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So even though it wasn’t sophisticated, or classy, or remotely adultish, I was honest. “Mrs. Astor said she had a photo of him and was about to show everyone his picture. Aaron’s.”
“You say about to—so I’m assuming she didn’t?”
“No, a rogue mimosa stopped her.” I shifted on the bench of the golf cart. “With the way everyone was crowding around her, they were going to see him first. I wasn’t trying to sabotage the whole thing, I just… I truly did just act on impulse.”
The defensiveness in my tone was clear, though I wasn’t certain the desperation was.Please don’t judge me too harshly. I would’ve accepted that he couldn’t understand it, but I didn’t want this to change how he thought of me. I wanted it so badly that it almost made me feel sick.
“I want to see him before they do,” I went on when Sumner didn’t interject. “And it felt… wrong, I suppose, to see him through a photo.”
“I get that, I guess.” Sumner turned the steering wheel to bank us around the seventh hole, where the flag waved in the wind. With how absent his gaze was, he got close enough that I could’ve reached out and grabbed it. “If he wanted you to know what he looked like, he wouldn’t have canceled the video chat.”
I’d begun nodding, since that was where my thoughts had been as well, but paused. “How did youknow he didn’t show?” I asked. “I didn’t tell you about it.”
He blinked. “I just assumed. You weren’t in the meeting long enough, and you seemed upset after?—”
“I wasn’t upset,” I argued, but my posture deflated a little. “Aboutthat, anyway.”
An uncomfortable current ran underneath my skin. Perhaps it was the mere mention of Aaron to begin with, bringing him up even though Sumner was supposed to be my safe place from the topic. “It’s strange, not knowing what he looks like, though. I’ve never even spoken with him. He could be anyone in the world, and I’d never know.”
Sumner nodded. “I could be Aaron.”
It was such a nonchalant way he’d said it.I could be Aaron. It was a thought that made no sense at first, a harmless joke, but it slowly sank in further. He was the same age as Aaron Astor. He was from California… like Aaron Astor. He’d garnered my parents’ approval. Saturday, at Mimosa Morning—what if he hadn’t been hiding from Mr. Roberts, but from Vivienne? Because it was his mother?
On a slow pivot, I turned my head toward him, staring. The uneasy feeling once again reared its head in full force.
Feeling the intensity of my gaze, Sumner shifted uneasily in his seat. “I just meant, like, since you don’t know what he looks like, I could be him for all you know. I’m not, though.”
I continued to stare.
“No, seriously, I’m not. Itwas a joke.”
“If you’re him, I’ll kill you.” My tone left no room for negotiation. “I really will.”
Sumner held one hand up from the steering wheel, leveling it with his shoulders. “You can even look at my license. I’m not Aaron.”
His insistence calmed me a little. As logic set in, I realized Sumner couldn’t have been Aaron Astor, for many reasons. He told me about not wanting to walk a path that others had set out for him—that wasn’t something a rich man like Aaron Astor would say. My mother had even snapped at him Saturday morning. Him being my secretary alone seemed to be the biggest reason. I couldn’t imagine Aaron Astor hired to follow me around for… what? Undercover recon on his future fiancée?
Except that sort of sounded like something the rich would do.
His golden hair was quite a bit darker than Vivienne’s, but from what I remembered from photos, Mr. Astor had blond hair. Sumner’s nose—did it look like Vivienne’s?
I held out my hand, palm up.
Sumner blinked at it in confusion for only a moment. “What?”
“Your license.”
He sighed before braking completely, putting the golf cart into park. Once we were still, he leaned backward so he could fish his wallet from his front pocket. “You’re a little ridiculous, you know that?” His voice held no heat, though. He pried out his license, offering it over to me.
The first thing I looked at on the piece of Californian plastic wasn’t the name, but the ID photo. It was aphotograph of Sumner, of course. His hair was shorter, cropped closer to his head, which made him look younger. He didn’t smile at the camera, but there was still an undercurrent of happiness that was evident in the photo. Apparently, he’d always been perpetually cheerful.
“See?” he said, expectant. “Not Aaron Astor.”
My eyes drifted over to the name, and sure enough,Sumner Penningtonwas written in blocky letters. “This could be a fake ID,” I said.
“Do you have any idea what a fake ID looks like?”
Admittedly, no. And if this was a fake, it’d have to be a really good one. Trying to seem as nonchalant as possible, I passed the card back.