“Just wondering.” She perched on the edge of the table I was working from. Her gaze seared into me as I typed.
“Why are you here?” I asked after a moment, giving her what she wanted by looking up at her. “If you want to annoy me, do it later. I have a headache.”
“You’re so grumpy.” She leaned forward, reaching for my hair.
I jerked out of her way. “Go and find something to do, brat.”
“Not until you guess.”
Groaning, I minimized the spreadsheet and decided to give her my full attention before she really pissed me off. “I really don’t give a shit who you saw.”
She grinned slowly, leaning toward me. “Yes, you do.”
“I swear to god, Camille, if you don’t spit it out, I’m going to throw you out of the window.” I’d done it before, after all. I didn’t want to do this check for Dad, but I wanted to have this conversation even less. I had one hell of a hangover and my bed was calling my name. “I have enough issues right now without your bullshit.”
“I saw Lani.”
Her name sent a jolt down my spine.
“Are you serious?” My mouth was dry.
Camille nodded, her wet, dark hair falling and sticking to her cheek. She pushed it behind her ear. “She was running when I was.”
“I thought she’d have left by now.”
“I don’t know. She said she only just found out about Connie and the baby, so I guess she could be staying a little longer to catch up.”
“What did you say to her?” I pushed my laptop away and leaned forward on the table.
My sister raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I thought you didn’t care.”
I stared at her flatly. I hadn’t to begin with, but that didn’t mean I didn’t now.
“Fine.” She sighed. “She asked what I did, and I said I was basically your keeper because—”
“Please tell me you didn’t tell her.” My stomach sank like a ton of granite. “Jesus, Cam.”
“I didn’t tell her!” She kicked her foot out at me and shuddered. “I got the same threat you did, remember? Breathe a word and you’re cut off.”
I let go of a deep breath and buried my face into my hands. Fuck, now my head was pounding ten times worse than before she came in. I didn’t want to think about The Thing much less have someone I used to respect so much know about it.
The Thing was like fucking He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as far as my family were concerned, and with good reason too.
I fucked up.
Big time.
And I was paying for it.
“I just told her you’re pretty much every college student on spring break ever all wrapped up into one asshole of a person,” Camille continued with way too much enjoyment in her voice. “She said she wasn’t surprised.”
I brought my face out of my hands and frowned. What the hell did that mean? She wasn’t surprised? Lani Montana knew nothing about me or who I was. I hadn’t seen her since she stood on the podium, gave her fucking Valedictorian speech, and disappeared.
I knew nothing about her except what I remembered, so she sure as hell knew nothing about me.
“What did she mean by that?” I asked after a moment.
She shrugged. “I didn’t ask her. I was happy to see her. I don’t really care what she thinks about you. Hell, I don’t even care what I think about you.”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“You should talk to her.”
I ran my hand through my hair and look at her. “I spoke to Pops this morning. He said he saw her yesterday at Ada’s wake and she was adamant she didn’t want to talk to me.”
“What did you do to her eight years ago?” Camille tilted her head to the side. “And since when has someone else’s wants ever stopped you?”
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“Oh, let me think.” She held up one hand and ticked things off her fingers. “I don’t want to pick you up, drunk, at two in the morning from Hakuna or Raven’s bar. Neither do I want to escort out the women—and I use that word lightly—you bring home and assure them you’ll call them when we all know you won’t.”
“All right, all right.” I swatted at her hands, breaking up that dumb ticking off thing. “I get the picture. I’m a selfish bastard.”
“It’s so nice when you agree with me.”
I shook my head and pulled my laptop back toward me. It’d turned off, so I hit the power button and ran my finger over the mousepad to wake it up. “I’m not gonna search her out to talk to her, Cam. If she wanted to talk to me, she would have.”
“Why? Because everything revolves around you?” She snorted and hopped off the table. “Brett Walker, you’re such an asshole. No wonder she doesn’t want to talk to you without knowing you. She can probably smell your arrogance a mile off.”
“Fuck off.” I threw a pen over my shoulder in her general direction. It clattered to the floor, so I took that to mean I missed my target.
Oh well.
I didn’t care.
I pulled up the spreadsheet to look over the accounting stuff and tugged the folder Dad gave me toward me. Comparing his hand-written log with the digital one his assistant kept, I found a mistake within the first few days of the month.
That was gonna go down well. Like a bag full of shit on someone’s head.
I tapped my fingers against the laptop as I looked. The next few lines blurred into one, so I looked away. I wanted to blame my hangover, but I knew it was more than that.
Camille saw Lani.
Actually saw her.
It wasn’t just hearsay that she was back or the general knowledge that she was. She was back in Whiskey Key for real. My sister was a bitch sometimes, but she wouldn’t say that to screw with me. She knew how much it damn near killed me when Lani disappeared into nowhere.
I didn’t even ask her anything. Did she know where Lani had been? Where was she living? What did she do?
Fuck—why did I care? She didn’t care about me. I had no reason to care about her except an old friendship that obviously meant nothing to her then.
I didn’t care.
That was my story and I was gonna stick with it if it killed me.
Maybe I’d believe it if I did.
Family dinner.
I fucking hated family dinner, especially when it involved my grandparents. Not that I didn’t love Pops and Nan, but it was six p.m. and I still had the same goddamn hangover as I did this morning. My bed was still calling my name too. I’d taken me the best part of the day to get through the finances and triple check it because my mind kept running into Lani.
“I don’t know why you have the assistants log finances,” Pops said, setting his cutlery on the sides of his plate. He reached for his glass of Merlot. “This is the third one to mess it up.”
“I know that,” Dad answered, not looking up from his plate. “I don’t have the time to log those things before they go to the accountant.”
“You could get a better accountant who’ll do it for you,” Camille chirped up.
Dad cut her a look, shutting her up.
“She has a point,” Nan agreed. “You could do that.”
“And spend money on something that could be done in-house? Pah.” Dad took a mouthful of wine. “The girl was supposed to have accounting experience. There were nine errors.”
Mom heaved out a deep breath next to me, but she didn’t say anything.