Three Little Wishes

Chapter Twelve

Riley sat in the sand reading A Game of Thrones, the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. It was Noah’s book. He’d written his name inside the front cover. She liked fantasy, and judging from the books lining the shelves in the living room at the beach house, her brother did too. At least he had when he was her age.

But this book was different from what she usually read, and she was having a hard time getting into it. Although maybe it wasn’t the book’s fault, she thought, when Cami yelled, “Get your nose out of the book and come bodysurf with me.”

“Later. The water’s cold,” Riley said, keeping her eyes glued to the page. Willow’s aunt was wearing a yellow polka-dot bikini that left little to the imagination.

Cami threw herself down beside Riley, spraying her with water and sand.

“Don’t do that. You have a broken arm and a concussion. You’re supposed to take it easy.” She didn’t know what Willow and her brother had been thinking, leaving her to babysit Cami. Then again, they might’ve thought Cami would be looking after her since Willow’s aunt was the adult and Riley was the kid. If so, it had been a big miscalculation on their part.

“You’re such a worrywart. Look.” Cami sat up and waved her cast in front of Riley’s face.

Right, she was a worrywart because she wanted to protect Cami’s cast from getting wet and had covered it in plastic wrap and tape when every excuse she’d tried to dissuade Cami from going swimming had failed.

“Stop waving your arm in my face. You’re getting the pages wet.” Riley tightened her grip on the book in case Cami tried ripping it out of her hands again, but she’d already lost Cami’s attention. As she’d discovered, Cami had the attention span of a gnat.

“Hey! Over here,” Cami cried, leaping to her feet, jumping up and down, and waving her arm.

Riley looked to where Cami was waving, and her eyes got big. “Cami, stop waving at them. You’re supposed to be in hiding, remember?”

It was one of the reasons Riley had tried to dissuade Cami from going swimming. The beach house was surrounded by trees and sat in a sheltered part of the bay with its own private beach, but there were plenty of boats on the water and a sandbar three hundred yards from shore. Cami was trying get the attention of three teenage boys who’d jumped off an idling speedboat onto the sandbar.

Riley opened her mouth to tell Cami to stop being creepy. She was old enough to be their mother. But she didn’t want to freak Cami out by reminding her she was forty-seven, not seventeen.

“I’m starving. Let’s go eat,” Riley said as she stood up, brushing sand off her shorts.

Cami stopped waving to frown at her. “We had breakfast three hours ago.”

“It’s not my fault you slept in, and it’s two in the afternoon. If we don’t eat now, we’ll ruin our dinner.” To think she’d been glad when Cami finally woke up, Riley thought with a sigh.

Cami laughed. “You act like you’re fifteen going on thirty.” She grabbed Riley’s hand. “I have a better idea. Let’s swim to the sandbar and say hi.”

“I told you. I don’t know how to swim.” Riley pulled her hand free. “Besides, you’re not supposed to be talking to anyone.”

“Oh, he’s really cute, isn’t he?” Cami said, pointing at the sandbar, acting as if Riley hadn’t said anything. “The tall one wearing the fluorescent-green board shorts.”

Riley sighed. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

Cami glanced at her. “Do you like boys? It’s fine if you like girls or even if you don’t like boys or girls.”

“I like boys.” They didn’t seem to like her, though. At least not in a boyfriend-girlfriend way. In New York, she had two friends who were boys. They’d all lived on the same street.

Cami cocked her head. “You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

“No! I’m fifteen.” She’d considered putting “Get a boyfriend” on her wish list, but what she really wanted was a friend.

“What’s your age have to do with it? Flynn and I, that’s my boyfriend, we started dating when I was fifteen.” Cami’s eyes lit up and she grabbed Riley’s hand. “I know how to get their attention. Come on, get in the water.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t swim.”

“That’s the point. Flynn was a lifeguard. A hot lifeguard, so you know what that means.”

“I really don’t.”

Cami arched an eyebrow. “I think I know why you’ve never had a boyfriend. Anyway, Flynn being hot meant that all the girls were trying to get his attention.” Cami pranced in front of her, tossing her hair and making flirty faces.

Riley laughed, and Cami grinned, taking her flirty-girl routine to a whole other level. The harder Riley laughed, the more outrageous Cami became.

Tears of laughter had blurred her vision, so it took a moment for Riley to notice that Cami’s boobs were in danger of falling out of her bikini. “Stop. You’re going to… lose your top.”

“I bet that’ll get their attention.” Cami’s hands moved to the ties at her back. “Stupid cast,” she muttered, turning her back to Riley.

She held up her hands. “Uh, no way. I’m not helping you flash those guys.”

“Fine. We’ll go with my first plan,” Cami said, reaching for Riley’s hand. “It worked on Flynn so I’m sure it’ll work on them.”

“What plan?” Riley asked as Cami tugged on her hand.

“We’ll pretend you’re drowning.”

“We can’t do that!” Riley cried, digging in her heels, but it was useless against Cami’s freakish strength. She obviously worked out, a lot.

“Yes we can. How do you think I got Flynn’s attention?” Cami fluttered her lashes and grinned, and then she pushed Riley into the water.

Riley landed flat on her back, sputtering as a wave washed over her head. She sat up, pushing her hair from her face. “That’s not funny.” She scowled at Cami but she wasn’t paying attention to her. She was frowning at the sandbar.

“Oh sure, I tell you I can’t swim. You throw me in the water, and you don’t even check if I’m okay,” Riley muttered, twisting the water from her T-shirt as she walked to shore.

“It’s not even a foot deep,” Cami said, waving her hand at another boat pulling up to the sandbar with four girls inside. “I told you we should’ve swam over and said hi.”

Riley threw up her hands. “I can’t swim!”

“Someone’s hangry.” Cami laughed, and then her eyes lit up with a look that made Riley nervous. “I know. Let’s go to the food truck! They make the best lobster rolls. Have you had a lobster roll? You have to try one. They’re to die for.”

Here we go again, Riley thought. “We can’t leave the beach house. You don’t want to ruin your family’s surprise, remember?”

“I knew you were going to say that so I’ve come up with a plan.”

“I don’t like your plans,” Riley muttered, picking up her book, the beach towels, Cami’s suntan lotion that smelled like coconut and didn’t have any SPF, Cami’s water bottle, and her sunglasses.

Cami grinned. “You’ll like this one. Trust me,” she said as she ran across the sand, up the retaining wall steps, and across the grass to the beach house without looking back or offering to help carry the stuff.

Riley thought maybe she’d misjudged her when Cami turned and walked onto the grass, her eyes scanning the beach. “I forgot my flip-flops.” She pointed at the yellow flip-flops sticking out of the sand. “Can you grab them?”

Riley looked down at her arms and then sent a pointed stare in Cami’s direction, which had no effect on Cami whatsoever because she was already in the house and closing the door behind her.

After a return trip to the beach and back to the house, Riley went straight to the laundry room on the main floor and dumped everything on top of the washing machine. She heard the shower running upstairs and decided to sort it later. She didn’t want to risk leaving Cami alone for more than five minutes, and Riley needed to take a shower too.

She grabbed her book and raced up the curved wooden staircase. There were four bedrooms on the second level. Cami had complained that Riley and Willow’s rooms had balconies and hers didn’t. Riley had a feeling her brother had given Cami a room without a balcony for a reason. Except that after spending half a day with Cami, Riley didn’t think anyone would be able to stop her if she decided to escape.

Riley paused outside her bedroom. The shower was still on in Cami’s room, and she was singing… “Macarena.” Riley snorted a laugh and shook her head. Cami had weird taste in music, she thought as she rushed into her bedroom and stripped off her clothes.

She was on alert the entire time she showered, listening for any sign that Cami might be pulling off the great escape on Riley’s watch. She was congratulating herself on setting a record for fastest time showering and washing her hair when she heard someone knocking on the front door.

“I’ve got it,” she yelled, panicked that Cami would beat her to the door. Riley hopped into her shorts and grabbed a T-shirt. Shoving her head through the opening, she was attempting to get her arms through the holes as she opened her bedroom door and Cami ran past.

“Wait!” Riley called, hurrying after her. “You can’t answer the door.”

“Yes I can. Look,” Cami said from where she now stood at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a daisy-printed sundress with a yellow straw sun hat in her hand. She put it on her head, stuck a pair of oversize white-flower sunglasses on her face, and struck a pose. “Ta-da. I look like one of those old ladies who lunch. Now we can go to the food truck. Woo-hoo!” She took off like a shot for the door.

Riley ran down the stairs, reaching Cami a second before she threw open the front door. A woman wearing white heels, a white sundress, and a white sun hat stood on the other side of the door with a bouquet of blood-red roses in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other.

She looked from Cami to Riley and smiled. “Hi. I’m looking for Noah Elliot? Would he be home?”

Cami crossed her arms. “Who are you?”

Riley wanted to know the same thing, but jeez, did Cami have to be so rude? She nudged her with an elbow. Cami glanced at Riley and shrugged.

“Hi. I’m Noah’s sister Riley, and this is my, ah, friend.”

“Noah’s not home, and neither is Willow.”

The woman gaped at Cami. “Excuse me. Willow Rosetti is living here?”

Beside her, Cami stiffened, and Riley decided she had to get rid of this woman and fast. She didn’t like the way she’d said Willow’s name, as if it left a bad taste in her mouth, and she had a feeling, even if Cami didn’t remember or know Willow, that she wouldn’t let anyone get away with disparaging her family. How she’d go about that was what worried Riley.

Riley nodded in response to the woman’s question and started closing the door. “They’ll be home around six.”

Cami placed a hand on the door above Riley’s head, holding it open. “You haven’t told us your name.”

“Megan. I’m Noah’s real estate agent.”

“Is that right,” Cami said, in a tone as disparaging as Megan’s had been when she’d said Willow’s name. Only Cami was way better at it. “Well, unless you didn’t get the memo from your boss, you are no longer Noah’s real estate agent. He fired your ass over the way you spoke to Willow.”

Uh-oh, Riley thought, sucking in a breath when Cami leaned toward Megan. “And that was before he found out you had Willow kicked out of her rental. Bad move, really, really bad move, Meggie. You should know better than to mess with a Rosetti.”

Megan’s eyes narrowed “Who are you?”

“Queen of the mean girls, and if—”

Riley moved in front of Cami, cutting her off. “We have to go now. We’ll tell my brother you dropped by.” She stepped back, pushing into Cami so she had no choice but to do the same, and began closing the door. But before she did, she felt the need to stand up for Willow too. “You should apologize to Willow. You weren’t very nice to her, and she’s a really good person.”

Before Megan had a chance to respond, Cami slammed the door in her face. Then Cami leaned her back against it and started laughing while mimicking Riley: “‘You weren’t very nice to her, and she’s a really good person.’”

“It’s true,” Riley said, heat rising to her cheeks.

Cami lowered her sunglasses, her gaze moving over Riley’s face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” Then she grinned. “Don’t worry, though, a few weeks with me, and we’ll up your mean girl game. No one will mess with you then.”

“Right, because you’re queen of the mean girls.”

There were mean girls in every school, including Riley’s old one. She wasn’t looking forward to dealing with them at her new school, so she could probably use a few tips. She just didn’t know if she’d survive a few more weeks with Cami. Riley’s nerves were already shot, and it had only been twenty-four hours, and Cami had slept through more than half of them.

“That was great, wasn’t it? Did you see her face?”

“Yeah, and I saw the way she was looking at you too.”

“She has no idea I’m a Rosetti.”

“Maybe not, but…” She trailed off. She’d been going to say it wasn’t only the fact that Cami was a Rosetti they had to hide. They also had to keep actress Camilla Monroe under wraps.

Riley covered the lapse by saying, “You’re right.”

Cami walked over to the window and peeked through the blinds. “Okay, she’s gone. Let’s go.” She opened the door and stepped onto the deck. “Do me a favor and get the old-lady bag that PA Gail tried to pass off as mine. I’ll meet you in the car.”

Riley lunged for Cami, grabbing her arm. “We don’t have a car, and you can’t drive.”

“I can so. I’ve been driving for a year, and I’ve been driving my mom’s station wagon. It looks exactly like the one Noah pulled out of the garage last night to make room for Willow’s stuff.”

Think, Riley, think.“We can’t. I don’t have keys for the car.”

Cami shrugged. “That’s fine. I can hot-wire it.”

“No, you can’t!”

“Can so.” She rubbed her fingers between her eyes, looking as if she was in pain. “Someone taught me how. I just don’t remember who.”

If she couldn’t remember the person, Riley decided she wouldn’t remember how to start the car so she could go along with the plan instead of risking Cami throwing a tantrum. “Okay. I’ll get your purse.”

She ran back up the stairs and headed straight for Cami’s room. She opened the door and stood there with her mouth hanging open. The bed was unmade, and there were clothes everywhere. Cami’s suitcases—all three of them—were open and empty on the floor, and so was the suitcase Willow had brought for her.

At the sound of Cami walking around downstairs, Riley shook off her shock at the mess and hurried into the room. It took her five minutes to find Cami’s purse under the sheets at the foot of the bed. She opened the purse, feeling bad for invading Cami’s privacy, but she wanted to make sure there was nothing inside that would set her off. Yesterday, when Noah had gone back for Willow, Cami had found her phone. It was just Riley’s luck the phone had face ID, and it opened right away because Cami was looking at herself in the screen.

Luckily, because the Wi-Fi sucked at the beach house, Cami hadn’t seen much but messages from Hugh and Jeff. Cami didn’t know who the men were but Riley did. She lived in LA and watched entertainment news. Hugh was a big-time movie director, and Jeff was Cami’s cheating ex. She didn’t share this with Cami. Getting a glimpse of their messages on the home screen had upset her enough.

Riley figured it was because at seventeen, Cami had dreamed of becoming an actress, and Hugh had been informing her she hadn’t gotten the part she’d auditioned for. He had been really nice about it and promised he’d keep Cami in mind for another project and hoped to talk to her soon.

Cami’s cheating ex hadn’t been nice at all. His girlfriend had gotten the part, and he’d rubbed it in Cami’s face. He’d ended the text by recommending a real estate agent for Cami’s house. After that, Riley had hidden the phone.

Riley pulled out Cami’s wallet and considered hiding it too, afraid the driver’s license photo would upset her. Riley hadn’t missed the towel covering the bathroom mirror or the mirror face down on the dresser. But if Cami actually thought she was driving them to the food truck, it would be the first thing she looked for. Riley put the wallet back and then, with one last look around the room, she shut the door. Maybe once Cami got over her disappointment at not going to the food truck, they could clean her room, Riley thought as she ran down the stairs.

Noah wouldn’t be happy if he saw the mess, and Riley didn’t want him upset. The last thing she wanted was him having an excuse to kick out Cami and Willow. Riley liked having Willow around, and Cami might drive her crazy, but she liked having her there too.

Riley closed the front door behind her and froze at the sound of an engine revving.