Page 23 of Deadly Little Scandals

I’d never been much for dating, only partially because I’d never been the kind of girl that boys dated. I could handle catcalls and propositions and rumors about what might or might not have happened under the bleachers, but anything beyond that was virgin territory.

No pun intended.

“Sawyer?” Nick prompted.

“And here I thought you were going to ask me to plan a jewel heist,” I quipped, because quipping was easier than thinking about what hehadasked in any level of detail.

“If I wanted to plan a jewel heist,” he retorted, “I would have called Campbell.”

Hearing him say her name didn’t hurt, even knowing their history.Thank God.My utter lack of an urge to wince reinforced for me that I was still on the right side of the fine line I’d spent my life skirting. Flirting was fine. Thinking was fine. Physicality, even, I could handle.

Just not feelings.

“Whydidn’tyou call Campbell?” I asked. They’d been each other’s method of blowing off steam, once, and if I owed him, she owed himbig.

“Because,” came the reply. “I called you.”

That—and the way he’d said it, his voice softening—wasn’t something I had any intention of letting my mind linger on for long.

Luckily, Nick chose that moment to enlighten me as to why he wanted to go to some party badly enough to call in a favor. “I have a sister. She’s fifteen. Lives with our grandmother. Wants to do the stupid Debutante thing in a couple of years.”

He sounded so disgruntled at the idea that I grinned. “And this requires me going to a party with you why?” I asked.

“I have money now.” He sounded disgruntled about that, too. “I just don’t have the connections she needs. Or the reputation.”

“Are you asking me to make you respectable?” I said, enjoying this more than I should have. “What is this, a Jane Austen novel?”

“I like Jane Austen,” he replied evenly. “And you owe me.”

I did—and as long as I owed him, that was all this had to be. A debt I could pay. Maybe we’d get another dance in.

Maybe I could get him out of my system.

“You have yourself a deal,” I said.“Mr. Ryan.”

Before he could respond to my use of his last name, Aunt Olivia called out for Lily and me from inside the house, and I stifled a groan.

“What was that?” Nick asked.

My traitor lips ticced upward. “Goodbye, Nick.”

I hung up just in time to hear Aunt Olivia trill out, “Who wants to make personalized memo boards? And then I’ll show y’all the absolutelydarlinglittle outfits I got for Greer’s shower.”

My desire to make a memo board for a dorm room I hadn’t even agreed to live in yet ranked only slightly above my utter lack of inclination to attend a baby shower for a baby who I knew for a factdid not exist.I’d been expecting Sadie-Grace’s stepmother to have a “miscarriage” for months. When we’d received the invitation to the shower, I’d even tried telling Aunt Olivia that Greer was faking her pregnancy.

Aunt Olivia had shushed me.“Don’t be silly, Sawyer. I’m sure you simply misunderstood.”Personally, I thought witnessing a woman strapping on a fake pregnancy belly was the kind of thing that was pretty darn hard to “misunderstand,” but Aunt Olivia wouldn’t hear a word about it.“To think that any woman would do such a thing! Pshaw. I’ve had enough ridiculousness for one summer, thank you very much. We’re going to that shower. End of story.”

“Don’t you think the girls have been punished enough?” Uncle J.D. asked, right inside the window. As much as I agreed with the sentiment, the fatherly tone with which he’d saidgirls, plural, hit me like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Are you implying that time spent with me is a punishment, John?” Aunt Olivia only called him by his first name when she was annoyed.

“They’re eighteen, Liv. Almost nineteen.”

“I’m always Liv when you want something,” Aunt Olivia said quietly.

“God forbid I try to talk to you like—”

“Like I’mher?”