The Wilder Sisters Read Online Free PDF

Indian.
    They shared a moment of profound silence. Seemingly of its own volition, her still-wet hand closed around the tall white cylinder of Paul Mitchell mousse and aimed it like a shotgun at the arrogant carpenter. One French-manicured finger fired. It struck Lily this was exactly what her mother’s ancestors should have done generations back to every smiling white face that walked into Floralee to claim the land and shame the culture out of the people. But at this moment all Lily wanted to do was obliterate the half-assed picky eater, even if it meant she had to go to work with flat hair.
    “Catch.” She threw him a towel. “From now on, Blaise, make your own damn dinner. And when you go, leave your key on the counter.”

    He sputtered and wiped at his eyes. “Come on, Lily, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”
    “There isn’t any other way to mean it,” she said. “I want you out the door in five seconds, voluntarily, or Buddy will be delighted to escort you.”
    Blaise took a step toward her. “You’re a fucking bitch.”
    The words stung, but Lily continued to point the can. “Maybe I am. But I’m armed.”
    He backed out of the bathroom and down the hallway. As soon as she heard the front door shut, Lily sat down on the toilet and cried her brown eyes out for exactly five minutes, since that was all the time she had to spare. Then she dressed in her copper size 6 Dana Buchman suit, blow-dried her long, dark hair, tugged on her dreaded pantyhose, kissed Buddy thirty-five times (once for each year of her life), filled his dish with gourmet biscuits, and ran out the door. She drove onto the 5 freeway, pasting dollar signs in the pupils of her red-rimmed eyes, and merged with the unrelenting traffic. Immediately some balding control freak in an orange Dodge Viper cut her off. She pressed the button for the windshield washer, which had worked fine yesterday, and received only a windshield scratch for her efforts. How much would that cost to fix? She sighed, lifted her car phone and punched in the code for her messages.
    Ms. Wilder, I’ve got a ten o’clock gallbladder scheduled for OR number four. Nothing special, but I’d like it if you observe …
    Wouldn’t it just figure. Dr. Help-Me-I-Can’t-Do-This-Procedure. Exactly what she needed on a Friday morning when the rest of her life had gone completely to hell. Usually her Fridays ended at eleven o’clock, and she drove out to the stables to ride for three hours. Rent- string horses weren’t the same as owning your own, but she’d made friends with a sweet little paint gelding, and the guy who ran the rentals usually saved him for her. Now, instead, she could look for- ward to freezing to death in the OR. Three months back Dr. Help- Me had some old lady split open from sternum to pubic bone, then got hung up on the phone with his attorney. The anesthesiologist hadn’t smoked the patient deep enough, and she’d sat up in the middle of the procedure. Lily’d had to break scrub—violate the sterile field in order to keep the patient’s guts from spilling out onto the floor like a hara-kiri victim’s.

    Her job was insane—surgeons pulling down a jillion dollars a year, Lily doing half their work, making a fraction of their salaries, fielding their constant innuendo. Why’s a pretty package like you still single? Are you a lesbian? Why won’t you go out with me ?
    Because I don’t date freaks , she wanted to answer. Have me arrested . But she had to grin and bear it and keep those orders coming in, even to the point of observing surgery. Lily Adrienne Wilder, aka the LAW: top gun in laparoscopic sales in Southern California. She crept along in the traffic, painting a picture of the Floralee ranch house in her mind’s eye. How good it would feel to sit on the wraparound porch in one of those falling-apart rockers, a cold drink in her hand, and stare all day at the Sangre de Cristos. Rum and Coke—now there was an autumn beverage, the rich,