Chapter 2 - Camille Realized The Fear Was Real
Camille turned away from Rosa and stared down at Pierce in disbelief.
A moment ago he had looked annoyed, insulted, superior. Now, among broken stems and overturned buckets, he looked like a man who had just heard his own sentence.
“Pierce?” Camille said carefully.
He shot to his feet too quickly, brushing rose petals off his ivory blazer.
“She’s crazy,” he snapped. “Get in the car.”
Camille didn’t move.
Rosa ended the call but kept the phone in her hand.
“Funny,” she said, calm as ever. “Because last year you told people your name was Gavin.”
Pierce’s head jerked toward her.
Camille’s eyes narrowed. “What did she just call you?”
Pierce stepped toward the SUV and reached for Camille’s elbow. “Don’t do this out here.”
Camille pulled her arm away. “Do what?”
Rosa bent to pick up the red-rose bouquet he had dropped. She brushed dirt from the paper wrap with more care than she showed him.
“You always do the same thing,” she said. “Big flowers. Big promises. Then you leave the woman holding the bill.”
Pierce laughed, but there was no ease in it now.
“You sell bouquets on a sidewalk,” he said. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“No,” Rosa replied. “I know enough to call people who do.”
Camille looked from one face to the other, suddenly less interested in the destroyed flowers than in the thing Rosa’s phone call had done to Pierce.
“Pierce,” she said quietly, “who exactly was she talking about when she said she found him?”
Pierce’s jaw tightened.
Rosa answered before he could.
“The man who thought changing his name was the same as changing what he did.”
Pierce took one step toward Rosa again, but this time he stopped himself.
Because the hotel’s front doors had just opened.
May you like
And two men were walking quickly toward them from the lobby.
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