Taming Lily (The Fowler Sisters #3)(65)

It’s best that he doesn’t know. He’s my friend, but I don’t want to look like a complete failure in his eyes.

And f*cking around with the person I’m supposed to be trailing after? That’s definitely failing.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I ask, keeping my voice even, trying my damnedest to appear neutral. That Lily doesn’t matter to me.

“You wanted to know if there’s anything incriminating on this laptop? Well, there is—against its owner. I found other encrypted files, ones that Lily put on the laptop over a year ago. I broke into them.” Levi studies me, his gaze narrowed. “What exactly did she do when she was in Maui, anyway? ’Cause she sure wasn’t trying to gather up evidence against Pilar. She totally missed those last emails between her and Felicity, which blows my mind. But maybe that was enough for her? Before the actual dirty dealing started to happen, Felicity would hint that she wanted to know the latest happenings with the Fleur product lines, but Pilar always blew her off. It read like they were circling around each other, trying to see who’d cave in first and offer up the goods.”

“Lily spent a lot of time outside,” I lie. More like she spent a lot of time with me.

“Huh.” Levi rubs his chin again. “There’s naked pictures on it.”

“What?” The word blasts out of me like a shot. “Of Lily?”

Levi nods. “Lots of them. Topless shots, ass pics, and one full nude—the girl is crazy for leaving them on her laptop, but they’re there. Some of them I can tell were transferred from an old cell phone. Most of them are old. I thought they might all be on her cloud storage, but I think she only saved them to her Time Capsule at home. No one else would be able to access them unless she has another computer in her apartment that has access to the Time Capsule.”

Ah, Lily. Keeping naked photos on her laptop? What the hell is wrong with her? At least they’re not in the cloud, like all those other celebrity photos that were recently exposed. “Pilar would love to have them.”

“She’d probably blast them all over the internet,” Levi says.

“I can’t let her have this laptop.” I exhale loudly and hang my head.

“Nope, you absolutely cannot,” Levi agrees cheerfully.

Chapter twenty-two

Lily

“GOD,” I GROAN, slumping over the tiny desk in my bedroom, blearily staring at the giant screen of my iMac. I was so tired, so freaking depressed and angry after I came back from Maui, I fell into bed the minute I got home and slept for hours. More like a day. I managed to make myself presentable and went to see Rose and Violet at Fleur—which was supposed to only be lunch but turned into an all-afternoon adventure with lunch and then the meeting …

That, surprisingly, went well. Daddy was pleasant. Grandma wasn’t there, so I didn’t have to deal with her. I love my grandma, but she knows how to lay on the guilt.

In an extremely thick layer that suffocates me.

I came home from the meeting only to crash again, sleeping through the entire night. Woke up in the morning, brewed myself a pot of coffee, and finally started to make an attempt to open the hard drive that’s included in my router so I can figure out exactly what’s stored on my stolen laptop.

And I’m starting to freak out.

My hand on the mouse, I open up the folder I forgot I’d created, the one entitled Naughty, and I click through the endless photos of me … naked. Cringing, I squint at the screen, shuffling through the pictures, my stomach slowly twisting and turning. They’re mostly of me topless, with a few butt photos mixed in. A series in particular featuring me standing naked with my back to the camera, hands on hips and sassy smile fixed in place as I look coyly over my shoulder.

I remember exactly who I took those photos for. A guy named John. Ten years older than me and richer than my daddy, he made me feel like I was special. He spoiled me rotten, took me shopping, bought me sexy shoes, sexy lingerie …

He was also a total pervert who loved to look at me naked—particularly my butt. Claimed he could stare at it all day.

Being the generous semi-girlfriend that I was, because we weren’t necessarily a couple but we were together one Valentine’s Day, I decided to send these photos to him via text.

Too bad his actual girlfriend found them. The one I didn’t know existed. The one who didn’t know I existed, either. Thank God John deleted all of those photos before she could do any major damage.

Did I learn from that lesson? Um, no, doesn’t look like I did. Not when the last photo appears, the image filling my screen in vivid detail. Of me sitting in the center of my bed, my head tilted to the side so my hair spills over my shoulder, covering one of my breasts, my nipple peeking through. A sultry smile curves my lips and my legs are spread wide, knees bent and feet planted firmly on the mattress, all my goods on blatant display …

I cover my face with my hands and make an inarticulate noise, trying to tell myself it’s all going to be okay. Despite the laptop being gone, these photos won’t show up anywhere. At least I didn’t save them to my cloud storage. I don’t trust the cloud, and for good reason. But hey, I’ll be fine. Absolutely, perfectly fine.

Inhaling sharply, I hold my breath then let it out, trying to calm my racing heart. But it’s no use. Whoever has my laptop—f*cking Max, motherf*cker—has access to those photos.