f hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, then a whole legion of scorned women had no more impressive rage than a Southern lady robbed of her pearls. My grandmother was fit to be tied as she escorted me between two tables to the man who’d outbidden my uncle and Lucas Ames.

“Davis.” She fixed him with a stare. “This was unexpected, even from you.”

“Even from me?” the gentleman repeated. “If I recall, you once took great pleasure in telling me exactly how predictable I am.” He turned to me and extended a hand. “Since Lillian seems to have forgotten her manners, I suppose it’s up to the two of us to introduce ourselves. I’m Davis Ames. And you are, young lady?”

If my grandmother could have incinerated him with the power of her mind, I think she would have.

“Right now,” I replied, “I’m someone who is very concerned for your longevity.”

He chuckled, and it utterly changed his face. “Got a bit of you in her, does she, Lill?”

My grandmother’s expression almost faltered. She was still furious, but there was a layer to that emotion that hadn’t been present a moment before.

“We go way back, your grandmother and I,” Davis Ames told me. “In fact…” His gaze went to the pearls around my neck. “I was there the day your grandfather first purchased that necklace for her.” His gaze flickered back to Lillian. “If I remember correctly, I was waiting tables.”

“And look at you now.” My grandmother recovered her voice. The words sounded like a compliment, but I was pretty darn sure she meant for him to hear them otherwise.

“Look at us both,” he replied.

Appropriately enough, that was what just about everyone at this little shindig was doing. They didn’t stare, of course. Staring would have been rude, but every cluster of partygoers scattered around the lawn angled ever-so-subtly toward us.

I somehow doubted they were that interested in my lack of footwear.

“The pearls are beautiful,” Davis Ames said decisively, “but I find I’m more interested in the young lady. You’re Eleanor’s girl.”

I was so used to hearing my mother referred to as Ellie that the words caught me off guard—as did the sudden realization that if Lucas Ames was my father, this man was probably…

My grandfather?

“Davis, I am sure that Sawyer has better things to do than to natter away the evening with us old folks.” Lillian motioned for me to turn around. She unclasped the necklace. As bitter a pill as handing them over was, Lillian Taft was not one to show
weakness.

“I’ve heard rumors about your son-in-law’s latest business venture,” Davis Ames told her quietly. “Given that J.D. didn’t close the door on bidding the second my idiot son opened his mouth, you might consider looking into those rumors.”

Lillian held the pearls out, arching an eyebrow. There was a moment of elongated silence between the two of them.

Gingerly, he took the pearls. “Lill—”

“If you so much as try to give me those pearls, Davis Ames,” my grandmother murmured, sugar and spice and steel, as she slapped the pearls’ box into his hand, “I will end you.”

I was absorbed enough in watching the interplay between them that I didn’t hear a third party approaching until he stepped into my peripheral vision and spoke. “There’s a bit of a rivalry between your family and mine.”

I turned to see the man who had first bid against Uncle J.D.—Davis Ames’s “idiot son.”

“Lucas?” I inferred.

His father and my grandmother were caught up enough in their back-and-forth that they didn’t notice as I took a step away from them, willing the man beside me to do the same.

He obliged. “I see my reputation precedes me.”

I shrugged. “Probably proceeds you, too.”

Lucas Ames snorted. “I take it you’ve met my nephew Boone?”

I’d spent years wondering who my father was. I’d wondered if he had a family. But there was a difference between wondering, in the abstract, if I had aunts and uncles and cousins, and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I might well have met those people tonight.

“You knew my mother.” My mouth was dry, but I managed the words.

“Way back when, I was Ellie’s best friend. On my better days, she was mine. How is she? Your mother?”

“Enamored of some guy she met in a bar.”

With anyone else, that probably would have been a conversation stopper, but Lucas Ames didn’t bat an eye. “Good for her. As a committed bachelor myself, I’m glad to know that she hasn’t joined the ranks.”

“The ranks?” I asked.

“Of the domesticated. The tied down. The settled.”

I almost pointed out that my mother had spent the past eighteen years raising a child, but the truth was that some days, I’d felt like I was raising her.

“Sawyer.” Lillian had apparently divorced herself from the conversation with Davis Ames enough to realize that I’d strayed, because she closed the space between us and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you go see if you can find Lily?”

My grandmother was the one who’d brought up the idea of me looking for my biological father. She was the one who’d laid the pearls out as bait tonight. But now that someone had actually taken that bait, she was shooing me away.

“Not to put too fine a point on this, but I think I found Lily.” Lucas nodded toward a table near the front of the stage. “And Walker.”

Walker had his cell phone gripped tightly in his hand. Lily appeared to be trying to calm him down. Walker shook her off and started stumbling toward his father. Like a switch had been thrown, Lucas Ames went from carefree bachelor to family man mode in a heartbeat. He crossed to Walker, putting a casual arm around him, though I suspected his grip was iron tight.

“You don’t look like you’re feeling well, kid,” he commented. “Let’s get you home.”

“This is one of her games,” Walker said, the words surprisingly crisp. “Campbell. It’s just one of her little tests. It has to be.”

“What has to be?” I found myself asking.

Based on the look my grandmother shot me, you would have thought verbalizing the question that everyone was thinking was a faux pas on par with running through this whole gala buck naked.

Walker, however, didn’t seem to object. He shoved his cell phone into my hands. I looked down at the screen.

“ ‘Debs and Squires like to play,’ ” I read out loud.

“Sawyer,” my grandmother hissed.

I ignored her and continued reading the text that Campbell Ames had sent her brother. “ ‘If I’m missing… suspect foul play.’ ”