Free Deceiving The Groom by Lisa Shadow Page A

dialed the number. Again, it rang twice and went straight to voicemail. She couldn’t deny it anymore.
    Her calls were being screened. 
    Claire threw the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall. Damn that cold hearted bitch who called herself an aunt.
    She stormed across her room to the hallway of the B&B and pounded on door of her cousin’s room. It flew open.
    Geoff stood in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
    “Give me your phone.”
    “Why?” He glared at her through slitted eyes.
    “Just give it to me, Geoff.”
    Geoff strolled to his side table and tossed her his cell phone. “Manners wouldn’t go astray.”
    Claire’s expression silenced him and he sat back in the large leather recliner in the corner of his room. Claire dialed the numbers, pacing the room.
    “Hello?” the high voice answered.
    “Aunt Justine.”  
    Geoff sat up straight, shaking his head.
    “Claire… Whatever are you doing calling from Geoffrey’s phone?”
    “I seem to be having problems with my cell phone. I couldn’t get through.” Claire threw Geoff a pointed look.
    “That’s unfortunate.”
    “I’d like to talk to Penny.”
    “I’m sorry, but Penny is busy. She won’t be able to speak tonight.”
    Claire spoke, breath held in her chest. “That’s what you said last week, and the week before. Tell me, when will she be free?”
    The silence that followed said more than her next words. “Frankly dear, I don’t like your tone.”
    Claire pressed her fist to her temple as if she could somehow stop the desperation from spewing from her mind. “She’s my sister. You can’t stop us from speaking.”
    “I am her guardian. I can do whatever I believe is in the child’s best interests. Not excluding keeping her away from questionable influences!” Aunt Justine’s voice took on the cruel edge that used to plunge Claire into hopeless submission.
    She shut her eyes for a moment, the familiar shame coming back to scar her again. She was not that girl anymore. “Questionable influences? Really, after all this time it all comes back to one indiscretion? Now I’m the rotten fruit?”
    “One indiscretion? Well, that’s not what the papers called it. Scandal, outrage, perversion. That’s what they dubbed it.”
    Claire silenced the broken sound that tried to escape her.
    “That’s what you are, Claire. You’re a perversion. I always saw it in you. I always knew you were cheap.”
    The words were a slap. A slap that snapped her back from the hole she was falling into. “I’m not cheap.”
    “What would you call it then, a teenage girl who becomes the mistress of a politician?”
    Claire’s heart rose to her throat. She couldn’t deny the accusation. It didn’t mean the implication was just. Claire drew a deep breath into her diaphragm. “I wasn’t his mistress, I was his girlfriend. He was already separated. I was eighteen and he was nice to me—he was the only person who was actually nice to me.”
    Her aunt’s humorless laugh dripped with venom. “Oh yes, I remember how nice he was to you, the papers listed it all. Jewelry, fancy hotels, all on the tax-payers dollar.”
    As quickly as the shame rose, up surged the remnants of her resentment. “I didn’t know that. I. Did. Not. Know.”
    Silence taunted her. Claire glanced across the room and caught her cousin watching. He held his chin with his bent index finger and thumb. The frown he wore made her wonder if he really cared, or if he just worried she was getting him in trouble by using his phone.
    Aunt Justine broke the quiet with her final barb. “I have come to the realization that these conversations are no longer healthy for Penny. I suggest you reconsider your attitude. Then and only then, will I decide if you are to be trusted with her again.”
    Panic slammed through her. “No—”
    “Goodbye, Claire.”
    The line went dead and the phone beeped menacingly in her ear. Claire’s lungs heaved. The room spun. She staggered against the wall.