“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 wordsmedia trainingput 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 likethis. 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 leastnicer. 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 mightowna 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.”
CHAPTER 50
When I finally got ahold of Max, she wasn’t feeling chatty. I could tell that something was wrong, but not what. She didn’t have a single fake expletive to share on the topic of Thea moving in, and she cut our back-and-forth short without any commentary whatsoever on the Hawthorne brothers’ physiques. I asked if everything was okay. She said that she had to go.
Xander, in contrast, was more than willing to discuss the Thea development. “If Thea’s here,” he told me that afternoon, lowering his voice like the walls of Hawthorne House might have ears, “she’s up to something.”
“Sheas in Thea?” I asked pointedly. “Or your aunt?”
Zara had thrown me together with Grayson at the foundation, and now she was moving Thea into the House. I recognized someone stacking the board, even if I couldn’t see the play underneath.
“You’re right,” Xander said. “I seriously doubt Theavolunteeredto spend time with our family. It is possible that she fervently wishes for vultures to dine upon my entrails.”
“You?” I said. Thea’s issues with the Hawthorne brothers had seemed to revolve around Emily—and that meant, I had assumed, around Jameson and Grayson. “What did you do?”
“It is a story,” Xander said with a sigh, “involving star-crossed love, fake dating, tragedy, penance… and possibly vultures.”
I thought back to asking Xander about Rebecca Laughlin. He hadn’t said anything to indicate she was Emily’s sister. He’d murmured almost exactly what he’d just said about Thea.
Xander didn’t let me ruminate for long. Instead, he dragged me off to what he declared to be his fourth-favorite room in the House. “If you’re going to be going head-to-head with Thea,” he told me, “you need to be prepared.”
“I’m not going head-to-head with anyone,” I said firmly.
“It is adorable that you believe that.” Xander stopped where one corridor met another. He reached up—all six foot three of him—to touch a molding that ran up the corner. He must have hit some kind of release, because the next thing I knew, he was pulling the molding toward us, revealing a gap behind it. He stuck his hand into the gap behind the molding, and a moment later, a portion of the wall swung out toward us like a door.
I wasnevergoing to get used to this.
