“Who cares? They won’t even notice.”
“You know I can’t go to your room alone. What if somebody saw me? What would they say?”
“I said, let’s go,” Russell said hoarsely. He grabbed her arm and started towing her toward the walkway that led around the edge of the house, through the gardens to the pool. The walk was narrow and closed in on either side by tall boxwood hedges.
“Russell, no,” Millie said, her voice rising. She stumbled along behind him, catching her heel on one of the cobblestones and nearly tripping before he roughly pulled her upright.
“What is wrong with you tonight?” he snarled. He shoved her up against the trunk of another magnolia tree and pressed himself into her until she felt the rough bark scraping against the flesh of her bare shoulders. He forced a knee between her legs and pushed her dress up until it was nearly at her waist. “That’s better,” he breathed in her ear. “No more games.”
She flailed helplessly against his hands, but they were everywhere, tearing at the neckline of her gown, fumbling with the snaps of her garter belt. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, and a moment later, he was unbuckling his belt and unzipping the fly of his pants.
“Stop it!” Millie cried. She pushed against his chest with both hands, but he was stronger, a head taller, and she was pinned there, half-naked, exposed to the world. She felt panicky. She was no virgin—Russell had seen to that—but this…
“Just relax, baby,” Russell said, chuckling. “Let me just—”
“No! Stop it!”
“Millie?” A man’s voice.
She heard the rapid clatter of hard-soled shoes on the cobblestones.
He stopped, a few feet away. It was Gardiner Bettendorf. “Millie? Are you all right?”
Russell kept her pinned, right where she was. “Get lost,” he said calmly, not even bothering to turn around. “The lady and I were just admiring the moonlight.”
“That’s not what it sounded like to me,” Gardiner said. “Millie, would you like to go back to the house?” He stepped closer, peering at them.
She squirmed under the weight of Russell’s body, mortified at her appearance, desperately trying to cover herself. She took a deep breath, willing herself to sound normal.
“Um, yes. We were just about to come back to the party. But you go on ahead and we’ll catch up.”
“I think I’ll just walk back with you, if you don’t mind,” Gardiner said. His tone was light, affable.
“I said get lost!” Russell yelled. He whirled around and without warning threw a punch at Gardiner’s nose, just barely grazing it. He swung again and connected solidly this time.
“Stop it!” Millie screamed.
Russell was bigger, but Gardiner was faster, and now he swung hard, landing a solid blow to Russell’s jaw and then to his gut.
The big man staggered two steps backward, a look of astonishment on his face. “I’ll kill you.”
A thin stream of blood trickled from Gardiner’s nose and onto the spotless starched collar of his white dress shirt. “Enough, all right?” He nodded at Millie. “Why don’t you go on back to the party now?”
12
Brooke’s cell phone rang at precisely 8:01A.M.She grabbed the phone, hoping the loud ring wouldn’t awaken her son.
“Hello? Is this Brooke Trappnell? This is Lizzie Quinlan.”
“Oh, hi.”
Brooke glanced over at the crib mattress on the floor by her bed, momentarily reassured that Henry was still asleep, his favorite blue-and-white quilt wrapped around him, burrito-style. She took the phone and walked into the kitchen.
“Who’s your client?” Lizzie asked.
“Excuse me?”
“His name. You said your client was a dear friend of my late grandmother’s. So I’d like to know his name, since you know mine.”
