Page 95 of The Princess and the Fraud

I would.

Those two words took over, and on their own accord, my feet started carrying me to the music hall’s doors. I strode down the hallways, the determination propelling me forward, not letting me think twice about my decision.

When I made it out into the country club’s lobby, I found my coworkers. They were all putting their jackets on and carrying their bags, and then froze when they saw me. “We’re heading out,” Trisha said, zipping her coat to her throat. “Everything’s practically finished. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so we’re not killing ourselves tonight.”

Under normal circumstances, I might’ve double-checked if everything on our checklist was done, and might’ve even done a walkthrough the ballroom to double check it myself. Now, though, the determination still had me in its grasp. “Have a good night.” Instead of following them to the employee parking lot, I took a right, heading toward the walkway that led to the hotel.

“Oh, and your phone was ringing nonstop in your cubby,” Trisha called to me. “I don’t know if it was your mom or something.”

My steps slowed. They were already walking away, toward the back exit, and I watched them with a strange realization. None of them had been here as long as I had, but I’ve worked with Trisha for the last three years, at least. And none of them knew about my mother. It was my fault, of course, for keeping to myself and never trying to make friends, but it was a strange, startling realization.

I switched directions and started toward the employee lounge, because while it might not have been my mother calling me nonstop, it wassomeone.

When I pushed open the lounge’s door, I could hear my phone vibrating in my coat pocket even before I got my cubby open. I fished it out, finding Annalise’s picture on the screen. I didn’t have a chance to answer it before it kicked to voicemail, and I found that she’d called me fifteen times.

My stomach sank, and I quickly redialed.

“Lovey.” She gasped when she answered, letting out a sigh of relief.

“What’s wrong?”

“Are you still at the club?”

“Yeah, I’m just?—”

“Can you go to the hotel and check on Aaron?”

“Why?” My feet were already moving, once more pushing me forward before I could think twice. I shoved out the employee lounge door. “What’s going on?”

“Michael and I are in New York—we took the train to have a little date day—and we’ve been calling him, but he’s not answering.”

“I mean, what’s going on that you need me to check on him?”

Annalise hesitated, and in that split second of suspended silence, I held my breath.

“Fiona called me. Crying. Aaron—hedumped her.”

I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the glass walkway, and since it was dark out, my reflection was clear in the windows. I almost looked like a ghost. “What?”

“I couldn’t really tell what she was saying, but apparently it was something like he told her that it wasn’t going to work between them. She said—she said that he said there was someone else.”

Someone else. He’d told Fiona there was someone other than her—someone he wanted more. My phone suddenly became slick in my grip. I looked over at my reflection in the dark window. My blonde hair was up in a ponytail, and a few pieces had slipped out over the workday and fell to frame my face. My cheeks were pink from the long day, but my eyes were wide, almost like a deer in headlights.

“I don’t know what he’s thinking,” I heard Michael say on Annalise’s end of the call. Alarm raised his voice an octave. “He needs to be married in aweek.”

Someone else. Warmth bloomed behind my ribs, something almost like hope. “I’ll see if I can find him,” I told them, picking up my pace. “I’ll call you.”

I came into the hotel lobby with my heart beating impossibly fast, phone clutched in my shaking grip. I hurried to the front desk. “Jennifer, can you call Aaron Astor’s room?”

“He’s not in his room,” Jennifer said. Upon my frown, she added, “He came down about an hour ago.”

“He left?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t go out to the valet. He went out the back.”

The back? There was just the self-parking lot in the back of the hotel. Had he just gone out to walk around? Did he?—

“Thank you,” I told Jennifer, because all at once, it hit me. I tapped my palm to the desk’s surface, all but jumping backward. “Thank you!”

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