“Are you going to tell my mother you’ve told me all this?” I asked.
“No—not yet. I’ll say I haven’t said a word about my suspicions to you. Let her believe that I’ve spent some time thinking about it on my own, and I’m trying to leverage this for my own gain. That way we keep the element of surprise on our side.”
“I don’t know. My mother is shrewder than I wish she was,” I said.
“Remember—I’m an escort. You do a lot of faking when you’re an escort. Trust me, I can fake something this important.” She looked at me and scowled. “You’re the one who needs to put on an act. You look enraged. And even though you have every right to be, we have to play this just right. Even if it only buys us a little more time.”
Audrey
I didn’t ever want to talk to James’s mother again, but I really didn’t want her to kill me, either. I was taking a risk with the threat of the letters. A calculated risk, I kept telling myself, but I was still petrified.
Celia Preston could do that to you.
“I’m going to the bar,” I told James. I was wearing a conservative black dress so that when she called me a whore, at least I’d be dressed like a lady. I held up an envelope. “This is what I’m going to show her. I drafted another one. It’s in the bedroom. If she strangles me, please mail it to the Tribune.” I smiled at him, trying to make light of the situation, but James glowered at me as I stuck the envelope in my pocketbook.
“It’s not funny,” he said, his jaw clenching. “I don’t want her anywhere near you.”
“You said it yourself—she’s not going to hurt me here. It’s too close. And you can come, too, but you have to stay with Todd and Cole. And no glowering, at least no more than usual. We don’t want your mother to know that I’ve told about Danielle. Okay?”
“Okay for right now,” James said. He grabbed my hand, and I noticed how very sexy he was looking in his T-shirt and a pair of faded cargo shorts with flip-flops. I loved the man in a suit, but I loved him dressed casually, too. He looked as if he were a mere mortal, not a gazillionaire.
I think the point was I loved him.
“I love you,” I said, stopping him before we went outside. I pulled him in for a deep kiss. “All this family intrigue is really messing with our sex schedule,” I said, pretending to pout and keep our moods light. “I thought we were just going to be in bed this whole trip.”
“I wish,” James growled, running his hands over me. “But we have to deal with this. I can’t have my mother even thinking about harming you. We’ll try this tonight, but tomorrow, I’m calling Danielle’s parents and alerting the authorities back home. They’ll have to reopen the case as a criminal investigation.”
I nodded at him. “Okay. Let’s just see what your mother has to say to me right now.”
* * *
As this was a group vacation, and as James’s family liked to drink, everyone in our party was at the bar. The floor-to-ceiling windows had all been opened, so the warm night air spilled in. There was a breathtaking view of the ocean and the moon above it. Someday, I thought, James and I will come back here and have a real vacation. I clasped my fingers around the small, gold necklace that he’d given me before the wedding; I needed it to remind me to be brave. I loved James, and I had to protect him from his mother. Protecting myself from her was secondary—but if something happened to me, if she did something horrible, I knew it would break him.
We had to beat her.
He ordered us drinks, and I gave him a small kiss, leaving him with Todd and Evie and Evie’s sinewy cousins, as I searched the room for his parents. They were seated near the indoor fireplace with several of the older guests.
I took a sip of my martini, hoping it would act as liquid courage, and approached their little group.
“Good evening,” I said, barely able to contain the shakiness in my voice. Celia Preston was wearing an island-appropriate flowered tunic, white linen pants, and orange patent-leather gladiator sandals that probably cost as much as a mid-sized Hyundai.
“Hello, dear,” she said, and I noticed she was drinking a martini, too. So she’d already had some liquid courage.
Not that she seemed to need any.
“May I speak with you for a moment, Mrs. Preston?” I asked politely. “It’s about what we discussed earlier.”
She smiled at me tightly and stood. “Of course,” she said. She motioned for me to follow her to a small table at the corner of the bar, away from everyone else. I was afraid, but I knew she was too dignified and far too premeditated to throw herself across the small glass table at me right here in public. Still, a cold sweat coated my palms, and I felt positively queasy to be so close to her again.