Chapter 6

Ella's POV

Zoey was still screaming.

The sound was thin and cracked, like a nail dragging across glass. Pity nobody could hear it.

I swept a glance around the outside of the greenhouse. No one. The party grounds lay on the far side, screened off by a thick stand of flowering shrubs, and here in this back corner only the fountain kept me company—spilling water in a steady rush, drowning out her screams for her.

Interesting.

She'd cleared everyone out—just to watch me squirm.

Then she couldn't blame me for what came next.

I let the last trace of panic drop from my face, bent down, and stripped the jacket off one of the bodyguards on the floor. The fabric was still warm. I crossed the space in a few strides and threw it over Zoey's head, blinding her.

Her scream cut off the instant the world went dark, and then came the frantic, blind thrashing.

No cameras. No witnesses. This corner was as clean as if someone had prepared it just for me.

I didn't hold back.

As my fist came down, I was tallying up the interest.

This one was for that slap the other day.

That kick was for sending her men to corner me in here.

…

She wailed and curled into a ball, her makeup a ruined smear, not a shred left of that chin-up arrogance she usually wore.

I dusted off my hands, stepped back, and swung my foot—

and kicked her straight into the fountain.

The water leapt up high.

Zoey floundered in the pool, hands and feet flailing, choking on mouthfuls of water, her screams tangled up with the splashing—pathetic beyond words.

Pity. no one heard. The shrubs and the rushing water swallowed every sound before it could reach the party.

Not even a single servant.

I looked down at the sodden, thrashing heap for a moment, hummed a few tuneless bars, and turned to go.

But two steps in, my feet stopped.

There, in the shadows at the edge of the party grounds, sat a black car.

I knew that car.

It was Cole's.

My breath caught.

He was here?

When had he arrived? Everything I'd gathered said he never showed up to these small-family affairs.

So how was he here?

A thin chill crawled up my spine. I had no idea how long he'd been sitting in there, or what, from that distance, he'd seen.

But the chill lasted only two seconds.

Two seconds later my mind had cooled, running the whole thing over, weighing every angle.

Since he was here—

then, handled right, there was nothing in what had just happened that could be pinned on me.

The faint edge left my expression. Feature by feature I let it soften, until the timid, wide-eyed, know-nothing girl had settled back over my face.

I spun toward the party and pitched my voice past the shrubs, quick and soft and frightened, aiming it at the lights beyond so it would carry over the noise of the fountain.

"Someone, help! Someone fell into the fountain!"

Footsteps came rushing over almost at once.

I crouched at the edge of the pool and reached for Zoey in the water.

"Zoey! Grab my hand! Hurry, grab it!"

The guests crowded in, a chorus of gasps rising around us.

Zoey was choking too hard to string a sentence together, but the moment she looked up and saw it was me, her face twisted—shocked, furious, ugly with it. She slapped my outstretched hand away and shrieked out a single word—

"Bitch!"

Caught "off guard," I let that shove throw me sideways, my balance gone, my whole body pitching toward the water.

She really did play along.

Before that cold little laugh could finish inside me, I'd already closed my eyes, braced for the plunge.

But the cold never came.

A hand closed steadily around my arm.

The grip wasn't hard, but it didn't waver in the slightest—like a wall dropped exactly at the moment I tipped, pulling me back from the edge of the water.

I opened my eyes.

Ryan.

Cole's assistant.

Honestly, a little disappointing.

He steadied me, not saying a word from start to finish. He only turned slightly, lifted a hand, and gestured for me to walk a certain way.

That string inside me pulled taut again with a hum.

Ahead, where the lights dimmed, a figure stood alone before the car.

A dark suit, a tall, straight-backed frame. He stood apart from the crowd, so utterly detached it was as if all that clamor and that whole sodden mess had nothing to do with him at all.

My steps slowed.

When I reached him, I lifted my face, my lashes still wet from the "fright," my voice soft enough to wring water from.

"Uncle Cole… you saved me again." I paused, as if still shaken, as if grateful. "I really… I don't know how to thank you."

He said nothing.

Those eyes settled on my face, calm, giving away nothing, as if he were studying something he hadn't yet made up his mind about.

He didn't offer a word of comfort. He didn't reach out to steady me.

But he didn't send me away either.

That was all it took.

The whole scene went quiet for a beat.

The guests who'd just been whispering about Zoey falling in the water turned as one, their eyes landing first on him, then sliding, bit by bit, over to me.

Then the hushed murmurs broke open all at once.

"Why was Cole Westmore here?"

"Why would he come to a nothing little family gathering like this?"

"Isn't that woman Blake's fiancée?"

"How does she get to stand next to Westmore?"

"What are they to each other?"

Since when does Cole—the man everyone calls cold as ice—let a woman stand at his side?

Every word of it fell, without exception, into my ears.

Cole heard them too, I was sure of it.

What it meant to bring me to his side in the open—no one knew that better than he did.

Which made me wonder: was I a step closer to being under his wing?

But before I could follow that thought any further, a shrill, piercing woman's voice tore the air apart.

"Ella! You bitch! You actually dared to hit me—and then shoved me into the water! My brother won't let this go! The entire Shaw family won't let this go! Just you wait—I'll kill you! I swear, I'll kill you!"