Another Woman's Man by Shelly Ellis Page B

old-fashioned guy.”
    â€œUh, th-thanks.” She climbed inside, pretending not to feel the fluttering in her stomach as she brushed his arm. He shut the car door behind her.
    â€œDrive carefully,” he said through the glass. “And thank you, Dawn.”
    She nodded and pulled off.
    The butterflies wouldn’t be ignored. They were fluttering like crazy now, trying to beat their way out of her stomach.

Chapter 9
    â€œC ome on!” Cynthia yelled before blaring her car horn again. “We’re going to be late!” she shouted out the lowered tinted car window.
    She watched as her sister Dawn ran down the sidewalk toward her double-parked Lexus SUV.
    â€œOw, damn it!” Dawn shouted as the heel of her calfskin boot got caught in a crack in the cement.
    Dawn’s purse dangled from her forearm, dragging near the ground. She was still shoving her other arm into her wool coat as Cynthia beeped her horn again. Dawn swung open the passenger-side door and climbed inside.
    â€œI’m coming! I’m coming! Jesus!” Dawn yelled as she landed on the leather seat and slammed the door closed behind her. “If I knew you were going to be like this, I would have driven to the cake-tasting appointment myself!”
    â€œUh-huh.” Cynthia rolled her eyes, flipped on her turn signal, and pulled into traffic. She glanced at the speedometer and wondered how far she could go over the speed limit without getting a ticket. “That would mean you’d actually have to get involved in Mama’s wedding planning and figure out where the hell the bakery is.”
    â€œWow!” Dawn buckled her seat belt and eyed her sister. “So it’s like that, huh, Miss Gibbons?”
    â€œ Yes, it’s like that!”
    â€œCindy, what the hell crawled up your ass and died? What’s with the attitude?”
    Oh, where to start, Cynthia thought flippantly as she drove.
    How about the fact that somehow all the planning for their mother’s wedding had fallen squarely into her lap? Cynthia had suggested that their mother get a little more involved (hell, Cynthia had even found the cake baker and set up the appointment for today herself) or maybe even hire a wedding planner for the shindig, but Yolanda had shot down that idea. She said she sensed that something was going on with Reggie and he seemed to be getting more and more distant and ambivalent about their nuptials. Her mother worried that he was starting to get cold feet. Yolanda thought it would be better to concentrate her efforts on making sure her husband-to-be was taken care of and happy rather than deal with coordinating with a wedding planner to iron out the details.
    â€œI’m sure whatever you organize will be wonderful, sweetheart,” Yolanda had said over the phone.
    Cynthia had been tempted to remind her mother that she had a full-time job and it wasn’t her wedding, but out of respect, she bit her tongue.
    Another reason for Cynthia’s burgeoning bad mood: She was having little to no luck on the romantic front lately. Her own finances were starting to get a bit shaky now that her daughter, Clarissa, had started college and seemed to require an endless stream of money for books, architecture class supplies, sorority pledge events, and so on. Cynthia needed a man of means like yesterday, but the only candidates she had so far either had way too little cash or would require too much time and effort that she just didn’t have right now.
    But she couldn’t reveal any of these worries to her sisters. No, all of them were too wrapped up in their own lives: Lauren with her restaurant and new family, Stephanie with her new man and her pregnancy, and now Dawn with her long-lost father.
    No, none of them had time for little ol’ Cindy!
    â€œI told you that we needed to be at the bakery by four, and for some reason you can’t understand why I have an attitude,” Cynthia snapped at Dawn.