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"Charity!"

"Keep your voice down," she ordered.

"I'm nobody's charity," I said.

"All right. Let's not make a federal case over it. I had to tell her something," my mother said.

Still, I couldn't help but fume. She avoided my eyes. "Autumn, please show Rain some coats and a raincoat," my mother said. "She'll need a short leather jacket, too."

"As you wish, Mrs. Randolph. Rain, would you step over here?" Autumn said.

"I'm no charity case," I emphasized. My mother directed her attention to a pair of slacks and pretended not to hear.

After a coat, jacket and a raincoat were chosen for me, I was taken to the shoe department. My mother bought me boots, flats and a pair of high heels to go with my formal outfit.

"How am I going to get all this home?" I asked her.

"It will all be packed for you in luggage I'll buy and placed in the limousine. What point is there in your taking it back to... wherever and then having to pack it again?" she asked.

I had intended to show it all to Mama, but neither she nor I had any conception of how much my mother was going to buy for me.

"I can't send you to my mother's house without a decent wardrobe," she continued. "I'd only hear about it."

"So then, you a

lready told her about me?"

"Sort of," she said.

"Sort of? What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means... sort of. Why do you have to ask so many questions?" She stared for a moment and then relaxed her shoulders. "All right. My mother's a problem. She can be a terrible pain in the ass, and my sister doesn't help the situation much," she muttered.

"Did you tell her I was going to live with your mother?"

"I just told her I found someone to stay with Mom. She knows we had to do something and she doesn't want to live with her."

"Why not? It's her own mother, isn't it?"

"When you meet Victoria, you'll understand," she said, frowning.

"Don't you like her?"

"Boy, you do ask lots of personal questions, don't you?"

I stared, barely blinking. I wanted to say why shouldn't I? It's my family too, isn't it? I think she heard my thoughts.

"Look, my sister and I don't exactly see eye to eye about things. We're ... different. We have different needs. Victoria is content being single, being ...Victoria. She spent a lot of time working with my father, and she was very good at what she did and valuable to him, managing his accounts and overseeing the budgets on his projects. He was a developer. He appreciated her, but she always thought he favored me over her."

"Did he?"

She looked like she wasn't going to answer and then she smiled.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. He was a real ladies' man and he wanted women to look and act like women. Victoria can come off hard, unfeminine. She's more comfortable with a balance sheet than she is with a bed sheet."

She paused and looked around.

"What else? What else?" she muttered. "Oh, let's just take a break. I need a cappuccino. Come on," she commanded and started for the elevator. "I'll call you about all this in a little while, Autumn," she sang as we walked. "Just get it all ready for packing."