Chapter One
SCOUT
Sometimes, being an adult meant making sacrifices.
At least, that was what my father had said when he’d called and told me that there was a temporary vacancy for an intern working for a Justice of the Supreme Court and that he’d recommended me for it, but that it would mean skipping my family’s trip to Vienna.
And he was right. Five years from now, I probably wouldn’t even remember where I’d spent this Christmas.
But my resume would sure as hell reflect that I spent three weeks working at the Supreme Court.
You couldn’t buy that kind of placement, or the prestige that came with it.
It was totally worth missing the holidays with my family.
That was what I told myself, anyway.
Except now, watching all the brothers packing up for the break and listening to their plans, it didn’t feel like it was worth it. This was more how I imagined the only five-year-old not invited to a birthday party with a bouncy house might feel—like I was missing out big time.
Which was dumb, because even at five I’d known that bouncy houses were undignified, and because this was going to put me on the radar at the freaking Supreme Court.
Who cared if it meant spending Christmas alone in an empty fraternity house while everyone else was having a good time?
It was only for a week, and then I’d go to DC and fill in for whichever one of Justice McDaniel’s random low-level staffers was on vacation and be back at Lassiter around the same time I would have been arriving back from Europe.
Nobody would be any the wiser about how I’d spent the month.
Because that was the other thing.
I hadn’t actually told anyone I wasn’t going to Vienna—including my boyfriend, Trey.
Because how would that conversation even go?
Trey, I’m a poor, sad Christmas orphan who can’t go to Vienna because I have to go and work at the Supreme Court of the United States, an opportunity you would give your left nut for, because you are smarter than me, more ambitious than me, and you’re going to be a hell of a better lawyer than I’ll ever be.
Ain’t good old nepotism grand? Also, feel sorry for me!
I wasn’t that pathetic.
And anyway, if I told Trey what was happening, he’d just invite me to spend Christmas with his family because he felt sorry for me.
No thank you. My parents had raised me better than that.
You didn’t go where you weren’t asked, and you certainly didn’t guilt trip someone for an invitation if one hadn’t been forthcoming.
Miss Manners would not approve.
More importantly, neither would my mother, who would eat Miss Manners for breakfast. Using the correct silverware, naturally.
It would be fine. I’d get through Christmas in the fraternity house, enjoying the quiet and whatever food I felt like getting delivered, and then I’d go to DC and take coffee orders for three weeks, and somehow that would look better on my resume than any of Trey’s extracurriculars did.
Because I was a Talbot-Smith, and that was how things worked for us.
So why, when I was being given this awesome opportunity, did it still feel like I was the one missing out?
It didn’t help that right now I was surrounded by love and peace and joy and all that bullshit. Any minute now a rosy-cheeked child was going to skip past ringing a bell, or a bunch of people in Victorian garb were going to barrel into the store and accost me with carols.
Hopewell didn’t have much of a shopping district, but there were a few antiques stores in the City Point historic district, and Trey and I were checking them out because he still hadn’t bought a gift for his mom.
Most of the storefronts were filled with decorations and tinsel, reminding me relentlessly that it was Christmas Day in a week.
I did my best to push it aside because when it came to shopping I was in my element, unlike Trey.
Trey was a terrible shopper. Like, objectively awful. He was smart as hell, but when it came to choosing a gift, he either froze like a deer in the headlights or second-guessed himself right out of the store. It was almost endearing, but I’d never tell him that.
“You can’t go wrong with jewelry,” I said as we inspected the case the woman had put on the counter.
Trey reached out for a ring.
“Not that one.”
He gave me a look. “You just said I couldn’t go wrong with jewelry.”
“Not generally,” I said. “But specifically, that is a man’s ring, Trey.”
“Are you sure?” Trey asked.
I picked the ring in question up. It was a classic silver pinky ring with a blank face where initials could be engraved, and it had three lines scored in one corner that added texture to the otherwise simple design.
It was a timeless piece and in surprisingly good condition.
I slipped it onto my pinky to demonstrate and held it up to admire it.
It looked good on me. “See? Made for a man’s hand.
And are you going to tell your mother she has man hands? ”
He gave me another look. “You choose then.”
I cast my critical gaze over the case and said, “What else do you have?”
The woman met my critical gaze with one of her own and then hummed as she looked me up and down. “I’ll see what’s out back.”
“Thank you.” I waited until she’d left before I said, “We just saw the stuff they show to the tourists and the college kids. She’ll be back with the good stuff now.”
“I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but we are college kids,” Trey said.
“Yes, but I’m wearing Brunello Cucinelli.”
“I’m not,” Trey said, his forehead pinching. “And I don’t want to go crazy.”
“This is Hopewell, Trey,” I said. “There will be nothing here even approaching crazy.”
The woman emerged from the back of the store carrying a small box and set it in front of us.
“These just came in yesterday,” she said.
She opened the box to reveal the tray inside, which held an array of brooches ranging from understated to over-the-top and everything in between. “From an estate sale.”
Trey picked up a solid square brooch with a stone the color of cat vomit.
My fingers itched with the urge to slap his hand away.
I restrained myself, but Trey must have felt my glare because he put it down again and put his hands behind his back.
I scanned the tray, and my gaze was drawn to a silver art deco-style brooch with blue and white stones set in a geometric pattern that started as a rectangle but had rounded ends.
It was solid but elegant, and I knew Trey’s mom would love it.
She was totally into that era, and she loved bright statement pieces.
I nudged him gently and gave a subtle nod.
Trey reached out and picked up the brooch. “Maybe… this?” For someone who’d aced his LSAT, he sounded very unsure. “Wait, those aren’t diamonds, are they?”
Both the lady and I laughed.
“It’s paste jewelry, Trey,” I said. “It’s glass.” I pulled him closer to me and said in an undertone, “It’s genuine but don’t pay more than a hundred for it. There’s a chip in the bottom stone.”
I left Trey to the brooch and wandered off into the next aisle where a pair of gloomy-faced clowns regarded me from a shelf.
They appeared to be salt and pepper shakers, and they were so ugly they would haunt my dreams until the end of my life, but at least they stopped me from thinking about Christmas, right?
And Christmas was overrated anyway. Who cared if I didn’t get to spend a day with my family?
I could catch up with them another time.
I looked away from the clowns before they gave me actual nightmares, and my gaze landed on a snow globe.
I felt a stab of something like guilt when I remembered how I’d snapped at Marty.
He hadn’t meant anything when he’d asked for a snow globe from Vienna.
It was just Marty being Marty. But I’d reacted like he’d asked for a kidney or something.
Okay, maybe I was more sensitive about spending the holidays alone than I’d thought. But it wasn’t like I could do anything about it now. So I’d do what I always did and pretend I didn’t give a shit. I was incredibly good at that.
“Eighty.” Trey’s voice was low in my ear, and when I turned he held up a small gift box.
“Nice,” I said, and he flashed me an easy smile.
“I can’t shop for shit, but I’m great at negotiating,” he said. Then he looked closer, and his brow furrowed. “You okay, baby?”
“I’m fine,” I said, too fast to be convincing. Shit. If there was one person who could tell when I was worried about something, it was Trey. Okay, and maybe Marty, but that was because he had a weird superpower for reading people, so it didn’t count.
Trey raised his eyebrows and hummed. I hated when he did that. If he was going to call me out on my bullshit, couldn’t he at least do it openly?
Okay, so I didn’t really hate it. I didn’t hate anything about Trey, except possibly the fact he was impossible to hate.
Trey was just about the only person in the world who got me, which was simultaneously gratifying and mortifying, and left me feeling uncomfortably exposed.
Which was something else I hated, naturally.
But I couldn’t even hold it against him because I was, without question, in love with him.
I’d never told him that because, well, see everything about me. But he knew it. He was too smart to not know it.
And it wasn’t like he’d said it either, and that was okay.
I couldn’t be more of an emotionally repressed WASP if I painted stripes on myself and shoved a stinger up my ass, and Trey understood that.
He hadn’t even minded when it took a year for me to be comfortable telling people we were together—not because I didn’t want people to know I was with Trey, but because it wasn’t anyone’s business except ours.
So the fact he hadn’t said he loved me and forced me to acknowledge I had reciprocal feelings proved it.
Trey got me.