Bloody men, who needs them anyway? When you have handmade chocolates. Faith’s delicious virgin mojitos. Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy.
And girlfriends to die for.
“Then it must be slumber party time,” she said, but her voice broke on the words and the traitorous tears slipped down her cheeks.
Mercy rushed forward to gather her close. “Zel, it’s okay. We’re here now. We’ll keep you safe from those pigs.”
“I know.” She eased back, furiously scrubbing away the tears. “It’s not them; I’m used to them saying crappy things about me. I know it doesn’t matter.”
“Then what is it?” Faith asked, sounding concerned. “Because you look devastated and that’s not like you.”
“It’s silly. Stupid.” She shook her head, struggling to come up with a convincing reason for her pity party, because she couldn’t tell them about Ty. She just couldn’t. “It’s just… I had a row with Sebastian,” she said, deciding to throw her brother to the wolves.
“That beast! What has he done now?” Fire flashed in Mercy’s eyes.
“It doesn’t matter.” She laid her hand on Mercy’s arm, her friend’s reaction more volatile than the sympathetic looks she was getting from Dawn and Faith.
“It does matter,” Mercy said. “What did he do?”
“I asked him to join me for dinner, and he came up with some lame excuse,” she continued. “So I confronted him about it. But it was a disaster, as usual. He looked right through me, the way he always does. And I let it hurt me, when I know I shouldn’t.”
“Is he upstairs?” Mercy asked, the fire still blazing.
“Yes, but…”
Before Zelda had a chance to say more, Mercy pressed the bag of chocolates into her arms. “Take these, and don’t eat all the butterscotch walnut ones. I shall be back shortly.”
Mercy swept past her to charge across the foyer towards the staircase.
“Where is she off to?” Zel asked, bemused, as her friend’s heels cracked like rifle fire on
the parquet flooring, the waves of ebony hair bouncing on her shoulders with each defiant stride.
“My guess…” Faith piped up. “She’s gone to give your beast of a brother a taste of the Spanish Inquisition.”
Chapter Twelve
‡
“I still can’t believe they’d lie like that… in a freaking press release. It’s unreal…” Faith trailed another of the strawberries Mercy had stashed away in her Godiva haul through the white chocolate dip, looking relaxed even though she would have to return to the pub soon, because she’d only managed to get a couple of hours cover. “You should sue.”
“And I think we all know who she should get to do the legal work,” Dawn added.
Zelda took a long gulp of the chilly drink, Dawn’s teasing making the blush fire across her cheeks and her throat close. Of course her friends had seen the photo of her and Ty watching the fireworks at Coney Island. She’d expected them to comment on it, eventually. And she thought she’d been prepared for it.
But she wasn’t prepared. She couldn’t talk about him. Even with her friends. She’d avoided calling them all week, ever since disappearing so abruptly with him during their monthly meet up at the pub. And apart from a text from Mercy the next morning, which read—If you need to talk about a certain hot attorney, call me—her friends hadn’t contacted her about the incident, because they were being thoughtful and giving her space. And perhaps they were being discreet for Faith’s sake.
They knew how close Faith was to her brothers. And they also all knew about Zelda’s less than stellar track record with men. And they had probably concluded Ty was just another of her many, many fuck-and-forget flings. And she hadn’t wanted to disabuse them of that fact. She’d told herself it was because she didn’t want to upset Faith. But that was just a cowardly excuse to protect herself, because the truth was talking about Ty was the same as thinking about him, it only made her more aware of how much she missed him.
Keeping her silence now would probably be best, but despite those good intentions, try as she might she could not stop the ache in her throat forming into a huge boulder.
“Shit.” Tears welled again, and she brushed them away with her fist, but it was already too late.
“Oh hell, I’m so sorry, Zelda.” Dawn wrapped an arm round her shoulders. “You’re under a lot of pressure because of that dumb photo. I shouldn’t have kidded you about it.”
“No, you should have.” She sniffed.
Mercy offered her the tissue dispenser, her face still flushed from her earlier showdown with Seb—which she’d refused to elaborate on, except to say ‘your brother is a disaster.’