The Price Of Scandal(95)

Her fountain burbled happily on the flagstone terrace. Beyond it, the pool glowed softly under moonlight. Tealights floated on its surface.

I took a sip of serenity and made a face when Luna wasn’t looking. The woman was heavy-handed with turmeric.

“Moon, how do you work this stereo thing?” Cam demanded from one side of the outdoor fireplace.

“I got it,” Luna said, dancing over to her.

Cam joined me on the low wooden couch with cushions the color of pomegranates. “Here,” she said, handing me a very large glass of wine. “Don’t pour your serenity directly into the plants or they’ll wither up and die. Dig a little hole in the sand.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“We’re worried about you,” she said, taking a gulp from her own glass of wine.

“I’m worried about me, too,” I said dryly. “It’s been a day.”

The music came on from hidden speakers above us. It was chanting monks.

Cam snickered into her wine. “God love her.”

“Let’s go through it beat by beat,” Luna suggested, returning to us and plopping down on a rattan ottoman. “It’s important to let yourself feel the trauma, or it can take root in your body.”

“The vegan beauty Instagram influencer speaks the truth,” Cam teased.

“You guys don’t really want to hear this,” I sighed.

“Yes. We do,” Luna said firmly. “Start at the beginning.”

So I hit them with it. All of it. Starting with my revelation in the hallway at AHA and then moving on to Trey’s phone call, my mother’s demands, the media shitstorm. And then Derek. Or, more precisely, Derek and Lita.

They listened without interrupting until the end.

“And to top it off, my father calls me and tells me the board is expecting my resignation from Flawless by tomorrow at nine.”

“That’s fucking bullshit,” Cam snapped.

“And how does that make you feel?” Luna asked, resting her chin on her hand.

“How does that make me feel? Really fucking shitty, Moon.”

I felt wrung out and defeated. And perhaps just slightly, marginally better for at least releasing the words from the body.

“Great. That’s exactly how you should feel,” Luna said approvingly. The monks above us hit a particularly monotonous note.

“I’d like to point out that Ems here seems to be way more upset over that British sex god than about Flawless,” Cam said.

“I’m not,” I argued.

“Babe, you are,” Luna said gently. “He hurt you.”

Deeply. Irreparably. Scarringly.

Cam raised a finger. “Listen, this is not coming from a disloyal place, but you don’t actually believe that he screwed around with Lita, do you?”

“You saw the pictures,” I said.

“Technically, that’s not an answer,” Luna pointed out. “We’ve all seen the pictures, and I’m still inclined to agree with the beautiful Cam here.”

I heaved a sigh and thought about Lita’s superpower ability to seduce a man. Derek’s flirtatious charm. “Look, even if they didn’t have sex, those pictures made it very clear that something beyond business was happening.” My stomach rolled again. Dear God, did I even have any liquid left in my body? “Something that he kept from me after I made it abundantly clear that anything less than complete transparency was a deal-breaker for me.”

“Fair enough. He screwed up big time,” Cam agreed. “But I’m seeing a well-orchestrated, multi-pronged smear campaign. All of the rest of it is bullshit. So why wouldn’t the pictures be bullshit too?”

I hated the vile spark of hope that flared pathetically to life in my chest. I wanted to kill it.

“I don’t know. Does it even matter?” He was still doing something wrong, my survival instinct screamed at me.

Cam took the empty wine glass from me and refilled it from the bar cart. There was a bonsai tree next to a bottle of her favorite organic vodka.

Luna shook out her wild hair over her shoulders. “Cam’s right. There’s no way all of these stories were cooking independently of one another. Someone is out to get you.”

“Yeah, and that someone succeeded.”

The sound of a small boat engine caught our attention. We saw lights out on the bay. They were speeding in our direction.

“If this is the paparazzi, I’m shooting them with a flare gun,” Cam said, gaining her feet.

Together we walked down to the beach, wine glasses wielded as weapons. A glossy wooden dinghy beached itself a few yards from us. Something disco-ball sparkly moved behind the wheel. “All yours, Martin.”

Daisy, dressed in a captain’s hat, glitzy, silver cocktail dress, and life preserver, climbed over the stern and hopped down into the water.

“Shoes!” she called.

A pair of silver stiletto sandals sailed through the air and landed in the sand at my feet.

“Champagne!” Daisy said again. A steward lugged a case of champagne to shore and dropped it next to the shoes. He gave me, then Daisy, a salute before returning to the dinghy.

“Girl, you sure know how to make an entrance,” Luna said, hugging Daisy in the surf.

“Like I’m not going to leave a flotilla when my friend may need my underworld connections to have a bunch of people disappeared?” she snorted.