Instantly the log house was illuminated. Cassie froze at the first step. “Damn,” she muttered, her shoulders sagging as she slowly turned and faced her mother.
“You are so grounded,” Jenna said from her favorite leather chair.
Instantly, Cassie was on the offensive. “What’re you doing up?”
“Waiting for you.” Jenna unfolded herself from the chair and met her daughter’s sullen expression. Cassie, who so many people said was a carbon-copy of Jenna as a younger woman. Cassie was taller by an inch, but her high cheekbones, dark lashes and brows, and pointed chin were nearly identical to Jenna’s. “Where were you?”
“Out.” She tossed her streaked hair over her shoulder.
“I know that. You were supposed to be in bed. As a matter of fact, I remember you saying something like ‘Night, Mom’ around eleven.”
Jenna was rewarded with an exaggerated roll of Cassie’s green eyes. “So who were you with? No, forget that—I figure you were with Josh.”
Cassie didn’t offer any information, but in Jenna’s estimation, Josh Sykes was a foregone conclusion. Ever since Cassie had started dating the nineteen-year-old, she’d become secretive, sullen, and mutinous.
“So where did you go? Precisely.”
Cassie folded her arms over her chest and leaned a shoulder against the yellowed log wall. Her makeup was smeared, her hair mussed, her clothes rumpled. Jenna didn’t have to guess what her daughter had been doing, and it scared her to death. “We were just out driving around,” Cassie said.
“At three in the morning?”
“Yeah.” Cassie lifted a shoulder and yawned.
“It’s freezing outside.”
“So?”
“Look, Cassie, don’t start with the attitude. I’m not in the mood.”
“I don’t see why you care.”
“Don’t you?” Jenna was standing now, advancing on her rebellious daughter, getting her first whiff of cigarette smoke and maybe something else. “Let’s just start with I love you and I don’t want to see you mess up your life.”
“Like you did?” Cassie arched one brow cattily. “When you got pregnant with me?”
The barb hit its intended mark, but Jenna ignored it. “That was a little different. I was almost twenty-two. An adult. On my own. And we’re not talking about me. You’re the one who’s been lying and sneaking out.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“You’re sixteen, for crying out loud.” And a woman. Cassie’s figure was already enviable by Hollywood standards.
“I was just out with friends.”
“‘Driving around.’”
“Yeah.”
“Right.” Jenna wasn’t buying it for a minute. “Haven’t you heard the old axiom that ‘nothing good happens after midnight?’”
Cassie just glared at her.
“Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere now, so go on up to bed and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Sure there is. We’ll start with sneaking out and cruise right into the pitfalls of teen pregnancy and STDs. And that’s just for starters.”
“I can’t wait,” Cassie said, reminding Jenna of herself at the same age. “You just don’t like Josh.”