Deadly Little Scandals Read online

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” Lily promised. “Just let me turn around so we can face each other. When I go left, you go right. We should be able to keep our balance if—”

  Feeling wicked, I hooked an arm around her waist and leaned hard to the left, taking us both over the side and into the lake. Lily might have swallowed a bit of water. She definitely snorted in a most unladylike manner.

  “Sawyer!” She began paddling toward the Jet Ski, which had floated several yards away when we’d gone in.

  “What?” I said, feeling more like myself than I had in hours. “The sun is high, and the water feels good. Now talk.”

  “There’s not that much to tell,” Lily warned me. “Until I saw the boxes sitting on our beds, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain the White Gloves actually existed.”

  “A suburban legend?” I quipped. Before Lily could offer a retort, I processed the rest of what she’d said. “Our invitations were inside the house when you arrived?”

  “And all of the doors were locked.”

  Now she’d piqued my interest. “What exactly does the rumor mill say about the White Gloves?”

  “That they’re a secret society. That they recruit freshmen at State, U-of, and a handful of private colleges in a three-state region. Female-only, very exclusive.”

  In the world Lily had grown up in, exclusive meant wealthy. It meant old money, power, and status, having the luxury never to talk—or even think—about money at all.

  “We should go tonight,” Lily said. “Right?” She laid her arms on the back edge of the Jet Ski and rested her chin on her wrist. “I know where The Big Bang is. We could tell Mama we’re sleeping over with Sadie-Grace. Lord knows Sadie-Grace’s daddy won’t know the difference.”

  “Who are you,” I deadpanned, “and what have you done with Lily Taft Easterling?”

  “I’ve done everything that’s expected of me, Sawyer. My whole life, I’ve dotted i’s and crossed t’s. I followed the rules. I was everything I was supposed to be, right up until I started Secrets.”

  Everyone had their own way of coping with trauma. Mine involved a lot of compartmentalizing and a healthy amount of denial. Lily had coped with Walker dumping her last summer by creating a risqué photo blog where she wrote other people’s secrets on her skin.

  “You miss it,” I commented. “Secrets on My Skin.”

  I waited for her to tell me that I was wrong, but instead, she righted herself in the water. “Walker.”

  What about him? I twisted my torso, allowing my fingertips to skim the surface of the water as I turned in the direction of her gaze. About a hundred yards away, a Jet Ski passed King’s Island and began to slow. I had no idea how Lily had recognized its driver from this distance, but I didn’t doubt her claim.

  Lily Easterling had impeccable instincts about two and only two things: proper etiquette and Walker Ames.

  “Did you tell him we were here?” I asked.

  “I haven’t talked to him all day.” Lily avoided my gaze. “But Walker and Campbell are the reason I know this place. Their house is on the point opposite King’s Island, just two coves away.”

  I didn’t have the chance to ask Lily if there was a reason she and Walker hadn’t talked, before he glided into earshot and cut the engine. He slowed his forward momentum by holding his legs out to the sides, allowing his feet to drag in the water.

  “Salutations, ladies.” Walker took off his life vest, hung it over the handlebars of his Jet Ski, and dove into the water. He emerged seconds later, right between me and Lily. Moisture beaded on his chest as he shook the water from his hair, splashing us both.

  I would never have made a move on Walker, and he only had eyes for Lily regardless, but now that I knew that he wasn’t my brother, I didn’t try quite so hard not to enjoy the view. Then, slowly but surely, my mind turned to thinking about another chest.

  Other arms.

  Nick had very nice arms.

  “As I live and breathe,” Walker quipped, drawing me back to the present. “Sawyer Taft and Lily Easterling. What are the chances of meeting the two of you here?”

  Better than the chances of my path ever crossing Nick’s again. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the night of my debutante ball. Not that I’d expected to. Not that I even really wanted to.

  “Is that your way of saying you were hoping to have this cove to yourself?” Lily asked Walker, her tone prodding.

  “Never.” Walker had inherited his father’s charm, but unlike the former senator, he was not a particularly skilled liar. My gut said that he hadn’t known we would be here. He certainly hadn’t come looking for us.

  “How’s your mama?” Lily asked quietly.

  There was a beat of silence. “She’s just fine.”

  Walker didn’t want to talk about his mama. That made two of us. Charlotte Ames was not a member of the Sawyer fan club. Given that she believed me to be the product of her husband’s adultery, I was pretty sure she’d wished me six feet under more than once.

  “Is it bad?” Lily asked Walker, her voice muted. He didn’t reply, and she pushed off the Jet Ski and glided through the water toward him. I averted my eyes as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Lily Taft Easterling was a properly bred young lady, a Southern miss to her toes. But right now, her hair was windblown and free, and Walker’s chest was wet, and I could not have been more of a third wheel if I’d tried.

  “Don’t mind me,” I said loudly. “Certainly don’t refrain from PDA on my part. I’ll just be over here minding my own business.”

  “Very considerate of you, little sis.”

  Walker’s new nickname for me hit me hard. When we’d first met, he’d been in the tail end of a downward spiral and seemed to appreciate that I was immune to his charms. I insulted him, and he enjoyed it. That was our dynamic.

  This was the first time he’d referred to me as his sister.

  I have to tell him. I did everything in my power not to look from Walker to Lily. I have to tell both of them the truth, even if Lily hates me for it.

  But I couldn’t make myself do it.

  “Don’t call me that,” I said, and then, realizing that my reaction would probably make him refer to me that way more often, I changed the subject, hard and fast. “I hear the family business is under attack.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lily said, before turning back to Walker, her arms still wrapped around his neck. “What is she talking about, Walker?”

  “It’s nothing,” Walker told her. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Just like your mama is fine?” Lily asked.

  I was starting to regret bringing it up, but I could only compartmentalize so much.

  “I don’t want to talk about the family business.” Walker bent his head forward, allowing his cheek to brush against Lily’s, before casting another sidelong glance at me. “That’s more Cam’s thing these days than mine.”

  He’d just given me a reason—and an excuse—to get out of here before I said something else I would regret.

  “Now that you mention it, Campbell and I are overdue for a little chat.” I paddled over to Walker’s Jet Ski. The lanyard with the key was still attached to the life vest he’d left on the handlebars. I unclipped the lanyard, attached it to my own vest, and threw his to him.

  “Is it me,” Walker asked Lily, “or is your delightful cousin stealing my ride?”

  “I’m not stealing it,” I corrected. “I’m taking it home. Not our lake house—yours. Two coves down, on the point across from King’s Island, right?”

  Walker shook his head. “You are a strange girl, Sawyer Taft.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as altruistic,” I countered. “This way, you and Lily get some privacy for the latest episode of Beautiful People in Semi-Functional Relationships, and I can have a word with your sister.”

  hen I made it to the Ames family’s cove, I found Campbell lying out on the front of their dock, her s
kin glistening with some combination of sunscreen and sweat. She didn’t so much as raise her head or flip onto her side as I docked the Jet Ski.

  “Not bad,” Campbell called out lazily. “For a rookie.”

  I slid off the Jet Ski and hit a nearby button, which I assumed would either raise the watercraft out of the water or cause everything around us to self-destruct.

  “If you’re going to stand there dripping wet, could you at least try to drip a little more quietly?” Campbell opened one green eye. “You’re spoiling the ambiance.”

  That was more or less the Campbell Ames version of hello.

  My version was: “Commit any felonies lately?”

  Campbell rolled from her stomach to her back and popped one knee, her right hand taking up position behind her head. “You know what I love about you, Sawyer? You’re the only person in this whole state—maybe the entire country—who can say the word felony to me and be thinking of what I’m capable of and not that unfortunate mess with dear old Daddy.”

  That “unfortunate mess” was something she’d masterminded and I’d helped with. Her father was in jail, having pled guilty to several crimes he had committed, because we’d framed him for several that he hadn’t. Campbell’s capabilities were, in a word, impressive.

  I plopped down beside her, allowing my feet to dangle off the dock. “How are you holding up?”

  Campbell had always intended for her father to go down, but I didn’t think she’d fully considered the collateral damage, the press coverage, the scandal.

  “How am I holding up?” Campbell snorted. “My family has been exiled to the lake since the story broke. Mama’s decided that day-drunk is the new tipsy, Walker blames me because he’s trying not to blame Lily, and I am starved for civilization. And you?”

  Campbell had a flair for the dramatic and a gift for holding people at arm’s length, but I could hear the vulnerability buried in her couldn’t-care-less tone.

  I gave her honesty, tit for tat. “I’m sick of keeping secrets, haven’t spoken to my mom in a month, and am getting really tired of people asking me if I’m going to college in the fall.”

  “Are you going to college in the fall?” Campbell asked innocently.

  “I don’t know,” I shot back. “Are you starting to regret what we did to your father?”

  There was a beat of silence. “I don’t believe in regrets.” Campbell stretched lazily, like a cat, and then stood. “If you want to hear someone mope about the consequences of Daddy’s arrest and the journalistic feeding frenzy that followed, I suggest you get on Walker’s calendar.”

  I studied her for a moment. “Was the attempted takeover of your grandfather’s company one of those consequences?”

  “Do I look like someone who has the inside track on the family businesses?” Campbell asked me. She didn’t—and that was the point.

  “Spoken like a girl who has a love-hate relationship with being underestimated,” I said.

  That won me a small, slow, genuine smile—and an answer. “There’s blood in the water. The sharks are circling—socially, financially, whatever. They think we’re weak. But don’t worry your pretty little face about it, Sawyer. Our grandfather is tougher than that. He can handle the sharks.”

  She’d said our.

  I swallowed. “Campbell?” I was going to regret this, but once I’d started the ball rolling down the hill, I couldn’t stop. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Whatever reaction I’d been expecting, I didn’t get it. Campbell just tossed her damp auburn hair over one shoulder. “So Daddy impregnated a different teenager, and I can stop wondering how you and I could possibly share even a quarter of our DNA.”

  “You can’t tell Walker,” I said. “He’ll tell Lily.”

  “And why,” Campbell asked me coyly, “don’t you want dear Lily to know?”

  I’d told her who my father wasn’t—not who he was and not about the pact.

  “Please.”

  Campbell let the seconds tick by. “I have to admit,” she said finally, “I am flattered that you chose to confide in me.”

  That was as close to a promise to keep my secret as I was going to get. “Side note,” I told her, now that I could. “The company that just attempted a takeover of your grandfather’s? The man who runs it has the same last name as that teenage girl your dad knocked up.”

  “Payback?” Campbell arched an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know.” It was a relief to speak openly, no pretending. “But I’d like to find out. Find her.”

  I expected Campbell to ask me why I wanted to find Ana, but instead, she assented. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose there’s nothing left to do at this point besides attempting to identify and locate my actual half-sibling and doing something about that hair.”

  “What hair?” I said. “Ouch!”

  I batted Campbell’s hand away from my face in an attempt to keep her from trying to detangle my hair a second time. “There’s nothing wrong with my hair.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.” Campbell turned her back on the water and pushed past me, striding toward the ramp that connected the dock to the shore. “And keep up.”

  If there was one thing I’d had in plentiful supply in recent months, it was makeovers. I’d been poked, prodded, plucked, waxed, exfoliated, moisturized, buffed, highlighted, and conditioned within an inch of my life. Not to mention the makeup and the clothes.

  But, as Campbell had just so pleasantly informed me, I didn’t have a choice. She knew my secret, and she wasn’t above a little blackmail. The fact that I’d known that about her and chosen her as the person to confide in deeply suggested that there was something wrong with me.

  Either that, or some self-sabotaging part of me was hoping my secret wouldn’t stay a secret for long.

  “I’d tell you to keep your voice down inside,” Campbell said as she opened the back door to her lake house. “But we could probably do some kind of ritualistic animal sacrifice in the living room and still not merit my mama’s attention.”

  I didn’t know Charlotte Ames all that well, but my impression had always been that Campbell’s mother was closer to Aunt Olivia’s end of the maternal spectrum than my mom’s. Hovering was a way of life, holding one’s daughter to impossibly high standards was practically their religion, and acting the part of the perfect hostess was a darn near spiritual calling.

  Over the muted sound of a television some distance away, I heard what could only be described as a belch.

  Campbell ignored it as she herded me into a nearby bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. “Luckily for you, I can work around those unfortunate in-lieu-of-therapy bangs,” she said. “Far be it from me to point out that there are far more pleasant ways of working out tension and personal issues, so long as you can find a willing and attractive partner.” She pulled back the shower curtain. “Here ends the relationship-advice portion of our Betterment of Sawyer lecture series. Hop in the shower. Wash the lake out of your hair. Once you’re done, work a quarter-sized dollop of conditioner through that mess and leave it in. I’ll get you something to wear.”

  Campbell Ames was the last person I would have gone to for relationship advice, especially given the identity of her last willing and attractive partner.

  Nick.

  “You’re really going to blackmail me into a makeover?” I asked, refusing to give life to any of my other thoughts.

  “You really let me go on for weeks thinking we were sisters?” Campbell retorted, then she flashed me a sharp-edged smile. “The conditioner will minimize frizz when you’re out on the water, which in this humidity with that hair is a must. And you’ll need clothes for tonight. I’m assuming you and Lily received one of these as well?”

  She reached into a nearby cabinet and brandished a matte black box, long and thin and flat, with a card affixed to the front and Campbell’s name embossed on the card.

  The White Gloves.

  “We can hardly rely on Lily to get
you ready for your real debut in society,” Campbell said. I opened my mouth to reply, but she put a finger to my lips to hush me. “Things work differently at the lake. Lake formal basically translates to ‘you cannot wear a bathing suit.’ Semiformal means that you have to wear some kind of sundress over your suit. In either case, your makeup has to pass the boat test: if you can’t wear it on the water, you don’t wear it at all.”

  “So you’re going to this White Glove shindig?” I asked when she finally stopped talking.

  She shrugged. “Who am I to turn down a pity invite?” It was unlike Cam to admit to even the slightest bit of weakness. She was the kind of person who could come in last in a race and convince every person there that she’d won. “At this point in my exile, I will gladly let people gawk at the pitiable, scandalous Ames family to their hearts’ content, so long as they offer me some form of diversion as they gawk.”

  “What kind of diversion are you expecting tonight?” I asked.

  Campbell smirked and gestured to the shower. “You strip,” she said, “and I’ll talk.”

  I made the executive decision to undress in the shower. I’d shed my swimsuit and started in on washing my hair when Campbell deigned to hold up her end of the bargain.

  “Think of the White Gloves like the Junior League—by way of Skull and Bones. They tend to recruit from the debutante sets in a three-state area, but the initiation process is notoriously risky and risqué. A total adrenaline rush, from what I’ve heard.” Campbell paused for a few seconds. “Anyone can be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but not every country-club girl is White Glove material.”

  Lily had been excited to receive an invitation. As I stepped under the spray and rinsed the shampoo—and the lake—from my hair, I had the distinct sense that Campbell was relieved.

  She needed this.

  “Done yet?” Campbell demanded. I barely had time to wrap a towel around myself before she pulled the curtain. “Try this luminizer.” She slapped a container into my hand.