CHAPTER 49

Oren met me at the car with a cup of coffee. He didn’t say a word about my little adventure with Jameson the night before, and I didn’t ask how much he’d observed. As he opened the car door, Oren leaned toward me. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, until I realized that Alisa was sitting in the front seat. “You’re looking sedate this morning,” she commented.

I took sedate to mean moderately less rash and therefore less likely to evoke a tabloid scandal. I wondered how she would have described the scene I’d stumbled across in Libby’s room.

This is so not good.

“I hope you don’t have plans for this weekend, Avery,” Alisa said as Oren put the car in drive. “Or the next weekend.” Neither Jameson nor Xander had joined us, which meant that I had absolutely no buffer, and clearly, Alisa was royally pissed.

My lawyer can’t ground me, can she? I thought.

“I was hoping to keep you out of the limelight a bit longer,” Alisa continued pointedly, “but since that plan has gone by the wayside, you’ll be attending a pink ribbon fund raiser this Saturday night and a game next Sunday.”

“A game?” I repeated.

“NFL,” she said curtly. “You own the team. My hope is that scheduling some high-profile social outings will provide enough grist for the gossip mill that we can delay setting up your first sit-down interview until after we’ve gotten you some real media training.”

I was still trying to absorb the NFL bombshell when the words media training put a knot of dread in my throat.

“Do I have to—”

“Yes,” Alisa told me. “Yes to the gala this weekend, yes to the game next weekend, yes to the media training.”

I didn’t say another word in complaint. I’d stoked this fire—and protected Libby—knowing that, sooner or later, I’d have to pay the piper.

I got so many stares when we arrived at school that I found myself questioning whether I’d dreamed my last two days at Heights Country Day. This was what I’d expected, back on day one. Just like then, Thea was the first to make a move toward me.

“You did a thing,” she said in a tone that highly suggested what I’d done was both naughty and delicious. Inexplicably, my mind went to Jameson, to the moment on the bridge when his fingers had woven their way between mine.

“Do you really know why Tobias Hawthorne left you everything?” Thea asked, her eyes alight. “The whole school’s talking about it.”

“The whole school can talk about whatever they want.”

“You don’t like me much,” Thea noted. “That’s okay. I’m a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I’m no stranger to being hated.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t hate you.” I didn’t know her well enough to hate her yet.

“That’s good,” Thea replied with a self-satisfied smile, “because we’re going to be spending a lot more time with each other. My parents are going out of town. They seem to believe that, left to my own devices, I might do something ill-advised, so I’ll be staying with my uncle, and I understand that he and Zara have taken up residence at Hawthorne House. I guess they’re not quite ready to cede the family homestead to a stranger.”

Zara had been playing nice—or at least nicer. But I’d had no idea that she’d moved in. Then again, Hawthorne House was so gargantuan that an entire professional baseball team could be living there and I might have no idea.

For all I knew, I might own a professional baseball team.

“Why would you want to stay at Hawthorne House?” I asked Thea. She was the one who’d warned me away.

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t always do what I want.” Thea tossed her dark hair over her shoulder. “And besides, Emily was my best friend. After everything that happened last year, when it comes to the charms of Hawthorne brothers, I’m immune.”