Southern Sinner (North Carolina Highlands 3)

I decide to go with him and set up my own little workstation in a leather wingback chair by the lobby’s massive fireplace. A waiter promptly brings me a beer—a lager from one of my favorite Asheville breweries, Highline—and house-made pimiento cheese with butter crackers. Just what I need to soothe my frayed nerves.

It’s the most manic Monday I’ve had in a while, but it’s also one of the best.

Settling into my cushy chair, I get to work. I just threw a gigantic wrench into my plans going forward, and I have about a zillion and a half things to do to make it all work.

Luckily, the lobby remains mostly empty—it is Monday, after all—so I don’t feel weird taking calls or muttering curses at Excel documents.

Hank checks in every so often with a text.

How’s it going?

I’m thinking about dinner. Are you thinking about dinner? The Barn Door does a great burger.

I look up from my laptop. My stomach does a backflip when I see Rhett approaching. His face lights up with recognition, and he furrows his brow while a confused little smile appears on his lips.

“Stevie? I didn’t know you were here.”

“Hey! Hi. Hi, Rhett.” I set my laptop on the cocktail table beside my chair and leap to my feet, accepting the hug he offers. “Yeah, I, um, came up here on a little last-minute trip.”

“Gotcha,” he says, and we pull back at the same time.

A beat of uncomfortable silence settles between us. I imagine Rhett is also scrambling to think of what to say.

“So are you—”

“Here to see Hank?” I lower my voice. “For real, I mean? Not as his . . . you know, whatever I was before?”

Rhett scoffs.

“What were you before?”

My stomach downright plummets at the sound of a female voice. The sensation goes on for seconds, days, years, making the saliva in my mouth thicken.

Milly steps out from behind her brother’s wide shoulders, and my blood turns to ice at her narrowed eyes and pinched mouth.

Rhett tugs a hand across his mouth, muffling the words, “Oh shit.”

“Just his girlfriend,” I blurt. “I was just Hank’s girlfriend before.”

Milly turns her head, looking at me from the corner of her bright, curious eye. “So are you engaged now?”

“No,” I say miserably. “We’ve just . . . decided to take things to the next level.”

“You’re moving in with him, then.”

I glance around the lobby. Where the hell is that server? I need another beer, stat.

“Not exactly. But we’re trying to work out a schedule where we get to see each other more often.”

The furrow in Milly’s brow deepens. “I don’t get it.”

“Milly,” Rhett warns.

Crossing her arms, Milly turns her death stare on him. “You in on this?”

“In on what?”

I wince at Rhett’s insincere reply.

Milly looks at me again. “The scam.”

The urge to tell Milly the truth—all of it—swells inside me, rising like a fist in the back of my throat. I just want that part of our story to be over already. Now that I’m all in, I feel vulnerable in a way I haven’t before. There’s so much to lose, and I’m suddenly, painfully aware of how thin the ice is Hank and I have been walking on.

“There is no scam,” I say, face burning. “I’m just here to visit Hank. I missed him, so I decided to surprise him by just showing up. He has nothing to do with . . . anything.”

More badly delivered lines that don’t even make sense.

I’m definitely in over my head. Go figure the second I surrender, the second I trust the water to hold me up, is the closest I’ve ever been to drowning.

I wasn’t there when Hank lied the first time to Samuel and Emma. But I’ve sensed how deep that betrayal cut, and now that the wound is finally scabbing over, Hank and I are about to rip it back open.

Not good.

Not good at all.

I guess I’d hoped, foolishly, that the Beauregards would take the fake relationship thing in stride. That they’d laugh, give Hank and me a little speech about how dumb we were, and move on.

And maybe that could be the case if Hank didn’t have a history of deception. Deception that hurt the people he loves.

“I knew it,” Milly says. “I knew there was something fishy about y’all.”

“Milly,” Rhett says again, glancing around the lobby. It’s getting close to five, and guests have started to filter in, gathering at the bar in the far end of the room. “This is not the time nor the place for this conversation.”

“So there is a scam.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She spears him with a look. “Well, I did. Y’all have five seconds to tell me what the hell is going on, or I’m making a beeline for Beau’s office.”

“Please,” I blurt. “Don’t.”

Rhett gives his sister a look right back. “Keep your beak out of this, Milly. I’m warning you. Why do you have to be up in everyone’s business?”