Page 28 of Deadly Little Scandals
“Are you ever going to forgive me, Sawyer?”
It would have been easier if the raw emotion in my mom’s voice didn’t sound so much like everything I’d been feeling myself.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about her.I breathed in and held the breath.Think about Davis Ames. Think about the fact that he’s the one throwing the fund-raiser Nick needs an escort to. Think about the fact that the old man “handled” the situation with Ana.
Think about the fact that he may have been the last person who saw her alive.
I let out a breath and walked past my mom toward the house. I answered her question but didn’t turn around. “I don’t know.”
s she gone?”
“I think so. For now.”
“You know how I said I could feel my shoulder? Good news: I think I can almost, maybe, kind of, sort of feel a tiny bit of my arm.”
rcadia was a lakeside resort. From what I’d gathered, it had been built in the fifties. Stepping through the grand entrance into the lobby felt like stepping back in time. Granted, part of that was probably what we were wearing. Aunt Olivia might not have been a fan of the lake—or the activities Lily and I had partaken of on our last trip up here—but she and Lillian were both big fans of theme parties. Tonight’s fund-raiser was Big Band themed, and they’d insisted we go vintage.
Full-on, straight from the forties, stop-and-starevintage.
My dress was red, with buttons at the waist and capped sleeves. Lily’s was a floral print. Both had skirts that flared and modest, fitted tops. Our hair was curled. We were given bright lipstick. The only concession, other than knee-length dresses, that Aunt Olivia had made to the fact that this was a lake party was that neither one of us was wearing heels.
Sandals, apparently, fully qualified as lake formal.
I had the general sense that the tuxedo Nick was wearing did not. He stood near a column at the side of the lobby, his back toward the door. Even from behind, I recognized him in a heartbeat: his stance, the way he had his hands shoved into his pockets, the lines of his body, only partially masked by the tuxedo jacket.
Everything about him screamed that he’d rather take that jacket off.
Tamping down on that thought, I excused myself from the family as they made their way to the ballroom and started toward him.
Lily followed. “You didn’t tell me you had a date tonight.” That might have come off as an admonition, if she hadn’t sounded so intrigued.
“It’s not a date,” I told her as Nick shifted to lean against the column. “More of an arrangement.”
Nick turned toward us moments before we reached him, like he’d known exactly where I was from the moment I walked in the door. He let his eyes roam over my dress, then glanced briefly at Lily’s.
“Nice outfits.” He balled his hands into fists inside his pockets. “I’m overdressed.”
The fact that I’d noticed what his hands were doing inside his pockets probably meant that I was watching him a little too closely.
Too close for comfort.
“A pair of khakis would have been just fine,” Lily told him delicately. “Things aren’t as formal up here. You could try taking off the jacket?”
Yes, please.I quashed that reaction and shifted to problem-solving mode. “Forget the jacket. What clothes do you have in your car?”
Nick ended up in a pair of jeans and his white undershirt—shirt tucked in, hair teased back. Under Lily’s instruction, I did the teasing.
“A little more,” she told me.
Nick’s neck was bent, his head bowed. As I brought my hand back up, he angled his eyes toward mine. I tried to view this situation objectively. Objectively, he had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a guy. Objectively, his expression was annoyed, borderline pained.
Objectively, that expression changed when I touched his hair.
“Use both hands,” Lily said, and I did, pushing my fingers along his scalp, separating locks of hair until Lily decreed that we’d reached ideal levels of mussed.
Nick didn’t look away from me once, and if I’d let myself, I could have imagined exactly what it would feel like to curl my fingers in his hair, tighten my grip, pull his head back.
Bring my lips to his.
