Royal Trouble Read Free

your own damned fault."  Rocky said with agitation.  "Listen, I love you and I'm here for you, but I can't keep doing this.  I'll help you when you decide to start helping yourself, Leigh Ann.  Until then, I'm done with this conversation." 
    Roxanne pushed against the arms of the rocker to stand, leaving it rocking behind her.  Leigh Ann looked up, way up, because her sister was pretty tall, and swallowed hard when she saw the thunderclouds in her gray eyes.  Her sister did scary very well, and even though Leigh Ann knew she was soft as a marshmallow at heart, she took heed when her Roxanne looked the way she did now. 
    "You have two days to get out of the big house, Leigh Ann.  That's all the time I can buy you to hide out this time."  Hide out .  Is that what Roxanne thought she was doing?  Hiding out from her mother?  Sticking her head in the sand, hoping her sister would bail her out this time?  It wasn't any wonder her sister thought that.  When Roxanne was in college, Leigh Ann had done that twice, but always went back to live with their mother when things cooled off.  Not this time, Leigh Ann was serious about making a change in her life. 
    She just needed a little time to think, plan and figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up.  Since she was a full-grown woman now, it was a little late for her to do that, but before now she had been denied that freedom.  She hadn't claimed that freedom from their mother like her sister had done years ago.  But the fact that her independent sister didn't believe she would succeed had those tears she had banked resurfacing again.
    "Well, shit," Rocky said again leaning over to hug her.  "I'm sorry, honey, I didn't mean to make you cry, but you have got to find your backbone, and soon.  You are entirely too old to still be living with your mama and letting her control you."
    Leigh sniffled softly.  "I don't know how to do anything, Rocky.  I'm not good with anything, and I know it's my fault.  I shouldn't have quit school." 
    The endorsements will come once you win Miss USA, you will be too busy to finish college. Hermother's famous last words.  The words that put her in the position she was now.  Trying to get a job as a low-paid secretary, when she could have been so much more.
    "Maybe your interview will work out tomorrow," Rocky mumbled into her hair.  "What's it for anyway?"
    "Legal Assistant...and I have no idea why I applied for the job, I don't have any experience."  There wasn't much else she could do.  Finding that job, one whose only requirement was answering the phone and manning the front desk of a legal office with light typing in the local newspaper had been a godsend.
    "Because you're well spoken, you can think on your feet, and you present a professional image at a front desk, that's why.  Do you know how to type?"
    "Hunt and peck," Leigh Ann admitted with another sniffle.
    "Who are you interviewing with a man or a woman?" Rocky asked.
    "Robert Mullins is the attorney's name.  It's a small firm in downtown Amarillo.  I found out where you were working from Grandma and wanted to be close to you.  That's why I came up this way." 
    Grandma Nell had heard about what happened at the other ranch with their mother, and hadn't wanted to tell her where her sister was working and living.  Leigh Ann had begged, so she had finally told her, but made her swear not to tell their mother before she gave up the information.  Grandma Nell hated their mother.
    "Okay, let's get you up to the house.  What time is your appointment tomorrow?"
    "Three o'clock," Leigh Ann replied, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket to dab at her eyes.  "I figured I'd spend the night in town after the interview."  She didn't have a dime, so that night would be spent in her car.  If she didn't get the job, her nights spent in the car would be limited too, because it would be repossessed.
    "Can you afford that?"
    "Not really, but I really don't want to