"Keep driving. Please. You can drop me at the gallery on Sixth."
Irritation pitched his voice. "And how will you get to your car?"
"My cousin will take me."
"Rayne-"
She shook her head. "We said one night, Levi. One night. Let's leave it at that, okay?"
He clamped his mouth shut, his jaw straining under the pressure. Crazy how it only took seconds for her to complete the transformation back into a Shelby. Back into a woman who'd allow her family to dictate her life.
"Right here's fine." She pointed to the dark corner junction at Sixth and Sherman and then reached for her door. "I'll walk."
"No, you won't." He gunned it, speeding through a yellow light and over a curb. "I don't care what your last name is, I'm not dropping a woman off on a dark street corner alone."
"Levi, don't-"
He swerved into the parking lot of the gallery, the squeal of his brakes equal to the rage that spewed from her lips.
"That was completely unnecessary. You knew I didn't want a scene!"
"News flash, Shelby. You are a scene." He shot her a smile that could melt metal.
Her fingers shook as they fumbled with the lock. She yanked back on the door handle and proceeded to ram her shoulder into the frame for leverage. "Why won't this thing open?"
He crossed his arms over his chest, his truck idling roughly in the quiet of the night. "I'd be happy to assist you. Just say the word, princess."
"Urgh!"
"Nope. Not the one I was looking for."
She rammed the door once more, and that time, it popped open.
"I'd offer to walk you inside, but I think this is the part where you start pretending I don't exist. I can't quite remember the protocol from last time."
A sharp tap of metal against his window stilled his hand on his driver's side door.
And then he went blind.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
"Gia, turn that thing off!" Rayne rounded the front of Levi's truck, her heels clicking against the asphalt in a clipped trot.
With calculated ease, Gia lowered the police-issue Maglite from Levi's face and swung the beam onto Rayne-making a full and complete pass over her borrowed shirtfront. "Really, Rayne?"
"I'm . . . it's not what it looks like." Rayne's fingers stumbled over the buttons, plucking them free one by one.
Levi rolled his window down and leaned into the open air in his white cotton undershirt, resting his elbow on the doorframe. "Is this where I get read my Miranda rights?"
"Shouldn't you have them memorized by now?"
Levi dipped his chin. "Nice outfit, Gia."
She took a step toward him, her fringy jean shorts, paint-blotched T-shirt, and unlaced combat boots a sight to behold. She planted her feet shoulder width apart as if preparing for a street fight. "At least I'm wearing a real shirt."
"I'll be sure to pass that along."
"You do that, and while you're at it, tell your poker buddy to stop buying my pottery. My art is for connoisseurs. Not for bachelors in a need of a beer coaster."
"Oh, he's more inventive than you give him credit for. In fact, I'm pretty sure Travis uses one of your bowls for composting."
Gia drilled him with a glare that could have shot fire. "Stay away from my cousin."
Rayne clamped a hand at Gia's elbow. "Stop it, Gia."
His face darkened. "The last time I checked"-Levi cut his gaze to Rayne-"which was quite recently, your cousin's a grown woman. She can make her own decisions."
A chill feathered Rayne's exposed skin as she slipped out of the plaid garment and stretched her hand toward him. Her eyes pleaded with him to take the shirt and leave without further comment. She'd have enough to explain as it was.
He didn't oblige her; he simply stared at her face until her legs felt as weak as her pulse. "Keep it. See you in another nine years, Rayne."
She opened her mouth to argue, but he revved his engine, rolled up his window, and disappeared into the night.
The blue-static security light that stained the walls of the gallery reminded Rayne of a scene from Ocean's Eleven. Paranoia had her gaze bouncing from corner to corner as if expecting-maybe even hoping for-a group of undercover agents to pop out of hiding and drag her into an interrogation cell. They'd question her on tonight's whereabouts, ask her about the article of clothing still clutched in her fist, and eventually let her go.
But that kind of Hollywood drama would have been far too easy.
Rayne wove through a maze of randomly placed display pedestals and past endless shelves of Gia's glazed pottery. She sucked in a gasp after narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a small table of handcrafted clay jewelry. Though her cousin had a perfectly usable flashlight on her small person, she hadn't offered to flip the switch. A decision that was most definitely purposeful.
Gia drew back the curtain near the red-lettered exit sign, took a sharp left, and tromped up the steep staircase to her living quarters. She didn't bother to check behind her. She didn't need to.
Rayne had been trailing after Gia since they wore multicolored bangles and played in Aunt Nina's makeup during Sleep-In Saturdays, careful to put every expensive lipstick and mascara tube back in its rightful place before Gia's mother was aroused from bed. They'd captured frogs in the pond near the lodge, made mud-and-grass stew for their imaginary clubhouse guests, and camped under the stars in the Shelby pasturelands.
They were cousins by blood, sisters by circumstance, and best friends by choice. Rayne would always follow Gia.
Her cousin pushed through the door of her one-bedroom apartment and marched into the could-hardly-count-as-a-kitchen kitchen. Rayne braced herself against a piece of furniture she knew almost as well as her own bed, the hide-a-bed sofa in Gia's living room.
"Do you have any idea how many times I called you tonight?"
Rayne hadn't bothered to bring her clutch purse into the barn, which meant she hadn't checked her phone since . . . before BlackTail. "I didn't have my phone on me, Gia. I'm sorry if you were concerned-"
"Concerned? No." She laughed like a cartoon villain. "Concern is when your pants feel snug after a long holiday season. Concern is when you see your first wiry gray hair at twenty-seven. Concern is not when your overly predictable cousin tells you she'll be waiting at your apartment that evening and then doesn't show up. For hours. I went to the lodge, Rayne. And you can imagine what a help sweet Celeste was when I asked where you were."
The gut-punch she'd felt earlier when Celeste had shot down her proposal hit her all over again, but Gia wasn't finished.
"I called the restaurant and had my mom lock up the gallery for me so I could look for you. I called and I called and you didn't answer. Nobody knew where you were. So no, I wasn't concerned. I was out of my mind with worry!"
"I'm sorry, Gia. I wasn't thinking."
Gia kicked off one boot at a time. The hard plunk vibrated the thin laminate floor. "I was going to give it one more hour before I called my dad for help. You better be thanking God that I didn't, because he would have found you." She crossed the room and pointed to Levi's shirt as if it were a dead animal. "With him."
Rayne's skin chilled at the thought of her uncle Tony finding her at the barn with Levi. "I know what you think of him-what the family thinks, but he's . . ." What? What could she really say? "He's different than I thought."
Gia didn't move, didn't even blink. "He's a con man. Just like Travis. Just like Ford."
"No, he's not." Rayne had little to go off of but intuition, yet she felt more sure about that statement now than she had a few hours ago. Than she had a few weeks ago.
"Oh? And did he tell you that as he wrapped you up in his shirt?" Gia dropped her voice a full octave and added a husky drawl. "Rayne, sweetheart, don't worry. I'm one of the good guys, you can trust me. I'm definitely not a con man."
"Don't be mean."
"Then don't be naive." Gia spun toward her miniature wine rack and selected a bottle of red.
"It was an innocent night of fun."
"There is nothing innocent about playing with matches." She riffled through a drawer. "I don't even understand how you two-wait." Gia gripped the wood handle of the corkscrew, her eyes opening wide. "Is he . . . is Levi Hot Guy from the party?"
Rayne's expression was answer enough.
Gia plunged the spiraled tool into the cork, and Rayne would have sworn she felt the prick through her chest wall. "You have got to be kidding me. When I encouraged you to rebel, I meant, like, go get a wrist tattoo, not go have a fling with your family's enemy."
"It was one night. Not a fling. I went to BlackTail after work and he happened to be there. I just needed a mental break, but it's over now. So please, just drop it, okay?" The last thing on earth she needed was another lecture from a Shelby.
"You went to BlackTail?" Gia's stern tone slipped.
"Yes." Rayne sighed. "And yes, Travis was there too. And no, I didn't talk to him." Truth be told, she wouldn't have spoken to anyone if Levi hadn't chased her outside the bar. But in her rush to exit, she'd seen Travis. His imposing stature was hard to miss, even while he was seated. The relationship between Gia and Travis might have ended after their senior year of high school, but for reasons Rayne couldn't understand, the drama between them hadn't. "Can we move on from this topic now?"
After several seconds, Gia finally relented. "Fine. I'll drop it. For now."
"Thank you." Rayne slid onto the couch and pulled a pillow into her lap, allowing her head to rest on the back of the sofa, and closed her eyes.
Gia joined her a moment later, a glass of wine pinched between her fingers as she stretched her legs over the middle cushion between them. "So, I'm guessing it went pretty badly today with Celeste."
Rayne didn't want to think about how badly it had gone, but she couldn't put it off any longer. She'd had her reprieve, her escape, her . . . fun. It was time to be an adult again. To face the truth, no matter how ugly or painful. "You were right; she hasn't changed."
"If it helps, I wish I weren't." Gia nudged Rayne's leg with her socked feet.
"I keep thinking this is all a bad dream, ya know? Like the kind you try to wake yourself up from but can't." She toyed with the frayed edge of the pillow. "I really believed I could be the one to continue Granddaddy's legacy after Cal moved on."
Gia slumped her shoulders. "Nostalgia won't win this battle, Rayne." There was no malice or contempt in her voice, just bone-chilling honesty. "I know that's not what you want me to say. I know how hard you've worked, how hard you've tried to prove yourself to the family, but . . ." The corners of Gia's mouth turned down. "I asked my mom what she knew about this whole Celeste thing." She released a hard exhale. "I guess Celeste and Cal have been corresponding for months. She sent him ideas for improvement, marketing plans for growth and expansion, and basically told him she'd be his little trophy employee whenever he needed her. Of course Mom told him he couldn't do that to you, not after all the years he'd groomed you for management, but . . ."
But Cal had done it.
Just like she'd gone and proven herself unworthy of such an iconic Shelby position.
Rayne stared at the crumpled overshirt draped on the arm of the sofa, Levi's words ping-ponging inside her skull. You shouldn't look so surprised. That's what your kind does. They eat their young. Everything is image and polish and pretense . . . Four hours ago his statement had felt like a personal attack. Now it felt like a prophecy.
Rayne stood and paced the length of her cousin's apartment.
"What are you doing?" Gia asked.
"Trying to think like a Shelby."
"Care to clue me in?"
Rayne swiveled to a stop on her second pass. "Who is Celeste? I mean, really. What do we know about her?"
"That depends. How many expletives am I allowed to use in this conversation?"
Rayne pressed the heels of her hands against her temples as she carried herself back and forth. "I'm serious."
"So am I."
Everything felt clearer, sharper, fresher than it had moments ago. "Based on the brag letters at Christmastime from Great-Aunt Christine and all of Celeste's social media posts . . . she's in constant activity."
"Yeah, so-"
"Go with me on this. Everything Celeste does is a calculated step toward her next career goal. And you and I both know she doesn't crave small-town life, not when she's spent the last decade in New York City trying to make a name for herself. Shelby Falls isn't her scene. And she knows it." Rayne pivoted. "Which means . . . she's not planning on staying here long; she's only here now to soak up all the limelight she can."
"I think I'm going to need another glass of wine." Gia hopped off the sofa to pour herself another glass, while Rayne followed the winding trail of her thoughts.
"Think about it, Gia. Summertime is the liveliest season at the lodge-weddings, dinner parties, a full wait list for reservations. Very high-profile, especially during an election year. It's no wonder she wrote to Cal during the same time my father announced he was running for reelection. She's hoping to share the spotlight. But after Cal leaves for the campaign and our busy summer turns into a much slower fall and then into a practically dead winter . . ." Rayne secured her hands on her hips. "Don't you see? Celeste's marketing plan for the lodge is more of a marketing plan for herself. She's only here to rub elbows and soak up some publicity to add to her resume. And when it's all over, she'll move on."
Gia took a small sip of her vino, her dark lashes peeking over the rim of the wineglass. "Okay, so let's say your Nancy Drew hypothesis is correct and she's only planning to stay as long as it benefits her. What will you do in the meantime?"
"I'll wait her out."
"You realize she's going to do everything in her power to snuff you out so she can soak up the glory."
"Yes." Rayne straightened, her face etched with steely resolve. "But you were right before; it won't be my nostalgia or my passion that wins this war. It will be my loyalty. I'm the tortoise in this race, Gia."
Gia lifted her stemware high. "Well, let's hope your shell is thick, Tortoise. Because this is going to be one loooong summer."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
At a quarter to six, a single ray of sunlight pushed through the low-lying smoke cloud. The faint tap of Rayne's canvas flats against the rock pavers leading from her cabin to the lodge kept time with her steady pulse.