded him, showing him a sketch she was preparing for a design layout. “For the Petersen account.”
    “That’s good. McFaddon’s going to like that.” He waved a mock cigar between his fingers. “You got a great future here, kid.” She grimaced. “You’re not happy?” he asked, obviously surprised.
    Donna put down the pen she’d been sketching with. “I’m happy enough, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not sure this is really what I want to do with the rest of my life—” She looked into the kind eyes of her co-worker. “Guess I’m going through a sort of—transitional phase at the moment. Sound pompous?”
    He smiled. “Just a bit. Honey,” Irv Warrack continued, conspiratorially leaning against her desk, “anyone who can write copy like ‘The Mayflower Condominiums—An Original Concept—For Original Americans’ has found what she should be doing for the rest of her life.