Page 33 of Deadly Little Scandals
I wouldn’t know.Before I could dismiss the alien sense of disappointment that accompanied that thought or tell Campbell that Nick and I weren’treallydating and she could stop marking her territory, a third party entered our conversation.
“Did someone mentionfun?” Victoria said, sliding in between us.
Campbell eyed her. I wondered if she was thinking about Ana, but what came out of her mouth was: “Done flirting with my brother?”
Victoria was undaunted by the question. “It was just one dance,” she said. “And Lily doesn’t own him.”
Sometimes,I thought,a dance is more than a dance.
“And I suppose your interest in Walker hasnothingto do with whatever ax your family has to grind against mine?” Campbell asked Victoria sweetly.
“No more than my interest in you,” Victoria replied. She tilted her chin up slightly. “For the record, I didn’t come over here to talk about Walker.” She brought her hand to her lapel, and I realized that she was wearing a pin.Silver. A snake wrapped around a rose.
“Kind of hard to top our last rendezvous,” I commented dryly.
Campbell batted her eyelashes. “Discovering a twenty-year-old corpse really does have a certain flair.”
“Twenty-five,” Victoria corrected.
“What?” I said.
“My father’s been keeping tabs on the investigation,” Victoria told us casually. “The body has been dated back twenty-fiveyears. And, yes, the authorities do suspect foul play.”
Not twenty years.I tried to wrap my mind around that.Twenty-five.
Victoria let her hand go to the pin on her lapel again. “You two and Sadie-Grace might want to check out the valet stand,” she advised us. “And don’t tell Lily.”
e should call the boys.” Liv addressed that statement to Julia, but Charlotte was the one whose gut twisted in response.
The boys.Liv knew how Charlotte felt about Sterling Ames.Of course she knows. And of course she wants to call the boys.Hadn’t Charlotte told her that she wanted more? She could taste the words on the tip of her tongue, even as her stomach flip-flopped at the thought of Julia’s twin brother. The golden boy of their senior class.Just this once, I want to break all the rules.
“And what are we going to tell the boys?” Julia asked dryly. “That we’re going on a drunken adventure?”
“I’mdrunk,” Liv corrected. “You’re not, because you’re driving. And Charlotte’s not—yet—because I want her sober whenshecalls the boys.”
Boys, plural.Charlotte could manage a call to J.D. He and Liv had been together since the beginning of the summer. Sterling Ames, however, was another story.
“I’ll call my brother,” Julia volunteered suddenly. “He has a new friend.Thomas. He worked for Daddy this summer. He’s a little rough around the edges.”
Liv cackled. “Just the way you like them, Jules.”
wenty-five years,” I told Campbell. “Not twenty. Whoever the Lady of the Lake is, she died five years before Ana disappeared.”
“Is this the part where you tell me I told you so?” Campbell asked.
“No,” I said. I’d wondered—and suspected—too.
“Good,” Campbell replied. “In other news, I vote we get Sadie-Graceafterwe visit the valet stand, because the good Lord knows the girl’s sweeter than she is discreet. Now, do you want to distract the valet, or should I?”
Campbell could go from zero to full-on Southern belle in half a heartbeat. Luckily for us, she could also go from Southern belle to seductress and back again in a heartbeat and a half. The poor valet was going to get whiplash.
But at least she had his attention.
I ducked behind the valet stand, telling myself that I was doing this for Campbell—because I owed her one, and she needed the White Gloves.
She neededsomething.I knew what that was like.
The valet stand had a cabinet built into the back. It was, not surprisingly, locked. I grabbed a pin from my hair and went to work.
