Chapter 7
Seven
Dare
I clench my teeth and stare out the window of the Windsor hotel, irritated by the phone cradled to my ear. "Yes, hello? This is the third time I’ve tried to call down to the concierge."
I listen for a minute, nonplussed by the answer. I’m annoyed, and not just by this hotel's lack of service.
"When I say that I want an omelet with something green in it and a kale and apple juice smoothie, I don’t understand why you have sent the wrong items for two days now.
And besides that, my wake-up call for 6 AM this morning didn’t ever come through.
What are you doing? Don’t you know who I am? I could put you out of a job!"
I pace in front of the window of the bedroom, my movements tense. Behind me, the bed is unmade. And out the window, there is a beautiful view of downtown Harwicke, mountains sprouting up in the far distance.
After a few more seconds of assurances from the concierge, I hang up my phone with a snarl. “Idiot.”
I stride out into the living room, tossing it onto the bed.
I, of course, have the best room that the Monteleone has to offer.
The room is large and airy; it has a dining room and sitting area and a huge office in addition to my bedroom.
But honestly, it is not anywhere near living up to my standards.
I open my laptop, the web browser still pulled up for Talia Chance. Another failure, coupled with the woman’s disappearance last night and the annoyances at the hotel this morning. I rub the bridge of my nose, annoyed beyond reason.
There is a knock at the door. I look up, and the door opens unceremoniously, against my expressed wishes.
Climbing to my feet, I am all ready to vent my frustration at the cleaning lady for being foolish enough to ignore my Do Not Disturb sign.
But in the next second, my friend Tristen pops his blonde head in, his easy-going grin readily available.
"Knock, knock," he says. He straightens up and enters my room, and I am very glad to see him.
I throw my arms wide. "I didn’t know you were going to be in town,” I declare. “If I had known, I would have reached out to you sooner. I thought you were going to Australia with your fancy law firm."
Tristen’s eyes roll back in his head, and he just shakes his head. "I thought so too. But I guess I was wrong. But hey, now I am here in town when you’re here, so what’s up?”
He steps in the room and closes the door, spinning back to me with a smile on his face. He looks good, wearing yet another of his many three-piece suits, this time in a navy and dusty brown combination of colors. I look him up and down and grin.
"Have you seen any of our other high school classmates?"
Tristen makes his way over to me and collapses into a light-colored armchair.
"Nah. This is all very last-minute. I just flew in from Boston for the sole purpose of seeing you. Well, you and my mom. You know how she is. She would not be very happy with me if I came into town and didn’t at least take her out to a nice dinner. "
The image of Mrs. Bond floats into my consciousness—blonde and smiling and extremely chic. In many ways, she and her son are basically the same person. That is, if she had a job in corporate finance, taking apart businesses with a ruthless passion that is belied by an easy-going nature.
"Well, I’m glad to see you. I’m afraid that you’ll have to bear with me for a little while, though. I’m trying to track down a woman that I saw at the gala event that Remy hosted last night. I think that she holds the key to taking down my brother."
I sit down, paging through the laptop that’s open before me. Tristen sits up, his eyebrows rising.
"Oh?" He says. “When you call him that name, I often get confused. It’s not like you have any other brothers to distinguish Burn from."
Shooting him a look, I shrug. "You know him as well as anyone. After all, you went to high school with my brother too."
He grimaces. "Everybody that’s from a good family in the Tri-County area went to St. Mary’s. We were raised with blue blood in our veins." His lips twitch. "Some of us more so than others."
“Are you perhaps referring to my brother?”
Tristen stands up, moving toward the window. "Not him specifically. But yes. He seems to have taken who your grandfather is more to heart than anyone I know. Like your grandfather being a billionaire is something that Burn himself personally accomplished. It’s a little…"
He breaks off, perhaps searching for a word. I wave him off. "There's no need to be nice for my sake. I know just what Burn is. He's a snake and a toad, at best a boot licker.” I push up my sleeve. "It’s hard to realize that I’ve grown apart from him sometimes. But we could not be more different."
"I would agree with that. Now what exactly is your plan with this random girl that you think your brother knows?"
Pushing my laptop away, I lean forward. "Right. So I think that Burn fucked her."
He turns to me with a frown on his face. "And? Your brother being a cheating scoundrel should not be any great surprise. It certainly isn’t to me. I played Monopoly and Connect Four with him as a kid. He was a cheater then, and he’s a cheater now. What’s the surprise there?"
I purse my lips. "No surprise, really. But I still want him to pay for stealing away my fiancée."
"Not this again. Daisy isn’t that great, man. Don’t you realize that you can date and marry any woman on the planet?"
"Not any woman. Daisy left me. She told me that my brother is a better version of me."
"So what? She is crazy, obviously. I don’t understand why you are willing to go to such lengths to get her back."
I sit back in my seat, affronted. "I’m not planning on getting her back. I am planning on showing her that she made the wrong choice. She jumped ship to become engaged to my brother, and I for one want her to realize that it was the biggest mistake of her whole life."
Tristen schools his expression, pushing back his hair with a hand. "And this girl is going to help you do that?"
"Yes. Talia. But the very first step is to figure out who she actually is. Make sure that she’s legit."
Tristen pulls out his phone and looks down at it, mumbling halfheartedly. "What’d you say her last name is?"
"Chance. Talia Chance. At least, that’s the name she gave me."
He screws up his face as he searches for something on his phone.
"Ah." He moves closer to me, his brow furrowing. "I got her. Talia Chance, a two thousand eighteen Harwicke High School graduate.” He turns his phone toward me. "Is this her?"
There she is, her coppery hair braided over her shoulder, her expression reserved and muted.
She is standing with a cluster of girls, holding a patchwork quilt, and looking as though she would prefer not to be in the photo at all.
I cock a brow, wondering if she might be more attractive if she just dressed differently and did something with her hair.
She has creamy, flawless skin and vivid blue eyes.
In certain lights, I suppose she could be considered attractive.
"That’s her," I say. "She ran away from me last night while I was trying to find out what Daisy wanted."
Tristen sends me a short look, choosing not to comment on that.
Instead, he pulls his cell phone back and looks through the page, trying to gain insight from it.
"Well, it says that she works at a local bookstore. And there are a number of posts here about being ‘thrifty’. Patching jeans, resoling her shoes, mending a coat. A disgusting amount of posts about getting money from recycling. So… It’s likely that she doesn’t come from money. "
I picture her, remembering the little details about her from last night. Her obviously worn coat, her frumpy skirt, her army boots. My lips twitch.
"No, that much is obvious. She doesn’t seem to have two nickels to rub together. It’s funny that a woman like that should even know my brother. I wonder how they came into contact?"
He squints down at his phone and shrugs. "It’s weird, most of the pictures on her Instagram are about books or places here in town. There are no flashy cars, no pictures of her partying, and no new vacations. So I would say that either she met Burn when she was a fish out of water, or vice versa."
"That much is crystal clear."
He presses his lips and tilts his head. "You know, in another life, with a better haircut and a stylist, Talia would be quite a beauty. Her hair is really something else."
I scowl at him. "Do me a favor? Stop trying to make Burn’s bad decisions seem like okay ones. The girl is frumpy and poor, just like Burn’s decision-making process."
Tristen rolls his eyes. "You’re the boss. I’m just here on vacation."
Closing the lid of my laptop, I rise and stretch. "Is it too early for a drink at the Raven’s Head Club?"
Tristen checks his watch and frowns. "Yeah, I think they are still closed. But we can go to that other place I like… What’s it called again?"
I scrunch up my face. "I think you mean Herbsaint."
"That’s the place that all the cute, lower class girls work at?"
I smile ruefully at him. "The very same. Come on, if we hurry, we can be there in time for happy hour. They serve this whiskey punch in the afternoon that I really adore."
"All right. Let’s go."
After I don a suit jacket and slick back my hair, we head down to the lobby, talking about Tristen’s recent surfing trip to Australia. He is just describing to me how it feels to look down and see what he thinks is a great white shark, when we step out of the hotel and practically run into Daisy.
Petite, dark-haired, and wearing a short white dress that shows off her miles of legs under a dark wool cape, Daisy is unmistakable.
She has a beautiful face, a glossy dark mane of hair that falls to her waist, an upturned nose, and a wide, aristocratic forehead.
Add a perfect, plump pout and a pair of flashing hazel eyes, and you have Daisy to a T.