Of their own accord, her fingers intertwined with Tony’s, anchoring her. “Let’s go in, boyfriend.”
Hunger flashed across his chiseled face so quickly she almost missed it, but it lasted long enough to make the butterflies in her stomach break into a flash mob dance performance.
The store’s door flew outward, forcing Tony and Sylvie to jump apart to avoid the impact.
Pippa Worthington stormed out, her white hair streaming behind her like a battle flag. The moment she spotted them, her stiletto-clad foot faltered and she bobbled. Her eyes went as large and round as oversized mother-of-pearl buttons. The fashion world’s self-proclaimed ruler swayed, caught between her diamond-hard façade of superiority and the cold hard reality of public humiliation.
Without hesitating, Tony clasped Pippa’s elbow, stabilizing her. Her footing regained, she raised her chin and narrowed her eyes into slits of disdain. “Please remove your hand.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He shoved his hand into his pocket.
Sylvie looped her arm through Tony’s elbow, giving Pippa her most insincere smile. “I hope you’re doing well.”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m always fine.” Pippa pushed a pair of opaque sunglasses up her long, straight nose, shielding the vulnerability in her frosty blue eyes. “Why don’t you tell that to the world on your little blog?”
Sylvie blinked away the momentary shock. She hadn’t expected Pippa ever to acknowledge the High-Heeled Wonder. According to staffers at Chantal, there was a longtime style editor at the magazine whom Pippa had refused to acknowledge for the past decade. Cold. Impervious. Despised. That was Pippa Worthington. What she hated, she decimated. What she couldn’t destroy, she ignored with the efficiency of a tailor on awards night.
“I would tell the world, but I can’t. Someone hacked the site.”
The upper edges of two pencil-thin eyebrows appeared from behind Pippa’s oversized sunglasses. “How unfortunate.”
Tony’s hand squeezed Sylvie’s twice. A part of her registered the warning to step softly, but it was too late. Fury and frustration over fighting an unknown and unseen enemy had reached its peak. Adrenaline roared through her veins, daring her to force the self-proclaimed queen to defend her position.
“It’s no secret you hate the High-Heeled Wonder.” Sylvie shook off Tony’s grasp. “The threats. The e-mails. The driver who tried to run me down. Was it you?”
Instead of being offended, Pippa laughed. “Oh my, you have annoyed someone. But not me. Little one, your worthless site barely registered on my radar.”
“Until I broke the news about you losing Chantal.”
The laughter died. Pippa’s shoulders straightened and she tossed her hair over one shoulder. “I haven’t lost Chantal. Don’t you worry about Chantal…or me. We’ll be brilliant. You should be worried about yourself. You’re not a real fashion journalist. You’re not a professional. You don’t produce a tangible product. You don’t have the influence, brains, or guts to really make an impact on the world of fashion. You’re just someone who fannies about on the computer. People like you aren’t ready to sit at the adults’ table. Don’t you know better than to mess with people who buy their ink by the barrel?”
The insults, delivered with expert precision, landed with deadly force. Sylvie reacted the only way she knew how when cornered. She bared her teeth. “If you even—”
“Don’t bother threatening me.” Pippa waved manicured fingers in the air. “I have more important things to do with my day than worry about some insignificant blogger. I have a fashion empire to run.”
She stormed off to her black Town Car, where a man in an ebony suit held open the door. Sliding inside, she never looked back, let alone offered a thank you to Tony for stopping her fall.
“Well that went…” Tony’s voice trailed off as Pippa’s limo merged into traffic. His cell phone buzzed and he slid it out of his jacket’s inside pocket.
“Yeah, it went.”
“That’s quite an interrogation technique you’ve got. I’m shocked they don’t teach it at the police academy.” He smiled as he said it, but his eyes stayed glued on the text message.
“Sorry, I guess I lost it a bit there.” To put it mildly. “Doubt we’ll get another chance to find out what she knows.”
Tony tsked. “No need. Cam just finished checking her out. No ties to the IP address Carlos found. No encrypted files on her computer, and the documents on her hard drive and smartphone, home and office, are almost all Chantal-related. She doesn’t have a driver’s license or a car, let alone a silver Mercedes. She does use a car service, but as you saw, their vehicles are black Town Cars, and each trip is logged into a central system. No questionable financial transactions going out or coming in. She’s squeaky clean. So either she’s innocent or she knows how to cover her tracks like a CIA agent. Oh, and she was in DC at the White House interviewing the first lady the day you almost got mowed down.”
She stared at him. “How the hell did you manage to get all that information?”
“I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes. “Was it at least legal?”
“Legal-ish.” He shot her his most charming smile, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
Pippa had never made much sense as her stalker. Running a magazine like Chantal wasn’t a nine-to-five job. It was a brutal undertaking that required eighty-hour work weeks and almost slavish devotion. Her stalker had had time on his hands to create such a hate-filled plot. And with Ivy as good as cleared, that left Anders. With assistants, freelance designers, and business managers, could he have managed it?
Sylvie sighed. “So clearing her is that simple?”