“Don’t!” Ric said, his voice sharp.
“You can deny it all you want, but there’s a paternity test that says otherwise. Madelyn found it, and the NDA that Fred forced Shannon to sign, when she was packing up to move him out of the big house. So she came up with a plan to erase Livvy from the Eddings family picture. Instead, she managed to kill the only thing you ever truly loved. Parrish.”
At the mention of his daughter’s name, Ric reached past Traci and grabbed the Porsche’s door handle. But Traci stood her ground.
“You can’t scare me off, and you can’t screw me over anymore, Ric. I’m going to see to it that your old man and you finally do right by Olivia. You want to drag things out in a long court battle, have atit. You’ll end up just like Fred. Rich, yeah. But sick and bitter. And alone.”
He was facing Traci now, his back to the street, so he didn’t see the meter maid, who’d alighted from her vehicle and was approaching with a gleam in her eye and a ticket book in her hand.
“I’ll never stop missing Hoke or Parrish. They’ll always be a part of my life. But they’re the past, and I’m choosing to move ahead.” She turned to go back to her car, and Ric started to say something.
“Sir?”
He turned to see the meter maid, scribbling something on her pad.
“I was just leaving,” he protested.
She ripped the ticket from the pad and handed it over. “Take this with you. Five-hundred-dollar fine for parking in a handicapped space.”
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
“Almost ready?” Traci glanced over at her unlikely business partner, who’d dashed into the Saint lobby with only minutes to spare.
The sun was low on the horizon and the drinks had been flowing since the hotel doors were thrown open an hour earlier.
Livvy took a deep breath and nervously adjusted the wide silk sash of her deep-rose-pink ankle-length gown. A wildly expensive selection from the hotel’s new designer boutique, the silk dress and even the sandals, metallic bronze with a wedge heel, had been a “coming out gift,” from Traci, who’d insisted that Olivia had to look the part if she was going to play the part.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Livvy whispered. At least a couple hundred people, members and hotel guests, were gathered on the Riverside patio outside, waiting expectantly.
“Nobody knows if they can do something until they do it,” Traci said, her face glowing with a newfound serenity. Her hands rested protectively on her abdomen, at the barely discernible bump beneath her own flowing pink caftan.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Whelan quipped as he reached out for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“No, seriously, I feel like I might barf,” Livvy said. “There were six television vans with their crews set up outside the front gates when I drove down from Savannah just now, including one from CNN.There was a story in this week’sPeoplemagazine.” Livvy shuddered as she repeated the headline. “‘Sins of the Fathers: Money, Murder and Mayhem Among the Magnolias.’ A producer fromDatelinehas been texting and calling me. They want to interview me for the story they’re doing on Madelyn. They’ve already done a jailhouse interview with that scumbag Garrett.”
“What does Andy say? About theDatelinestory?”
“Mr. Plankenhorn thinks I should wait, at least until the trial is over. And I agree. This whole thing is majorly cringe.”
Livvy wasn’t exaggerating. Madelyn Eddings’s arrest for the murder of Parrish, combined with the attempted murder of Livvy and Felice, had touched off a national media melee. The press couldn’t get enough of the salacious details—how Ric Eddings’s wife seduced a waiter fifteen years her junior to enlist him in a plan to eliminate a newly found rival for the Eddings family fortune, and how the plan had backfired when a stoned musician named Cedric had bungled the delivery of the fentanyl-spiked joint, serving it instead to Madelyn’s stepdaughter Parrish with lethal consequences.
The tangled web of extortion, blackmail, arson, and theft that Madelyn and her partners in crime spun was still generating ripples of scandal, even a year later. KJ Parkhurst had cut a deal to testify against his co-defendants, and was serving a five-year prison term, but Charlie Burroughs hadn’t survived the injuries he’d sustained while fleeing from the state patrol.
“I feel like everyone is looking at me. Just waiting for Fred Eddings’s bastard kid to screw up,” Livvy said.
Traci tucked her arm through Livvy’s. “Get used to it, kiddo. They used to look at me the same way, after I married Hoke. Everyone, including his family, wondered how an Ain’t like me managed to snag a prize like Hoke. After he died, when I had to step in to run the hotel on my own, people, especially Fred and Ric, were always watching, waiting for me to screw up. Spoiler alert, Liv. You’re gonna screw up. Hopefully your screwups won’t be as massive as mine were, but it’s gonna happen. The difference is, I’ll be here to help you when it does.”
“I’ll be here too,” Whelan reminded her. It had taken both women months to convince him, but Whelan had finally, reluctantly agreed to take on the role of the Saint’s general manager.
“I don’t know a damn thing about running a hotel,” he’d protested when Livvy broached the subject.
“Neither do I. But you know how to run a business, and Traci knows hotels, and I’m learning. So we’ll learn together.”
“At the very least you won’t try to steal us blind, right?” Livvy joked.
A server in a white jacket paused in front of them with a silver tray laden with flutes of prosecco. Livvy took a glass and sipped while the waiter looked expectantly at Whelan. “Sir? Bourbon rocks?”
