I’d had more than one drink with Freddy inside, so I was a little less zippy than normal—and if I’m being honest, Iwaslooking for an excuse to take out a little frustration that night.
Dizzy managed to lift me as he charged, slamming me into the nearest wall. His size was his greatest advantage, but it meant he lacked speed as well as strategy. I got out of a sticky situation by punching hard at his spine until he let me drop. We pulled back to circle each other, ignoring the shouts of Freddy, Peaches and Bugs to cut it out.
None of them were willing to get in between us.
But both Dizzy and I stopped at once when we heard someone down the street shouting, “Hey!Bastardi!What the fuck?”
“Shit,” Freddy muttered, giving me a dark look.
I straightened up my clothes and cast a bright smile at Alessandro Castellani as he arrived. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“This asshole just started going at me—” Dizzy began, but he shut up at one look from Sandro.
“Is this how my bodyguards behave?” he hissed at Dizzy and the two others. “Fighting in the streets like children?” His glare shot to me. “And you, Jacopo. Do you have no honor at all?”
I couldn’t help myself. Blame the booze. Blame the injustice I felt at Sandro’s words. Or blame the reckless, unsettled feeling I’d had ever since that first kiss I’d claimed from Miller Beaumont. “Dizzy just wanted a little action,” I said with a smirk, knowing full well it would get a reaction.
Dizzy started for me again with a roar, but Sandro shoved him, hard, to the side, and pointed at him to stay where he was. “Ignore my orders again and I’ll have you castrated,” he said, without even a glance at Dizzy. No, Sandro’s hard, hateful stare was reserved for yours truly. “And you, Jacopo—get the fuck out of here before I gut you myself.”
He didn’t have to ask twice. I jerked my head at Freddy, who trotted after me, while I heard Sandro berating his sidekicks in rapid, angry Italian.
“Well, you blew that one, Jack,” Freddy said at last.
“Like a glory hole veteran,” I agreed.
“Have to take your word on that. You think you two’ll ever make it up? You used to be real buddies. Can’t you bury the past?”
I gave a hollow laugh and shook my head. “Don’t think that’s in the cards, Freddy. I’ll see you around, eh? Keep in touch about the Beaumont woman. Any news, I want to hear it right away, day or night.”
“You got it.”
I drove home hoping that at least Trouble had kept himself out of it foronenight—unlike me.
CHAPTER16
MILLER
My sister hada regular salon visit to keep her hair color perfect. The strawberry blonde for which she was famous was difficult to maintain—I knew because she’d told me often enough, bragging about it like it was a personal fucking achievement.
And if there was one stereotype I knew to be true about Annie, it was that she shared every damn thing with her hairstylist.
When I turned up at High Society Hair the next morning, I was welcomed like an old friend, even though I’d only been there a handful of times.
“Miller Beaumont!” the white-blonde receptionist gasped. Her hair looked like gossamer silk in the light filtering in from the windows. “Omigod, can I get you a coffee? Wait—do you have an appointment? Of course we can fit you in, but you’ll just need to give me a sec so I can see who’s free—”
“No,” I said hurriedly. “I’m not here for a cut. Uh. That’d be my sister. In fact, I was looking for her? I thought she said she had an appointment today.”
The receptionist—Chrissy, her name was, according to the name tag under all that platinum hair—frowned. “Golly, I don’t think so. She canceled the last appointment; said she was going out of town.”
I feigned surprise. “Really? I could haveswornshe said she was coming in today.”
I could only hope that whatever Annie had spilled during her hair appointments, our family estrangement was not one of those secrets. But I’d bet right in this case.
“Let me double-check,” Chrissy said reassuringly, and went back around the desk to tap her fingers over the tablet they used for appointments. “Okay,” she said, “I have a note here that Ms. Beaumont called to cancel all her upcoming appointments about a week ago.” Chrissy’s wide, white smile turned stiff, and her eyes flew to mine with a nervous giggle. “Sheiscoming back here, right?”
Annie had lifted the profile of High Society Hair from regular hipster-WeHo tobona fidechic. They owed half their celebrity clientele to the free promo Annie had given them over the years.
I gave Chrissy an apologetic look and hoped she’d interpret it the way I wanted her to. “I’d really like to have a chat with Nina, if she’s in today.”
