“Well, that didn’t seem to go so well,” Amelie said.
Sawyer frowned, lost in thought.
“What was your first clue?”
“That one’s a live wire. You’d best be careful with her or you’ll end up shredded to bits.”
“Too late.”
Amelie sighed. “I’m sorry for whatever my role might have been in that scene. Clearly, I missed some of the backstory but obviously, there is a backstory.”
“It’s complicated,” Sawyer said.
“I’ve got all night.”
Sawyer looked at her, and for lack of a shoulder to cry on, he opened up with everything that happened with his princess.
~*~
“Well, that was quite the story,” Amelie said, taking a final bite of her food.
Sawyer nodded his head. “And the damnedest thing is I want to go running back to her right now and straighten everything out.”
“I’d suggest if you’re going to the palace, you might want to borrow one of those suits of armor they likely have propped up in a corner somewhere. Otherwise, you’re a dead man.”
“I don’t even have the luxury of going to the palace,” he said. “Don’t even have her contact information. All I’ve got is access to her best friend, and you saw how little influence she was wielding there.”
“So if you’ve got her number, then shoot her a text. See if she can help you. She looked a little freaked out by everything, so maybe she’d be willing to run interference if it would straighten everything out.”
“Hmmm...” Sawyer said. “Do you think that could work?”
“Put it this way: it couldn’t hurt. At this point, you are so deep in the doghouse that you’ll never be seen or heard from again, except for the occasional howling at the moon.”
“Would it be awfully rude if I ended our evening on this note?”
“After everything I’ve done, at the very least I owe you this one, Sawyer,” she said. “Go track down the friend and see if she’s got the keys to the palace.”
~*~
“Can I just say that that didn’t go as planned?” Clementine said as she unlocked Isabella’s Audi and started the car. “Do you really think that was such a good idea, raging on the guy and that stranger like that?”
“Oooh, no. She was no stranger,” Bella said. “That is the evil, horrible, no good, very bad source of my teenage angst. And she was on a date with Sawyer, who seemed perfectly happy to sleep with me a mere week ago and now he’s planning to bed that wicked she-devil? That is so not cool.”
“Maybe there was a misunderstanding, Bell,” Clem said. “After all, you really didn’t let the man speak.”
“There was no need to hear a word out of his mouth,” she said. “It was abundantly clear what was going on there.”
“Honestly, Isabella, the only thing clear there was that you completely lost your shit in front of those people, which isn’t such a great reflection on you. What happened to your whole take the high road, be Zen, let it go, all those philosophies you decided to adopt last week?”
Isabella frowned and remained silent in the passenger seat, mulling over that little contradiction.
“I tell you what,” Clementine said. “Why don’t you just come over to my place, we’ll order in—not Chinese—open a bottle of wine, and we can watch Titanic or something equally heartbreaking. I think you need a good cry, just to purge all of those fierce emotions that clearly have been building up inside of you.”
Isabella let out a huge sigh. “Well, it’s not like I want to go back to the palace and listen to Luca tell me all about his latest celebrity girlfriend.”
“Luca? Again? I thought he gave up on actresses.”
Bella shook her head. “I don’t know what his deal is but I swear if the girl isn’t on the cover of a tabloid, he doesn’t want her.”
“Well, it would be good if we could keep you off the cover of any tabloids, so let’s go try to calm you down so maybe we won’t have any more unpleasant scenes in restaurants. K?”
Bella nodded, a tear or two leaking out of the corners of her eyes. Maybe she was furious with Sawyer, but what she wasn’t ready to admit was that more than anger, she felt terribly hurt. She’d let that stupid man into her heart just a tiny bit, and dammit, she knew that was a huge mistake.