Page 131 of An Indecent Longing

“Still no date last night, huh?”

Dorrie shook her head, biting her lip to hide her own smile as Trish set the box in the center of her desk.

“Well, open it. Let’s see what he sent today.”

She didn’t need any more encouragement. Tearing the paper away revealed a box of bandages, obviously for children, bright yellow and covered with smiley faces.

She actually had to blink away tears.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Whoever he is, he’s got game.”

Dorrie had the almost uncontrollable urge to give credit to both men while hoping it wasn’t just Ben. Then she shook her head and shooed Trish out of her office on the pretense of having work to do.

Instead, she picked up her phone.

They sent me flowers. And gave me lollipops. And smiley face bandages.

Seconds later, she got a reply.

Aw. That’s sweet. But I’d make them suffer a little longer.

I’m not going to make them suffer. I’m moving on.

Uh-huh. Right. You do that.

Now you’re just being mean.

Sweetie, you know I love you. But you have it bad for those guys. So make sure they feel your wrath then forgive them.

I don’t know if I can.

And that was the real problem. As much as Ian deserved to hate her father for what he’d done, Dorrie loved her dad. And so did her sister and the smartest woman she knew.

Talk to you later. Need to call my mom.

Okay. Send my love.

Dorrie sat there for a minute with her phone in her hand, staring at Risa’s last text.

Risa’s mom had been a nightmare. Mentally unstable and verbally abusive on her worst days. On her best…the kind of mom every girl dreamed about. The kind who baked cookies and made doll clothing. Until the day she’d committed suicide when Risa had been eight. She’d downed twenty bennies with a bottle of gin. The only good thing was she hadn’t been able to make Risa drink the soda she’d dissolved the other ten bennies into.

Somehow Risa’s mom had discovered that her husband had been having an affair for the past six years and had another daughter. Luckily Risa’s grandfather had known about his daughter’s mental issues and hadn’t killed his son-in-law in retaliation.

Jesus, no wonder they were all fucked up.

Her mom picked up on the second ring. “Hello, sweetheart. How are you? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Hmm, since you’re calling in the middle of the day, I know that’s not true. So what’s up?”

In her mind, she saw her mom as she always did, her chin-length, sable brown hair perfectly cut, no strand out of place, her gray eyes a perfect match for Dorrie’s. They resembled each other to such a degree that when Dorrie had been a teenager, people had mistaken them for sisters. It helped that her mom had been only twenty when Dorrie had been born.

It would’ve been a horrific scandal in Philadelphia society if Elisabeth Haverstick, daughter of Dr. Anders Haverstick, chair of internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, had been known to be carrying the baby of a Russian crime family member.

“Does Granddad still hate him?”

Her mom fell silent for several long seconds. Dorrie knew the pause wasn’t because her mom hadn’t understood her question but because she was thinking about her answer. Her mom had learned at an early age to never answer in haste. You’d always reveal something you didn’t want to.

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