Sugar & Spice

Chapter 20

A/N: Dedicated to Cx_corina ♥

Andrea was not happy. After Quinn left, she was waiting on the stairs until Crissy turned around. She crossed her arms, one sharp hip jutted out, shoulders tilted back. Crissy knew that look. She grew up watching Andrea perfect it. That look meant murder.

"You never said you were seeing anyone," Andrea said. The smoothness of her tone from only a few minutes ago was gone now, replaced with acidic accusation.

"I didn't think it was really that important," Crissy replied. "You have enough to juggle with the wedding. Mom has her clients."

"That won't fly with Mother. You know that. She's going to be furious when she finds out."

Crissy spread her hands. "She's going to be furious with me no matter what."

Andrea closed the space between them in two long strides, heels click-clacking on the tile floor like bullets sliding into the chamber of a gun.

"Mother won't approve. At all. I can tell you that right now."

"She approved of my ex-fiance and look how that turned out. Complete disaster."

"Oh, don't start with that. You threw that down the tubes because you're too sensitive."

Crissy clamped her mouth shut as anger burned in her stomach. Hot words flooded to the tip of her tongue but she didn't trust herself to say what she meant and not cause more harm than good.

"You belong at the firm, with Mother and me," Andrea hissed. "If you ally yourself with someone like that, you'll be stuck in this backwater for the rest of your life. You'll always be poor and you simply can't do that to Mother. You've already been a burden enough. You can do so much better than him, Cristina."

At the attack on Quinn, Crissy's self-control vanished.

"No," she said.

Andrea blinked and jerked back, eyebrows raised. "Excuse me?"

"His name is Quinn. And he is one of the best damn things to ever happen in my life. He makes me happy. And don't you dare say one more word about him being anything less than the incredible, thoughtful, kind person that he is."

Andrea sputtered, shocked. "Did you see the way he spoke to me?"

"I saw you insulting him and..."

"I most certainly was not insulting him," Andrea cut in. "And that just goes to show how bad of an influence this place has been on you. I am nothing but politeness. You just never appreciate it."

"You sound exactly like Mom when you talk like that," Crissy fired back before she could stop herself. "Like a little clone. Because you can't think for yourself."

The slap came so fast and so sharp, Crissy didn't even see it coming. She should have known, the way she was standing up to Andrea and fighting back, that Andrea would never simply sit there and take it. That had never been her way.

"You have only a few months to clean up your attitude," Andrea hissed, jabbing her finger in Crissy's face. "Because I will have no problem cutting you out of my wedding if you keep acting like this. Ungrateful and selfish. And if you force my hand, if you make me take my own sister out of my wedding, you might as well just stab Mother in the back now. Her heart will be broken because you were the one to take away a memory every mother should have at her daughter's wedding."

She spun, stalked up the stairs and slammed the door to Crissy's room. Crissy stood there, feeling more than a little dazed and dizzy from arguing with her sister's twisted logic. And her cheek felt like it was on fire from where Andrea had slapped her.