I’ll take care of it.” Stuart bent over Natalie. “What on earth has been going on here, honey?”
“Matthew.”
“Bye, Natalie,” he said quietly as Stuart began to lead her away.
She groaned, but whether it was because he was leaving, or because the Jack Daniel’s had finally staged its inevitable revolt in her stomach, he couldn’t tell. He had already turned his back on them and was heading around to the front of the house where he’d left his car.
Goodbye, and good riddance. He had plenty of trouble in his life right now. He didn’t need to take on more. And no question the lovely Natalie Granville, however adorable, was capital T trouble. Her crumbling mansion was trouble, her empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s before lunchtime was trouble, her statue wearing a wedding dress was trouble. Even her snooty, smothering boyfriend was trouble.
Matthew slammed the car door, turned the key and shoved the gearshift into drive. He should be glad to go, glad to escape from this moldering nuthouse. What a pair! A bone-deep snob and a ditzy, tipsy, possibly crazy Pollyanna.
But maybe he was crazy, too. Because instead of feeling relieved as he watched Summer House grow smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror, he felt an unmistakable, inexplicable pinch of real regret.
SUZIE STRICKLAND SAT in the Summer House driveway for two hours that Saturday afternoon, waiting for Stuart Leith to leave.
She wanted to talk to Natalie.
And she wanted to do it alone. But she couldn’t wait forever. She had summer school Monday, and she had a ton of homework.
How long could that preppy cretin hang around, anyhow? Natalie couldn’t really enjoy his company, could she? He was a double-barreled knuckle-dragger, whereas Natalie was actually kind of cool.
Suzie’s fingers instinctively strayed to her eyebrow, accustomed to fiddling with the little gold ring when she was nervous or irritable or worried. But the ring wasn’t there. The piercing had become infected last week, and she had to wait for it to heal.
It was like a conspiracy. She needed to write an essay to go with her college application, and if she expected to have a shot at an art scholarship it would have to be good as hell, really creative. But how was she supposed to be creative when so many things were driving her crazy?
And here came one more. The lawn mower’s rumble had been growing louder for the past half an hour. Mike Frome, another preppy cretin, was some kind of distant cousin of Natalie’s, and he was spending the summer working on the estate.
She slouched down in the seat, but he saw her anyway. He cut off the mower and came sauntering over, wiping his face with his shirt just so he could show off his buffed-up abs.
“Hey, Suzi-freaka,” he said, in that superior, sarcastic way he had. He’d started calling her that in middle school, when she had worn bell-bottoms and peace signs. He, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that hadn’t already received the Boring Young Conservatives Seal of Approval.
His crowd and her crowd had hated each other since puberty. She had been pretty pissed at fate when, one day last year, while shooting pictures of the basketball team for the school paper, she had discovered that he had suddenly become really cute.
And she meant really cute.
She sat up, acting surprised, pretending she hadn’t noticed his arrival. “Well, if it isn’t Mindless Mike. What are you doing here?”
“I work here.” He put his elbow on the hood of her car and leaned down, smiling in at her. He was all sweaty, but he looked cute sweaty, which he undoubtedly already knew. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here, too, moron.” Oh, brother. She shouldn’t have said that. She hadn’t even asked Natalie about it yet. But he always acted so darn superior, as if his money and his looks and his athletic ability guaranteed him entrée anywhere, while poor little Suzie Strickland, whose parents actually worked for a living, had to prove that she had the right to breathe the same air.
“Oh, yeah?” He looked curious. “What do you do? Are you like the maid or something?”
He was close enough that she could have reached out and punched him. But he would have had a field day with that, telling everyone at school how crazy Suzi-freaka had gone postal on him.
“No,” she said icily. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to be painting a trompe l’oeil in the Summer House library.” She smiled a Cheshire cat smile. “Not that you’d have any clue what a ‘trompe l’oeil’ actually is.”
Mike looked a shade less confident. “The hell I don’t. I was in your art history class last year, remember? It’s a—” he wiped his face again “—a thing on the wall.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Right. It’s a thing on the wall. What did you get in art history class, anyway? A D minus?”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what, Suzi-freaka? I don’t remember what I got. Some of us have more in our lives than obsessing about making the honor roll.”
“Well, that’s fortunate. Considering you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever making the honor roll.”
“Whatever.” Mike yawned extravagantly and pretended to scan the sky with a professional eye. “I’d better get back to work before the rain comes in. I’ve got a hot date tonight.” He raised the pitch of his voice, imitating her. “Not that you’d have a clue what a ‘hot date’ actually is.”
Okay, now she really was going to punch him.
“The hell I don’t,” she countered. “It’s a double-D cup with a single-digit IQ, in the back seat of your daddy’s Land Rover.” She gave him a dirty look. “Although frankly I would have thought you’d had your fill of all that with Justine Millner.”
Oh, hell. She shouldn’t have said that. He had told her about the Justine Millner problem in confidence, one night when, to their total shock, they had ended up at the same party. She had sworn never to mention it again.
But what was she supposed to do? Justine was Mike Frome’s only weak spot, whereas Suzie herself had hundreds, and he knew how to jab an insult into any of them at will.
“You know what you are, Suzi-freaka?” Mike palmed the hood of her car hard in a sardonic goodbye slap. “You’re some kind of serious bitch.”
She watched him lope away. Bitch. He’d never called her that before. Well, so what? Did he really think she cared what he called her? Did he really think she gave a flying flip?
She turned the key in the ignition and started the car. That horrible Stuart Leith wasn’t going anywhere. Apparently everyone on the face of the earth was having hot dates on this summer Saturday night—everyone but her.
Not that she cared. She didn’t care one bit. They were mindless animals, and she was an artist.
But for the first time in her entire life, that word didn’t bring any magical comfort. For the first time in her life, she would have gladly traded places with Justine Millner, or any other bimbo with a double-D cup and a reservation for two in the back of Mike Frome’s father’s SUV.
CHAPTER THREE
NATALIE WAS GOING TO DIE.
At least that’s what she’d been hoping since she woke up this morning, and she figured she had a pretty good chance. If this screaming headache and roiling nausea didn’t get her, surely the humiliation would.
But in the meantime, she had to deliver these plants to Theo. If by some awful chance she lived, she’d still have to pay the electricity bill. And the water bill. And the property taxes. And the insurance. And, and, and…
So she kept driving, even though the sun was stabbing swords