Page 114 of Wicked Ruin

“Take the call, Declan.” I open the car door and leave quickly while he’s busy answering the call from Seamus. I walk to my front door so he can’t stop me.

And that night, I start looking for jobs for women with my skill set in Australia.

Declan’s gone home.

And I hate it. I want to wake up next to him.

So I take a shower, slide into a T-shirt he left behind, and bring my tired, pregnant arse to bed just as a knock sounds on my door. “It’s me! Open up, Bridge.”

Bronwyn?

I open the door, and she stares for a minute at me in Declan’s shirt.

“What? It’s just a T-shirt. You act like you’ve never seen me in an oversized tee.”

“Right,” she says with an eye roll. “You have got to see this.”

I walk over to the couch. Does she see the little belly I’m sporting under the oversized tee? I hope not.

“Okay, come on, show me what you’ve got. You told me you suspected something was off with her socials, right? You’ve been stalking her since you found out Declan was engaged.”

I nod, shameless. “Well, take a look at this,” Bronwyn says, pulling out a veritable spreadsheet that would make any stalker proud: pictures, socials, everything.

“I am so proud right now.”

Bronwyn beams. “Take a look at this right here.” She pulls out a picture of a woman at the beach. “This is Valentina, right? What do you notice about her?”

“She’s beautiful and Italian and has excellent genes but questionable taste in bikinis,” I say with a frown.

“She has a cowlick,” Bronwyn says as she zooms in and shows me something. “Look, right there.”

“For crying out loud, Bronwyn, who cares if she has a cowlick? I guess her mother didn’t train her hair when she was a baby or something.”

“I didn’t even know that was a thing, but whatever, that’s not what I’m talking about, Bridget. You can’t just get rid of a cowlick. It’s something that’s there no matter what you do.”

“Are you serious? Okay, so what’s the purpose of this conversation?”

“Take a look at this.” She shows me a picture from the engagement party.

Declan and Valentina are very far away. Every single picture she posed for, she made sure that she was far away from the camera.

“She said she liked full-body pictures, no close-ups, remember? And look. No cowlick.” I squint. I can’t really see anything.

“There’s no cowlick, but there’s more,” Bronwyn says, and she points out more details.

“Look. One eye is a tiny bit lower than the other, and like… her ears sit differently.”

“Hmm. Strange.”

“We need to invite her out somewhere, just you and me. We need to talk to her alone.”

“Oh no. I am not doing that.” I shake my head. Bronwyn doesn’t know the truth yet, and if she did…

“Look, I don’t care what we do, but we have to see her up close.”

“Listen, here’s the thing. People present themselves on social media as these models, but in real life, they’re not. Filters and all that.”

“Well, that’s just the thing. What are the chances that the real-life Valentina is actually more attractive than the online version?”