Lily’s instructions from the White Gloves had indicated that she should arrive at the Gutierrez lake estate an hour early. Mine had specified two hours. If I’d thought it would have done any good to stay home with her and go later, I would have.
But nothing I said or did seemed to affect Lily at all, so I ended up driving through the gates of Rustic Mesa by myself, two hours before the social event of the lake season was set to begin. The fact that Victoria’s family didn’t just have a lake house, but an estate—and the fact that the estate had a name—should have merited some sarcastic mental commentary on my part, but all I could think as I approached the main house was that this night had the potential to go badly on so many levels.
Ana could show up. She could not show up. The White Gloves could cut Lily. She could—
Someone answered the front door before I could finish that thought. I’d been expecting Victoria, or possibly a housekeeper.
I hadn’t expected her father.
“A young lady such as yourself should never be made to wait.” Victor Gutierrez had salt-and-pepper hair, features that had aged well, and the type of charisma that didn’t age at all. “Especially in this heat,” he continued. “My apologies. Please, come in.”
I stepped over the threshold into a foyer with soaring ceilings. “Is Victoria . . .”
“My daughter will be down shortly.”
Before I knew what was happening, I was being escorted to what Lillian would have referred to as a Baptist bar—one that normally hid behind pocket doors. Today, in preparation for the party, they were open.
“Could I get you something cool to drink?” Victor Gutierrez made a study of my expression. “No? Ah, well. You won’t mind if I have a little something myself.”
He let go of my arm to walk back around the bar.
“I can wait in the foyer for Victoria,” I said.
“Keep an old man company,” he told me, filling a glass with ice. “Perhaps I might convince you to reconsider some of the ideas you have been putting in my daughter’s head.”
He was still smiling, so it took me a second to process what he’d just said. “Excuse me?”
He took a sip of his drink and closed his eyes. “I am well aware of why this party is happening and who you are hoping will be in attendance. I suspect the Ames girl has something to do with it, but she is not here, and you are. You will forgive me for asking you to pass the message along.”
What message? I thought.
“You may pass it along to the Ames boy as well.” Mr. Gutierrez made that sound like an act of generosity on his part. “I know that he and my daughter have been spending time together.”
He hadn’t referred to Victoria by her name once. She was always my daughter.
“If you’re concerned about the amount of time Victoria and Walker are spending together—or the ideas in her head—maybe you should discuss it with her,” I suggested.
Victor Gutierrez gave a wry shake of his head, with an expression that suggested that I was quite amusing. “Who do you think asked her to dance with Walker Ames at that silly fund-raiser in the first place? She is my eyes and ears.”
He told Victoria to dance with Walker? “What is your game here?” I asked. Why aim his daughter at Walker, then ask me to warn Walker away?
“I am an old man, Miss Taft,” Victor Gutierrez said contemplatively. “But not too old to remember the wounds of the past.”
He could beat around the bush all he wanted. I wasn’t obliged to do the same. “Sterling Ames knocked up your granddaughter. You weren’t happy about it.”
“She was a child!” He pounded his fist on the bar, then recovered his composure in the blink of an eye. “And do not tell me eighteen is not a child. You, Victoria—you’re all children to me. My Ana . . .”
He trailed off, and I thought about what Victoria had said about the rift between her father and his formerly favorite granddaughter. “You wanted her to come to you for help.”
He’d wanted her to beg forgiveness.
“I wanted to protect her,” Victor said emphatically. “From her own judgment most of all.”
“And now you won’t even talk to her.”
“She gave away our blood.” Victor set his drink down on the bar, his voice softening. “I would have taken her in—her and the child, both. We are family. That is what family does.”
But she didn’t come to you, I thought. And then I realized why he would have found that so insulting. “Ana went to Davis Ames.”
“But for the money he gave her, she could have been made to see reason,” he told me, his dark eyes fixed on mine. “I implore you to see it now.”
“Imploring would be more effective if I had any idea what you actually wanted from me,” I said.
“Stay away from my Ana,” he requested. “You and that family of yours.” He smiled then and put a hand on my shoulder as he raised his eyes to the stairs. “Ah,” he said when Victoria descended. “There’s my girl.”