With an uncomfortable smile, Grant grabs another cookie and books it out of the room.
Lissa shakes her head as she returns to her magazine. “Perfect strangers thrown together in insane circumstances,” she muses, then shoots me a wry look. “As if that’s not the exact recipe for every great love story ever.”
I don’t have time to rebut before the front door bangs open. Lesley races in in an uncharacteristic frenzy, propping himself up with one hand on the counter as he tries to catch his breath.
“New … Money … Mangler,” he wheezes. “This is not a drill.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I’m at war with myself as I get ready for the Hartley Gardens Gala in my room, and not just because I keep drawing my eyeliner wrong. One side saysCome hither and gaze into my eyes, and the other saysMy mom didn’t let me wear makeup until today. But that’s of little consequence, given the big picture.
On the one hand, I curse Anna Matthews for doing this to me. A black-tie event is the oldest trope in the book—just one more reminder that I’m nothing more than a pawn in her game.
But as I smooth my dress in the mirror, I have to face the undeniable flip side: Idolove a glamorous dress-up moment. And in this bloodred backless gown with a slit up to there, it’s hard not to feel like some kind of supermodel spy. I even have a sexy thigh holster to hide my phone. It’s really an exercise armband MacGyvered with some hair elastics to fit, but still.
Today has been a crash course in new money behavior, strategizing all the ways we can lure the Mangler at tonight’s event. Lesley led the charge by his whiteboard, where he jabbed a pointer at reference pictures, dos and don’ts, and conversation topics.
Old money is quiet, stuffy, snobbish.
New money is gaudy, brash, ostentatious.
Do: name-drop, show off, draw attention to yourself.
Don’t: besocrass that you get kicked out.
And so we begin, dressed to the nine hundreds, preparing to roll up to the Victoria and Albert Museum in a yellow Lamborghini Lesley has rented for the occasion. He registered us as Zachary and Savannah Beaumont, and even had wedding rings at the ready until I insisted that the Beaumonts besiblings. Bickering heirs to a California smoothie chain fortune. See, Anna? Two can play at this game.
I have put in the hours of effort befitting a rich American girl desperate to hobnob with the London elite—albeit with YouTube beauty tutorials in lieu of a glam squad. After a few practice defense maneuvers to double-check my dress’s range of motion, I’m ready.
I hurry out of my room and down the hall. I’m the last to arrive in the foyer, judging by the sounds of low-voiced strategizing and anxious pacing drifting up the stairs.
I only make it halfway down the steps when the sight of Grant stops me. He’s not someone you’d ever call sloppy in the first place, but to say he cleans up nicely is an understatement. He’s decked out in a traditional, non-green tux, his hair pushed off his face in a way that looks polished but also like it just fell that way. And even as he fidgets with the flashy new Rolex that has replaced his usual brown leather watchband, he’s the spitting image of a classic romance hero. I can take just a second to secretly admire that before I have to resent it again, can’t I?
Then he sees me with a double take, and his jittering fades away. Or maybe he just telepathically sends it to me, because my heart has a definite palpitation.
All he says, so quietly I’m not even sure he means to, is “Wow.”
Wow.It might be the most cliché thing he could have said, but tell that to my nervous system. His gaze is like a soft touchon my skin, his voice echoing through me like wind in a canyon.Wow.As far as I’m concerned, he invented the word.
I feel like I should say something—Wow yourself? You look okay, I guess? Sup, bro?—but there seems to be a large rock lodged in my throat. I’m dimly aware of Lesley whistling.
“Well, well!” Lissa crosses her arms, assessing us. “Don’t you two look utterly dangerous!”
I snap back to attention. “We’re not supposed to be utterly dangerous,” I remind her. “We’re supposed to be chunks of hot dog in a crab trap.”
She quirks an eyebrow at me and huffs out a breath. “Fine. Grant, tell Roxie she looks like a hot dog.”
Grant looks at me for a few more heated seconds, then decisively turns to Lissa.
“Give us the rings,” he says.
I fly into panic mode. “What?”
He takes the velvet box from her and shoves a gold band onto his finger. “No one’s going to believe we’re brother and sister with you looking like that,” he says.
“Ever heard of adoption, moron?” It’s harsher than I meant to be, but this is not a time for pleasantries. This is a time for shutting shit down.
Grant spares me only the briefest flat look as he comes toward me, taking two more rings out of the box. “I mean withme looking at you, looking like that. In that dress.”
