I should probably apologize to Emerald for making her job harder last year.
I should probably apologize to Emerald for a lot of things, really.
With that thought in my head, I climb wearily back into bed in just my t-shirt and underwear, and pull the covers over my head. I fall asleep within minutes, and, when I sleep, I dream that Emerald turns up at the house with Jakob, and the two of them go through my wardrobe, only to find Jett hiding in the back. When I wake up, I think the insistent banging I can hear is coming from the wardrobe, then I realize it’s the front door, and jump out of bed, running my fingers frantically through my hair as I rush downstairs to open it.
“Hi Lexie. Great outfit. Love that on you.”
Scarlett Scott is standing on my doorstep, her lips painted as red as her name, and her dark hair framing her pale face, and making her look like Snow White. Actually, though, Scarlett is more like the Wicked Witch, and that article she wrote about me in theGazetteproves it.
“How are you, Lexie?,” she says, smiling as if we’re a couple of old friends who’ve just happened to bump into each other on the street, as opposed to the sworn enemies we really are. Or thatIam to her, anyway. To be fair, Scarlett probably doesn’t know how much I hate her. She barely even knows me at all, really. She’d only just arrived in town when everything went down last summer, and Emerald was the one who tried to steal her identity — well, sort of — not me. So unless she’s decided to take Emerald’s side on the whole “burning down the town hall” thing, she doesn’t have a dog in this fight.
“So,” she says, smiling sweetly at me. “Set anyone’s dress on fire recently, by any chance, or have you been too busy for that?”
I guess it’s fair to say that Scarlett took Emerald’s side, then.
“I’m great, thanks,” I say, returning her fake smile. “And how about you, Scarlett? Taken up fiction writing, I see? Good for you, it must be nice to have a little hobby now that you’re not working for a real magazine any more. Heather Bay must be a real disappointment compared to London, though.”
Before she moved here, Scarlett was a food and drinks writer. It’s how I met her, actually. She was sent up here to write some articles about whisky, and Mum persuaded me to try to “woo her”, as she put it. To convince her to write about the distillery, as part of a big PR drive she was relying on me to pull off.
Unfortunately for Mum, though, the only articles Scarlett ever wrote about our family distillery ended up being about Mum herself, and how she’d tried to sabotage our closest rivals in order to steal their business. And she wrote those for the Heather Bay Gazette, not the London-based magazine she used to work for, and which might have had slightly less impact on us.
I was long gone by then, though. I only know all of this because I follow Scarlett on Instagram, and she’s always banging on about how much happier she is, having moved to the Highlands and started working for the Gazette. “Slow living,” she calls it. There’s absolutely nothing slow, however, about the speed with which she’s turned up on my doorstep this morning; or the way she’s looking over my shoulder and down the hall, her eyes scanning ruthlessly for any sign of Jett.
Well, she can forget that.
“Anyway,” I say breezily when she completely ignores my comment. “This has been lovely, Scarlett, but I’ve got things to do, so if you don’t mind—”
I slam the door in her face before I can finish my sentence, allowing myself a smirk of satisfaction at her surprised look as the door closes.
“Lexie? I just have a few questions?”
The letterbox flaps open, and Scarlett’s face appears behind it, as she yells at me through the gap.
“I wanted to know if you’re planning on seeing your poor mother while you’re here?” she shouts. “Is thatwhyyou’re here? And is it true that Jett Carter is with you? Because I have two eyewitnesses willing to go on record as having seen him, and—”
“Edna doesn’t count as an eyewitness, Scarlett,” I yell back at her through the open letterbox, “And my mum isn’t ‘poor’. She’s making it up and you know it. I can’t believe you’re encouraging her. It’s so manipulative. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just really want to get back to bed.”
“With Jett?” Scarlett asks eagerly. “Is he really here, then?”
“Get off my property, Scarlett,” I snap, losing what little patience I have for this conversation. “Or I’ll call the police. I mean it. I have my phone in my hand. I’m dialing now. Look.”
I hold my phone up to the gap in the door, so she can see I mean business here.
“Lexie, it’s Wednesday,” Scarlett says patiently. “Young Dougie has a half day on a Wednesday. You know that.”
Shit. I forgot about the stupid half-day-on-a-Wednesday thing. And also that it was Wednesday. Jet-lag really is a bitch, isn’t it? And so is Scarlett Scott, for that matter.
“It’s still morning,” though, I counter, turning the phone round to look at the time on the display. “It’s… it’s 4:30pm. Wow, I must have been in bed all day.”
I shake the offending phone, as if that’ll somehow turn back time.
It’s not morning. It’s not even a different day. It’s still the day we arrived in Heather Bay; which means Scarlett must have been even quicker off the mark than I realized.
Scarlett tilts her head to one side sympathetically as she peers through the letterbox again.
“Oh, poor thing,” she says, thoroughly enjoying herself. “Look at you, not even knowing what day it is. Why don’t I come in and make you a nice cup of coffee, then the two of us can sit down and have a good old chinwag? What do you say?”
“I say you must be insane if you think I’m going to talk to you after what you wrote about me, Scarlett,” I hiss back at her, incensed. “You work for the Heather Bay Gazette, Scarlett, not TMZ. Everyone must think you’re totally delusional, running around like you’re Lois Lane or something.”
