Page 15 of Deadly Little Scandals
The bouncer made a beeline for the frat boys. Sometimes, it paid to be observant. I moseyed on by the ropes and helped myself to a barstool right next to the White Glove. I still couldn’t see her face. She was leaning forward, elbows on the bar.
“Can I get you something?” someone asked her.
I recognized the voice that had asked that question a second before my eyes settled on familiar hazel ones behind the bar.
“Nick,” I said. I hadn’t expected to see him here. I told myself that was why I felt a jolt, borderline electric, as the ghost of our single shared dance solidified in my memory. At the time, he’d been a fish out of water, the boy at the country club dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans. Now he’d traded the jeans for shorts—or possibly a swimsuit. His T-shirt was threadbare and worn.
Soft,some part of me thought, imagining the feel of it beneath my touch.
The girl beside me chose that moment to let her hood fall back.Victoria Gutierrez.“Another half-dozen drinks,” she told Nick, commandeering his attention. “Same deal as before.”
“Pretty, colorful, and watered down,” Nick said, stealing a sideways glance at me. “Coming right up.”
He had the kind of voice that made everything sound a little ironic. When he turned to fill Victoria’s order, I tore my attention from the back of his head—and the back of the rest of him—and reminded myself that I’d come here to talk toher.
“You two know each other?” Victoria asked me once Nick was out of earshot.
“Something like that,” I said, refusing to allow him any more real estate in my mind. Instead, I searched Victoria’s features for some resemblance to the Ana I’d seen in pictures. Their hair was different, but they had the same eyes—same shape, same color.
“He’s cute,” Victoria commented offhandedly. “If you go for the rough-around-the-edges, angry-at-the-world type, which I suspect you do.”
I didn’t go for any type. I preferred flying solo—and Nick had reason enough to avoid girls like me.
“You asked him to water down the drinks,” I observed evenly.
“We’re not looking to get anyone drunk,” Victoria said.
“You just want them to think they are,” I inferred. “It’s amazing how people start to act drunk as soon as theythinkthey’ve had a lot of alcohol.”
“You’re a perceptive one, aren’t you?” Victoria almost but didn’t quite smile. “Enjoying yourself tonight?”
Eyes on her. No looking behind the bar, Sawyer.
“By some definitions,” I said, and then I cut to the chase. “How old are you?” If she was a senior in college, she was probably too old to be Ana’s baby, but I had to ask.
“Twenty-one.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?”
I wasn’t sure what she was expecting—maybe for me to ask for the inside track on how to prove myself worthy of the White Gloves—but I took her up on the invitation to be blunt. “Are you related to Victor Gutierrez?”
“Are you asking on your own behalf?” she said mildly. “Or on behalf of Campbell Ames?”
It took me a second to parse that response.
“I hope she knows that business is just…business,” Victoria said lightly. “Whatever my father’s intentions or grand plans, I assure you, they have nothing to do with me.”
Nick appeared then with the first three bright-colored drinks, setting the martini glasses down on the bar in front of her.
“I’ll be back for the others,” Victoria told him. She glanced at me. “And for you.”
As she retreated, I lost my excuse not to look at Nick. I let my eyes travel in his direction, but reminded myself that if he’d wanted to contact me in the past month and a half, he could have.
“Long time no see,” I said.
“Last I checked…” Nick grabbed a rag and ran it over the bar between us. “…you’re not old enough to be on this side of the ropes, Miss Taft.”
I wondered what Emily Post had to say about telling a guy to take his sarcastic use of the wordMissand shove it up his—
“Oh, yeah,” Nick continued, in a way that made me pretty damn sure he was trying to get a rise out of me, “you’re not really big on rules—or laws. Are you?”
