Page 8 of Mess With Me

For the first time, I square my gaze on the woman, noticing how she’s avoiding her last name.

But when I do, my breath falls away. Fuck. She’s got an easy smile—bright and cheery, though there’s a twist of something sassy in there, too. Or maybe that’s the twinkle in her bright blue eyes. But she’s hiding something. It’s not just the nerves she’s been showing, either. There’s something under that confident, dressed-up exterior. And I’m suddenly desperate to know what it is. Her plump, pillow-soft-looking lips curl up slightly, and I realize I haven’t even responded with my name.

All I manage is a grunt.

Fucking hell.

“My brother’s a big talker,” Jude jokes.

I fold my arms, ignoring Jude. It’s not hard to do. Plus…my ears have perked up. There’s something in the air, some new sound. I try to focus on it.

“I find it hard to believe you were watching them set up the dance floor,” Sasha says, distracting me.

The question surprises me. “Why?”

The single-word answer comes off as rude. I usually don’t care about my tone, but now I just feel like more of an ass.

But Sasha’s unbothered. “You don’t look like you dance.”

There’s that fucking twinkle again.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

“Not even when you’ve had a few too many?” Her nose has a tiny little crook in the middle. Maybe she fell off the swing as a kid or something.

“I never have too many.”

“That’s true,” Jude says, watching us like we’re a game of goddamned tennis.

I don’t know why I was worried about her. She seems perfectly capable of looking after herself.

“Hey, we were just talking about how you helped us when we were in Switzerland,” Nora says to me.

I raise a brow. “Did you find something new?”

Jude and Nora were in Switzerland last winter, following the story that got them together—and had Nora winning a documentary contest in London. They were investigating a century-old murder mystery that took place in our family’s hotel, and I happened to give them a little boost with some information I found.

“No, we haven’t had time to look any further into it since I had to focus on classes again this term,” Nora says.

Jude kisses her on the temple. “It’s not the same doing it on my own.”

“I need to know who murdered Eleanor Cleary, though!” Sasha says. “And what happened to her baby.”

The way she says baby, with those doe eyes, makes something weird tick inside me. Like she cares deeply about a baby who probably got lost in the system a hundred years ago.

But I don’t have time to unpack that, because that sound I swore I heard grows louder now, and recognition kicks in.

“Fuck me. Everyone into the trees,” I bark at the group.

Three sets of eyes go wide.

“Why?” Sasha asks. But she’s not testing me. Real alarm skitters across her features.

I point up just as the chopper rises above the trees in the distance.

The alarm I feel is real, but it’s not the stark adrenaline I’d feel if I knew there was real danger. I can see someone leaning out the side of the bird holding what looks to be a telephoto lens.

Sasha utters words I’m surprised to hear come out of a mouth so proper and pretty. She lifts her arm up not to see into the sky, but to shield herself from view.

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