oone and I were required to dance together. I expected him to ask me what exactly he’d been a part of this afternoon—the car, the notes, our “arrest.” Instead he adopted an overly serious look.

“The cut over my eye is quite dashing, is it not?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Sadie-Grace thinks she broke you.”

He sighed happily. “Yeah.”

I decided to let him have his moment.

“Don’t look now,” Boone said as our waltz was coming to an end, “but I believe you have a gentleman caller.”

I glanced back over my shoulder, expecting to see some other poor sap of a Squire who’d been told he had to dance with me, but instead, all I saw was one of the massive ballroom windows, overlooking the Northern Ridge pool down below.

Standing next to the pool was Nick.

Sneaking out of one’s own Debutante ball was harder than it should have been for a criminal mastermind such as myself. But eventually, I managed to make my way outside.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I told Nick.

“That’s all you have to say?” he asked incredulously.

From his perspective, this whole evening probably did merit an explanation.

“The DA has already dropped all charges against me. You and Campbell,” he said. “You…”

“Make quite a team?” I suggested.

He stared at me. “How did you even—” he started to ask.

Given that I’d recently caught someone else’s damning words on tape, I cut him off. “I’m going to plead the Fifth on that one,” I said. “But for the record, when I was a kid, I watched a lot of police procedurals and telenovelas.”

I would like to say that the dance was Nick’s idea, but that would be a lie.

I’d always believed in absolute honesty. I’d believed that people were fundamentally predictable. I’d believed that no one who wanted to flirt with a teenage girl was remotely worth flirting back with.

For a long time, I’d believed in being self-sufficient and independent and, with the exception of my mother, alone. And then I’d come here.

For reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint, I found myself holding my hand out to Nick, a boy I barely knew, one I’d framed and unframed and hit in the stomach with the door of a car. “Can I have this dance?”

He could have refused. He probably should have.

He didn’t.

This time, someone really did cut in. Based on the voice, I thought at first that Walker was the one who’d followed me outside, but when I turned, I found myself staring at Davis Ames instead.

Nick was gone before I could so much as say good-bye. I expected Davis to lead me back inside, but he didn’t. Instead, he took my hand. “I probably shouldn’t have to tell you this,” he said as we started to dance, “but I’ll lead.”

I waited for him to get to the point. I had no idea how much he knew about what had happened tonight, or what, if anything, he knew about me. But I did know, from Lillian, that he was ambitious.

I knew that he valued family.

And I just helped put his son in jail.

“Still not much of a talker, I see.” The old man offered me a small, self-satisfied smile. “Note that I’ve banished all forms of the word nattering from my vocabulary.”

“Congratulations.”

“Spitfire,” he murmured. “Like your grandmother.”

For a second, I thought that was why he’d asked me to dance. Maybe I looked the way Lillian had, when he’d first known her. Maybe this wasn’t about my connection to his family—or the events of the past twenty-four hours—at all.

“I don’t suppose you would happen to know anything about the series of frantic calls I’ve received from my son’s attorney, would you?”

And there it is. “Can’t say that I do,” I lied cheerfully.

There was another long stretch of silence. “I’ve helped my son out of a jam or two before.” Davis Ames sounded almost reflective. “He has indicated to me that you might be a problem for this family.”

A problem. All things considered, that was rich. “Has he indicated to you that I’m your granddaughter?”

With as much time as I’d spent avoiding saying that, the words came out surprisingly smoothly. In response, the Ames family patriarch choked, then coughed.

“My dear,” he said, once he had recovered, “I wish that you were.”

“There’s no use pretending.” I stopped dancing and took a step back from his grasp. “Your daughter-in-law as good as told me. My mother confirmed it. And your son? He’s awfully invested in keeping me quiet for someone who didn’t knock up a teenager eighteen years ago.”

There was another silence—this one, measuring. “I’m not denying that my son had a lapse in judgment.”

“I’m thinking of legally changing my name,” I quipped. “Do you think I should go by Lapse or Judgment?”

“He got a girl pregnant.” The old man’s voice was far gentler than I would have expected. “He was an adult. She was a teenager. I handled it.”

Handled it. The words hit me, hard. Just like you “handled” the hit and run that left Nick’s brother in a coma?

Campbell had said that her father had called someone that night. Someone had made his little problem go away. Someone had blocked the investigation. Someone, I thought, had needed to be convinced that Walker was the one driving that car.

“Campbell had a few things to tell me earlier,” Davis Ames said, eerily perceptive when it came to my train of thought. “I believe that after tonight, my son will have to handle things for himself.”

I doubted that Campbell had told him everything. Even if she had, I couldn’t persuade my brain to focus on that. I’d finally told Davis Ames that I was his own flesh and blood, and he’d denied it.

Denied me.

“You know what,” I said quietly. “Don’t worry about me telling anyone that your son is my father. I have no intention of becoming a problem.”

I turned and walked back to the party. I was halfway up the stairs when I realized he was following me. As I reached the door to the ballroom, he placed one hand on it to prevent me from opening it.

“Miss Taft,” he said softly. “My son got a girl—a young girl—pregnant years ago.”

I know. I know this. I—

“But that girl,” he continued, “was not your mother.”

I whirled around to face him. He couldn’t really expect me to believe that, could he?

“Her name,” he said, “was Ana.”