“I’ve just been busy, Dad. I don’t get home till late evening and by the time I get here, I’m beat. I always plan to call you but then I fall asleep before I get a chance.”
“That’s no excuse. You have a cell phone. You can call me during the daytime. And I’m sure Roman wouldn’t kill you if you called me from the office.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll do that.” She paused then before she could change her mind she blurted out, “Dad, why don’t we call this whole thing off? It’s not working out for me. I’ve got bills piling up and I don’t get paid for another two weeks.”
“What kinds of bills? I pay for your apartment and that includes your utilities. All you have to worry about is your food.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “and my credit card bills.”
“I paid off all your credit card bills two months ago. Even though you maxed them all out at the same time I made sure all your balances were paid up. That’s almost thirty thousand dollars. Have you maxed them out again in such a short time?”
Serena bit her lip. “I guess I have,” she said, her voice soft and defeated. Then she added quickly, “But it’s just because it was graduation time and I had to do a lot of shopping. I had to go to the graduation ball and the ceremony looking good, didn’t I?”
“I guess so,” her father said, “but you didn’t have to shop at Prada for all your stuff.”
“But I didn’t,” she began to protest then stopped. She decided to change her tone. “Daddy, seeing that things are so tight for me, do you think I can start getting my allowance again? I need to pay off some of these bills.”
“Serena,” he began in the tone he used when scolding, “you know our agreement. No allowance for six months. You have to learn to live on a budget and manage on your salary. How do you expect to run this business when I’m gone if you can’t even run your own life? This pampering has got to stop. Spoiling you with hefty allowances and clearing off your credit card balance from shopping sprees is no way to prepare you for the world.” He sighed heavily. “I know it’s hard on you and I hate doing this but it’s for your own good.”
“So you’re not going to give me my allowance back?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, will you at least pay part of the credit card bills?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“This is so not fair,” Serena said bitterly. “You’re my dad. Why are you treating me like this?”
“You’re no longer a child, Serena. You need to start accepting responsibility and taking charge of your own life.”
“But all I asked for was-“
“That’s enough. I’m already helping you by paying for the apartment. Your monthly salary is all you have to work with so start working on a budget.”
Serena slammed the phone down and slumped back in the couch in a huff. She’d never been rude to her father before but this situation called for it. She sat with her arms folded tightly across her chest, teeth biting into her bottom lip. What did she know about budgets? Where would she even start? Her father was putting her through hell. She would never forgive him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Serena bit her lower lip and frowned as she stared down at the framed portrait. She lifted her index finger to her lips and began to nibble absently at the nail then, realizing what she was doing, she dropped her hand guiltily and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans. When was she going to get rid of that awful childhood habit? Whenever she was nervous or deep in thought she always reverted to that one habit she found so hard to break. She was twenty-one, for goodness sake. Time to put down such childish behavior.
She sighed and walked away from the bed then went to stare out the bedroom window of the apartment. It was a hell of a thing, being broke. For the first time in her life she knew what it was like to want something badly and not have the money to get it. She’d seen an exquisite gold watch at Diamante’s and had wanted it for her grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday but with a little over two hundred dollars available on her credit card how could she? And there was that small matter of her personal expenses. The little that was left on the card would have to serve her till pay day. With gasoline prices skyrocketing she had no idea how she would make the money serve that long.
The long and short of it was she had no money to buy Grandma Sylvie a birthday present. And so she’d turned to her long-time hobby. Instead of buying a gift she’d dug through a box of old photos and found one of her grandmother when she was ten years younger, laughing and happy with her husband of over forty years. Serena’s grandfather, still handsome in his senior years, was holding her in a tender embrace and he was smiling down at her with a love that was undeniable.
Serena stared at that photo for a long time. She knew the grief Grandma Sylvie had suffered when Grandpa Harris died of pneumonia at the age of sixty-seven. She’d married her childhood sweetheart and had never returned the interest of any other man. She missed him immensely, and she missed the love they shared. Serena wanted to recapture that love for her grandma, even if only on paper. And so she began to draw.
It took most of her Saturday morning but she didn’t mind. Serena sketched the photo, creating an eighteen by twenty-four inch replica in charcoal, and then she pulled out the elegant gilt-edged picture frame she’d found at the discount store. Gently, she placed the picture inside and as it lay on the bed in its frame she ran loving fingers over the faces of her grandparents. Then she went to the closet to get wrapping paper and a bow.
After she’d wrapped the gift she propped it against the side of her mahogany chest of drawers then headed out to the kitchen to tackle the second half of her project. Today she was going to bake a cake. No matter that she’d never baked a thing in her life, she was going to do this for her beloved grandmother and nothing was going to stop her. Now that she’d created one project with her own hands she was eager to do more. She’d downloaded the recipe from the internet and it looked as easy as ever.