Page 31 of Deadly Little Scandals
I wasn’t sure whether the pained look on Nick’s face was the result of Boone’s use of the wordfedoraas a verb or the conversation he, Campbell, and I had been having before we’d been interrupted.
“I’m sorry to do this,” I told him. “But I have to go—just for a few minutes.”
On the other side of the room, words were being exchanged between Victor Gutierrez and the man whose company he’d attempted to topple.If it was personal, if he targeted the Ames family because of Ana…
“I’ll be back soon,” I told Nick. “Think you can stomach a dance then?”
Campbell responded before Nick could. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered. I wasn’t sure if she’d clued in to what I’d noticed, or if this was just another attempt to get under Nick’s skin.
“No,” I said. Whatever Campbell’s intention was here, I’d never told her the exact words her grandfather had used when he indicated to me that he’dhandledAna. Cam might have had complicated relationships with her parents, but she loved the old man.
I needed to talk to him alone.
“Will you be okay?” I asked Nick, because he still hadn’t replied to anything I’d said, including the question about the dance.
“I’m a big boy.” Nick didn’t even have half a smile for me now. “I can take care of myself.”
Like me, he had probably been born taking care of himself. If you didn’t rely on other people, they couldn’t disappoint you. Hadn’t that been my own mantra, once upon a time?
I’ll make it up to him,I told myself as I started weaving through the crowd toward the Ames and Gutierrez patriarchs.
“You, too, would look excellent in a fedora,” I heard Boone tell Nick behind me.
“Is now a good time for a subject change?” Sadie-Grace asked, in a rare moment of social acuity. I told myself she had the situation in hand, but the last thing I heard as I stepped out of earshot was “Because I think my stepmother might be planning to steal a baby.”
et’s play a game. How deep do you think this hole is?”
“That’s not a game, Sadie-Grace.”
“Not with that attitude, it’s not.”
“Seriously?”
“Come on. Please? How deep do you think this hole is?”
“Deep enough that it’s going to be a pain in the ass to climb out—ifwe even can.”
“Well, I’ve decided I like our chances. Because I’m an optimist,andI’m pretty good at giving boosts.”
y the time I reached Davis Ames, Lillian and Victoria’s parents had been swept up in other conversations. Pushing down the urge to look back toward Nick, I wondered what Mr. Gutierrez had said to the Ames family patriarch.Idle chitchat? Not-so-friendly doublespeak? A warning?
“You have the look of a woman on a mission,” Davis told me.
I nodded toward the man I assumed to be Victor Gutierrez. “What did he want?”
“To say hello.”
That was a nonanswer if I’d ever heard one. “What else did he want?”
Davis cocked his head slightly to one side, then laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Escort an old man out for a breath of fresh air,” he said, “will you?”
The deck outside the ballroom faced the water. Down below, a hundred or more boats were docked. Farther out, the lake glistened in the twilight. I could hear the sound of water rhythmically washing over the shore.
“If I thought she would agree,” Davis told me, leaning up against the deck’s railing, “I would ask your grandmother to dance.”
That wasn’t what he’d brought me out here to say, and it certainly wasn’t what I wanted to talk to him about, but I’d been a part of the world he and Lillian inhabited long enough to know that this was how the game was played. “She said she met my grandfather at a party like this one.”
Davis nodded back toward the ballroom. “In that very room.” He ran his thumb over his forefinger, and I noticed that he still wore a wedding ring on his left hand. “There was a time that I thought one dance with your grandmother might make all the difference in the world.” He was quiet for a moment, listening to the sound of the water and the faintest traces of music from inside. “It is out of courtesy to my relationship with her that I will ask you exactly once to stay out of my dealings with Victor
