One night of passion had cost her in a big way.
Aurora thought about it all now. She had tried to resist him, but with Jason’s pretty face—soft features, topped off with those light green contacts—honey, he was just too fine to resist.
Aurora squirmed a little now, thinking of his talents between the sheets. He was one who seemed to really get off on oral sex and would often treat her to a little before asking for reciprocation. And then the fun would begin. As big as she was, he easily handled the job, flipping her here and there and over and yarn. “Wow,” she whispered, thinking aloud.
“What?” Samantha asked again.
“Oh, nothing,” she lied.
“You really need to get Jason off your mind girl. He’s gone. It’s over,” Samantha said, letting her own bitterness show.
“Sweetie what’s wrong?” Aurora asked, sensing her sister’s need to talk. However, instead of words, Samantha burst into tears. Aurora rushed over to her quickly putting her arm around her shoulder.
“They cut my position from the orchestra. I’m gonna lose the house,” she cried.
Aurora stood up straight. “What? Where is your savings?”
“What savings. Douglas left me with so much debt.” Samantha sniffed—snorted actually. “I had to use my savings to pay it all off ... and still I owe so much money,” she cried. Her nose was reddening under her smooth brown skin tone.
“Why in the hell did you do that? Why did you pay off Douglas’s bills?” Aurora asked, choking out the words. “I wouldn’t have paid shit. I would have sent his lover’s family an invoice. I mean come on! Half those bills he racked up cheating on you!”
“Aurora stop,” Samantha pleaded, sliding from her chair and moving back from the table as if distancing herself from the letter. “There’s more.”
“More?”
“Douglas and that ... that woman had a child.”
That was too much. Aurora threw up her hands in disgust. This was one too many subplots to this girl’s sad tale of despair. Wow, Aurora thought. If only she could rewrite her sister’s life, how different this would come out for her.
“You’re not gonna lose your house I promise you. Once my book gets picked up—”
“Stop, Aurora. This is a real problem here,” Samantha snapped, shutting her down with the slice of her hand. “Now stop it. Sure, if you and Jason were together and you could like ...” Samantha paused as if formulating a plan. “You could borrow some money from him for me, then sure. But all this talk about you writing a book, well I don’t want to hear it!”
Aurora was fit to be tied, but something inside kept her from going off. She loved Samantha—maybe that was it. “You’re not gonna lose your house.” Aurora grabbed her cup of coffee and stormed into the library, slamming the door behind her. She had work to do.
Aurora thought back to when it all started. It took a while to realize Jason had stolen the manuscript as Aurora had gotten busy with all else going on—Douglas’s funeral and all that other nonsense. Needless to say, when her former best friend, Jason’s then agent and mistress, Stacy, called to tell her about Jason breaking their contract and jumping ship to hook up with another agent, Aurora was a little taken back. “And I care about this why?”
That’s when Stacy mentioned Jason’s new secret manuscript.
“Jason doesn’t have a new manuscript,” Aurora had divulged to Stacy, who sighed loudly. “I know this because he was in my bed trying to write one—unsuccessfully I might add. I tried to tell you idiots he didn’t write the first one but oooh well. Soon he gave up and made love to me,” she said, digging it in that Jason had come back to her.
“Aurora don’t be hating,” she had said then, attempting slang, which was not her strong suit, being of Minnesota stock.
“I’m telling you, Jason doesn’t have a new manuscript. Jason didn’t have an old manuscript. So unless he took a class, or stole another one, Jason didn’t write anything,” Aurora countered, listening to only silence as Stacy’s response to her comments.
Aurora hadn’t thought to make a contract with Jason over the first book and felt like a fool trusting him to be fair with the advance and royalty installments—the only one who got anything out of that deal besides Jason was Stacy.
“Stacy ...” Aurora called out. She remembered that feeling in her chest—it was just like the one she had now, thinking about Douglas and all he was putting her sister through—even from the grave. “Stacy, Jason doesn’t have a manuscript? Right!”
“And it wasn’t even my best work,” Aurora scowled now thinking about the manuscript and that conversation with Stacy. “And the fool got a three book deal out of it.” Suddenly thinking about Stacy, she started chuckling. “Ohhh Stacy was so pissed. She missed out on a lot of money. Ha! I keep forgetting I wasn’t the only woman scorned in that deal. Wonder who Stacy is holding up.”
Holding a grudge was one of Stacy’s biggest character flaws, Aurora remembered. She’d not heard from Stacy since all that went down. “And good riddance I say,” she mumbled, typing the finishing touches on her manuscript. It was the story of a woman who had found an old love but her new lover would not let her go. So she decided to murder the new lover in order to free herself of the spell he had on her. “Dumb sort of, but kinda cool in a way,” she thought aloud. She used Jason as the new lover who was in the way of her character finding her way back to her first love. “And now to kill him,” she laughed wickedly sitting at her computer and getting down to the dirty business. “Ooooh honey and this is gonna hurt you way more than it’s gonna hurt me!” she cackled wickedly.
Urban Books, LLC
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Blood Relations Copyright © 2009 Michelle McGriff
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-6016-2656-1
First Mass Market Printing May 2012
First Trade Printing December 2009
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
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