Facing the Music (Rosewood 1)

He took a few steps toward her, narrowing his eyes with suspicion. “I find that very hard to believe, Lydia. You’ve been chasing after me since junior high.”

“I know, but we really aren’t meant for each other. Seeing you and Ivy together at the game last night made me realize that we want different things. I want a handsome, successful husband who treats me like a goddess. You want to slum with the poor girl that made a career out of humiliating you and half the male population of California. How could I love a man with such poor judgment?”

She shrugged, pursing her pink lips as she considered her next words. “We’re not meant to be. I know that now.”

“Then what was tonight about? Why set this trap and ruin everything for me?”

“I wasn’t trying to ruin things, I was trying to save you from yourself. It’s like I said before, I did this for you. Date anyone, Blake. Anyone but Ivy. You might think you had something special, but when it fell apart, she’d write another awful song about you. She can’t be trusted, so I had to send Ivy back to California for good.”

Blake squeezed his eyes tightly shut as he tried to wrap his mind around her logic. “This has nothing to do with me,” he said at last. “You can throw all your altruistic motivations out the window, because I’m not swallowing that crap. You did this to hurt Ivy. What happened between you two that you would waste so much of your energy trying to wound her?”

“She took everything that was supposed to be mine!” A red flush of rage mottled Lydia’s flawless complexion. “And she did it on purpose. She went out of her way to take away everything I wanted because she was jealous of my life. I was the head cheerleader. I was popular and pretty and had the envy of everyone in school. I was supposed to be the prom queen. I was supposed to date the captain of the football team and live this charmed life.”

Blake tried to process everything she was throwing at him. She apparently had years of built-up aggression over her competition with Ivy. What he couldn’t understand was why she thought Ivy did it on purpose. Ivy never wanted to be prom queen, but she tolerated it for his sake. Blake had asked out Ivy, not the other way around, so it wasn’t as though she had stolen him away from Lydia.

“You need some therapy.”

Lydia laughed. “I’m not disturbed, Blake. I see everything very clearly. Ivy took it all away just to spite me. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her have you, too.”

Blake shifted nervously on his feet. “Are you threatening me, Lydia?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t hurt you just to get back at her. I’ve cared about you for too long to ever do something like that. I just want to see Ivy broken, defeated, and back in California, where she belongs.”

He could feel his blood pressure start to rise. “Well, you’ve got your wish. She’s leaving Rosewood as we speak. At the moment, I wish you’d do the same.” Blake circumvented her to unlock his desk drawers and opened one to pull out the envelope with the pictures from Nash.

“Wait,” she said. “What are those?”

“Nothing to worry your little head over, since you’re going to turn yourself in to the police. Or was that just a big story to keep me in my office?”

Her stoic expression proved him right.

“What?” he asked. “I told you Nash kept copies, and I was right. I’m not the only one with them. Apparently while you were in here playing me, someone else was playing you. This picture,” he said, holding up the envelope. “On the jumbotron. Where the whole town could see it.”

Lydia listened to him quietly, her hands tightly balled into fists at her sides. Her lips were pressed together into a thin line, and her gaze was icy as she regarded him. She didn’t like that she had been caught. It was ruining her glorious moment, splitting up him and Ivy at last.

“What are you going to do with those pictures?”

“Well, the funny thing is that I’d decided yesterday that I wasn’t going to do anything with them. No one got hurt, and Ivy and I were happy together. I didn’t want to embarrass your family. But tonight, you’ve gone way too far and I have no choice but to change my mind. I’m about to hand them over to Clark Newton. Look for your debut on the front page of the Rosewood Times tomorrow morning.”

Lydia’s jaw dropped open, her eyes wide with panic. “Blake, please,” she pleaded, but it wasn’t going to make any difference. “What do you want? I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” He chuckled bitterly. “Well, then I want you to track down Ivy right now. Run out of my office and go straight to her cabin to tell her what you did.”

She didn’t budge, not one inch. Instead, she just shook her head and dropped her guilty gaze to the floor of his office. Apparently, those pictures hitting the paper was the price she was willing to pay to run Ivy off once and for all. A fatal checkmate that made losers of both players.

Blake would never understand women. “Fine, don’t help me save my relationship with Ivy. It’s just as well. People in this town need to know what kind of person you really are. Not even that beauty pageant smile and your family contacts will get you out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself. It didn’t have to come to this.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

“I don’t want to see you—any part of you—for a long time. I mean it. Not at the football games. Not at the bank. I don’t want to run into you at Woody’s or see you hanging around with my sister at the bakery or my parents’ house. I’m pretty sure no one else in town is going to be too keen on hanging out with you, either, so you’d do good to lay low for a few weeks. Do you understand me?”

He waited for Lydia to nod, then he brushed past her into the hallway without another word.

Chapter 20

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, my boy.” Adelia Chamberlain stared her grandson down with a look that would make lesser men wet themselves.

Blake should’ve known he was in trouble when he got a summons to the house Wednesday morning. When Winston had called and said his presence was requested by his grandmother, he’d gotten a sinking feeling in his stomach.