Page 12 of The Princess and the Fraud

“Annalise lives in California.”

Aaron drew in a slow breath. “She’s here visiting.”

If she really was visiting, no doubt the ladies at the party would’ve been talking about it. Annalise herself would’ve told me. Caroline would’ve told me. Aaron really was the world’s worst liar.

“Come on,” I said, moving to pick up my abandoned mimosa tray. “I’ll escort you back to guest services. They can help you find your group.”If you’re even a part of it.

Aaron didn’t respond. If he had the good sense God gave him, he’d listen to me and not continue to wander around. Andnotjump into another bush for… I didn’t even know why. But if anyone caught him going around creating holes in the foliage, they would not be happy.

When I turned around with my tray in hand, I found Aaron had stepped closer to me. Not close enough that my tray hit him, but almost. “Are those plastic?” he asked, fixated on the flutes.

“Yes.” An accident involving Ms. Jennings and Mrs. Conan years ago and twenty stitches each meant no more glass flutes.

Aaron didn’t look away from them. “I keep going back and forth in my head—how am I going to make everyone like me? We didn’t quite leave on a pleasant note last year, and now I’m here with the charity that’s trying to overtake them—I keep seeming to start off on the wrong foot. How am I going to change their mind? I’ve been thinking about it.”

I blinked at his rush of inner consciousness. “Uhh, okay…”

“But what always works?”

Aaron looked at me like he expected me to answer. “I don’t know.”

“Empathy.” His eyes were strangely bright; he’d made a decision. “Empathy always works.”

I saw it all happen in slow motion. Aaron brought his hand up, and almost with a blinding force, he slammed his palm into the edge of my tray. Training went out the window when the disruption was so severe, and my mimosas couldn’t survive the impact.

The entire tray flipped forward, out of my palm, and the filled flutes crashed into Aaron’s midsection. Orange juice stained into the fabric of his white shirt instantly, some even flinging up to splatter on his chin. Plastic cups clattered to the ground in an almost melodic concerto, and my tray bounced against the cobblestones before it pirouetted on its rim.

I stood, slack-jawed, in the aftermath of it all, unable to do anything but watch the tray settle flat on the ground.

Aaron reached up and coasted the back of his hand along his chin, wiping away the juice. “Shall I help you clean up?” he asked, perfectly ordinary.

I blinked, gaping at the scattered champagne flutes. “Shall youhelp me?”

“That’s what I said, yes.”

I sputtered. I actually sputtered. “You—this—ha!” Anger swallowed my shock whole, leaving no room for anything else. “This is your fault, you arrogant little—ha! You can clean it up all by your?—”

“Aaron?”

A group of four stood at the mouth of the walkway, nestled between the rosebushes. The first person I noticed was Caroline with her brows up on her forehead. The woman beside her looked equally shocked. Her blonde hair hung in perfectly curled ringlets down her chest, her light pink sundress accentuating the color perfectly. The man at her side wasn’t as familiar, but I had seen him before, though he’d been wearing a tuxedo the last time.

And the last time I’d seen her had been June, and she’d been wearing white. “Annalise?”

Her face lit up. “Lovey!”

The man—her husband, Michael Huntsly—rushed to his friend’s side, as if I’d doused Aaron in acid rather than orange juice. “Not theHefmans!” he exclaimed, and I realized he wasn’t looking at Aaron at all, but at hisshoes.

Annalise only gave him a momentary glance before turning to me, delight dancing in her eyes. “Well, I figured someone would throw a drink in Aaron’s face, but I had my bets on Mrs. Massey.”

CHAPTERTHREE

Empathy, Aaron had said. Empathy always worked.

That wasn’t what he’d meant, though.Manipulation. Manipulation always worked.

“Towels!” I could hear Ms. Jennings’s high-pitched screech before I even saw her. Annalise had dragged Aaron to the garden party to grab napkins, and the ladies flocked in. “We need towels!”

“Here, here!” That came from a server, Paige, who’d abandoned her tray of hors d’oeuvres and rushed over with the Alderton-Du Ponte teal towels in her arms.

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