Page 62 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
The room swiveled as one to where Richie sat, looking like hewaswatching a soap opera. He was caught mid-grin, which Kate figured wasn’t about to go well for him.
“Uh, excuse me, I don’t have anything to do with any of this,” Richie said, putting up his hands with an affable expression. “I don’t know anything about any oysters or a necklace. I just came for a show, wedding or otherwise.”
“Except that’s not all you’re here for, is it?” Cassidy said. “You and your lawyer boyfriend have been trying to strong-arm Aunt Rebecca into selling Hempstead Island for the past year for some kind of dumb luxury development.”
“My suggestion to Rebecca about selling the island was in her best interest,” Steven said, putting on his best lawyer voice. “Just look at the safety issues we’ve had this weekend alone. Kennedy could have been seriously injured. This house should never have been put up for an inspection, and I can’t imagine it will pass now that—”
“We know about the gambling debts, Steven!” Cassidy said, practically hysterical by now. “Everybody knows, okay? Richie told us about how you got in over your head with your bookie and now he’s forcing you to make Auntie R sell him the island to pay off your debts.”
Kate turned in triumph to Jake and mouthedponies.
“It was a lucky guess and you know it,” Jake whispered.
“Anyallegeddebts would not be anybody’s business but mine,” Steven said stiffly, but there was noticeably less wind in his sails. “The real estate proposal is a sound investment, and the house is in a hazardous state.”
“Why don’t we all just calm down,” Simon said, his voice projecting cool control through the space. “I’m sure if we all discuss this like reasonable adults—”
“What would you know about reasonable, Simon?” came Serena’s voice from the doors, where she’d appeared in a dramatic clap of thunder. Kate imagined she must have been waiting for such a cue to announce herself. She puffed up like a songbird preparing to give the greatest aria of its little life span. “You thought you could silence the lion’s roar, but we’re too mighty. We know you’re selling off Simon Says and sending us all down the river in the meantime! Some family business you turned out to be. You’re as ruthless as the big boys in New York!”
“What?” Simon said in shock. “What gave you the idea—”
“Who’s our new overlord?” Serena demanded. “Is it Kennedy? Is that why you’re here this weekend, schmoozing? So you can convince Kennedy to buy you out?”
Simon put his hands up defensively. “Now, if we can just take a beat, this really isn’t the right place to discuss—”
“Where is the right place, huh? Because you’ve been avoiding us for months! The joke’s on you, bub, because we’re unionizing and we’re notgoing to allow you to sell! And certainly not to Kennedy Hempstead. She’s already hosed our books with her crappy marketing.”
“Serena, please,” Kennedy said, her voice soothing. “I know you’re upset about the delay in contract negotiations, but as we told you last month, marketing a series is a very different beast from a brand-new book. Series fatigue is real, and your readers—”
“Don’t you dare try to lecture me about my readers! My readers are loyal and reliable, which is more than I can say for you, little chippy. If Simon thinks he can put you in charge of the whole shebang, all you can guarantee is that we’ll be bankrupt by Christmas!”
The small cadre of Spencer’s authors behind her dissolved into boisterous outrage. The lights took the advantage and dropped out again, and Kate felt like a flower pressed between two steaming hot rocks.
“We need to get out of here,” Kate muttered as the atmosphere in the room ratcheted up to unbearable heat levels. She pushed into the aisle, intent on making a discreet and graceful exit, but unfortunately it only put her in Juliette’s crosshairs as the lights pulsed back on.
“There’s your real culprit,” Juliette said, pointing a finger square at Kate.
“Me?” Kate squeaked.
“Look at her, she’s even trying to flee,” Juliette pressed. “I mean, come on, Kate is the most obvious culprit here. This whole weekend is literally the plot of her book. She’s the one who conveniently ‘found’ Kennedy passed out. And I just caught her holding Kennedy hostage in a room where a fire conveniently started. Plus, she’s Spencer’s ex-fiancé. He dumped her for Kennedy and she’s looking for revenge. She’s clearly still in love with Spencer.”
“Iknewit,” Spencer said, so fucking smug Kate could punch him. “You do still have feelings for me, don’t you? That’s why you asked me up to the attic.”
“No, that’s not… I didn’t…” Kate put up her hands. She needed to organize the chaos. “I just… I just wanted to get through this weekend without…”
Without what? Making an absolute fool of herself? Becoming theobject of everyone’s pity? Losing her cool in front of an audience? Loretta wouldnever.
“Everyone sit down and shut it,” Loretta snapped, glaring down the assembled crowd. A more diminutive, soft-spoken woman might have had to stand on the bar or wave her arms around, but Loretta had plenty of height and volume to command the attention of the room. “What we’re not going to do is lose our cool right now.”
“Let’s not… lose our cool?” Kate said, but the ending sounded an awful lot like a question.
“Oh, Katelin,” Spencer’s mother scoffed, and something in Kate snapped. Clean in two. Forget Loretta, forget her dignity, forget saving face for the weekend. Kate had absolutely had enough.
“My name is not Katelin!” she shouted. “It has never been Katelin! I have tried to correct you so many times, until I was sure you were doing it on purpose. But you’re not going to be my mother-in-law, so I don’t have to be nice to you anymore! You were never kind, never welcoming, and frankly it always felt a little icky how much you fawned over Spencer. He’s an ordinary man! He can’t drive a stick shift, he doesn’t know how to tie his own tie without watching a YouTube video, he overpronounces every Italian word he speaks because he spent one summer there in college, and he was only mediocre at oral sex!”
None of that was meant to come out, but that last little detail was definitely one she had strictly instructed her tongue to keep inside her head. It was Jake, standing there, being sexy as hell and just casually mind-blowingly good at oral sex, that must have rattled that fact loose. Still, she clamped her hand over her mouth as soon as she’d said it. Spencer’s brother, Eric, gave a braying laugh and slapped his brother on the back, still smacking that obnoxious gum.
That was nothing compared to Spencer’s mother, though. She had long since passed red and dipped into disturbingly purple. “Howdareyou, you awful woman.”