Beautiful Liar (The Reed Rivers Trilogy 2)

Peter Hennessy. That’s the next name on the list. And one I don’t recognize. But when I google the guy, and see his photo, I palm my forehead. He’s Henn! Reed’s nerdy-looking best friend from college. When I met him at the bar, he instantly put me at ease with his authenticity and sweetness.

Hannah Hennessy. Henn’s wife, I assume. I google and find out she is, indeed, Henn’s wife—an adorable brunette with glasses who works in the publicity department of a movie studio... the same studio owned by Howard Devlin, as a matter of fact. Huh. What a small world! Or is it? Did Reed have something to do with Hannah getting that job? Did Reed pick up the phone and use his connections to help Hannah get an interview? Because that’s exactly the kind of thing I could see Reed doing: pulling strings behind the scenes to help his best friend’s woman get her dream job . . .

Ping.

A murky thought raps gently at the back of my brain. Ping. The thought is like a soft cotton ball lobbed at me from ten feet away...

It’s only a blurry idea at the moment, tugging at the outer fringes of my consciousness. But before the cotton ball hardens into an actual pebble, my phone buzzes with an incoming text that makes me squeal and forget all about the fuzzy thought gently pinging in the back of my head. It’s a message from Alessandra that reads:

I’m at Reed’s front gate, baby! LET ME IN! It’s time to pre-party like ROCKSTARS before we party with ACTUAL ROCKSTARS! (But first, a sandwich. Please. For the love of all things holy, I’m starving.)

Chapter 27

Georgina

“Oh my God,” Alessandra says, gaping at the seven gleaming cars lined up before us in Reed’s massive garage. We’re at the last stop of the house tour I’ve been giving Alessandra for the last thirty minutes. And Alessandra is clearly as blown away by the spectacle of Reed’s glittering car collection as she was the rest of the house.

I lead her down the row of vehicles, expertly rattling off whatever I know about each make and model—all the same factoids Reed told me during my house tour, plus some stuff I think I might have made up—and Alessandra “oohs” and “aahs” and makes snarky comments about Reed’s over-the-top “bougie-ness” the whole time.

When we come to a standstill in front of Reed’s yellow Ferrari, the second-to-last entry in the collection, I say, “Reed finally got this beauty back from the body shop yesterday. A few weeks ago, he was driving it too fast around a curve and, according to him, a tree ‘leaped out into the middle of the road,’ right in front of him.”

“Oh my gosh. Was Reed hurt?”

“No, thankfully. But the right front of the car wasn’t as lucky. Apparently, it was really smashed up... right through there.”

I crouch down and peer closely at the area in question, and Alessandra bends down and joins me in scrutinizing the body shop’s handiwork.

“You can’t even tell it was ever busted,” Alessandra marvels.

“Yeah, it looks as good as new. Wow.”

We straighten up and walk a few steps to our left.

“And last but not least... this is Reed’s favorite, by far.” I motion to Reed’s beloved Bugatti. “It’s a Bugatti Chiron. Which, believe me, is far superior to the Bugatti Veyron. The Bugatti folks really upped their ‘pickup’ game with the Chiron.”

Alessandra scoffs and rolls her eyes along with me. “Like I always say, the Veyron is a straight-up piece of shit.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s exactly what I said!”

We laugh and laugh.

“Wow, Georgie,” Alessandra says. She pauses to look around the expansive space. “Reed really did make you his Cinderella, didn’t he? Just like he said that night at the bar.”

I inhale sharply. Holy crap. Alessandra is right. He did. Indeed, that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling this entire week with him. Like Cinderella at the ball.

Alessandra walks a few steps away to inspect Reed’s sporting equipment on the far wall, but I stand frozen and flabbergasted by my epiphany. Have I been a fool to let myself get swept into a fairytale with a man like Reed Rivers—a man who’s made it quite clear he’s got no desire to be anyone’s Prince Charming? There can’t possibly be a happily ever after at the end of this fairytale I’ve been play-acting with Reed. I really need to remind myself of that fact, and prepare myself for the alternate ending. I need to pull back. Stuff these feelings down. Guard my heart so it won’t get hurt. I glance at Reed’s sparkling yellow Ferrari, and think, If I give my heart to Reed and he smashes it, I can’t imagine I’d come out the other side looking as good as new, the way this Ferrari did.