The Face of Scandal (15 page)

In their hometown, her antics had swiftly earned her a reputation as a troublemaker, but her family had been given the cold shoulder long before that.

Hazel saw echoes of that rebellious streak in the pictures stuck to the mirror above Sadie’s vanity. She rested both hands on the back of the padded wooden chair, soaking up the faint, lingering heat of Sadie’s shoulders.

For someone who could afford to cut people off on a whim, Sadie’s photo collection revealed an uncanny sentimental side. There were snapshots of kids from Dunby, faces Hazel recognized but couldn’t put a name to, and others that Sadie must’ve met in college.

Marco and Hazel were among the more recent additions, squeezed into frame beside Sadie in a selfie taken maybe a few years back, when Sadie had first gotten herself a smartphone. The quality of the print confirmed Hazel’s vague recollection. The background was familiar—cheap Formica counters, red vinyl seats—but the people grinning into the camera were as good as strangers. Marco had his arm around Sadie’s shoulder, but he was holding her lightly. Hazel had her cheek pressed against Sadie’s.

She was laughing.

Hazel reached out to smooth the bent corner of the photograph. She’d barely touched the matte surface when another slid free of the mirror frame, dropping face-down into the dark end of a nude eye shadow palette.

A series of digits inscribed onto the back gave her pause.

Hazel turned the photograph to right end up. She didn’t recognize the sequence, but the first three digits were the area code for St. Louis. She flipped the snapshot over. It was of Sadie and her mother.
So probably not her mother’s phone number…
Curious, she plucked another photo from the frame. Five-seven-three gleamed in black ink, familiar only because that was the way her parents’ number began. The same was true of any phone line in Dunby.

Mrs. Ling’s conversation was still going strong in the other room, so Hazel plucked down another photograph. And another. More phone numbers, but not exclusively. Here and there, she found a street name and house number. The thought of Sadie jotting information down someplace other than her smartphone left Hazel confused. It seemed like an added complication—and for what? Mrs. Ling wasn’t the type to rifle through her daughter’s things.

Sadie had been horrified when Hazel told her stories about her own childhood.

She couldn’t make sense of the strange, handwritten code strewn all over Sadie’s powder boxes—not until she turned over the last photograph. On the flip side of the toothy grins crammed into frame on either side of Sadie was not a name, but a street address.

251 South Olive St, Los Angeles
. Also known as the Omni Hotel.

The last time Hazel had heard mention of the place was—

“Did you find anything?” Mrs. Ling asked, materializing in the doorway.

Hazel shook her head. “I have to go.”

“Already?” Mrs. Ling’s indefatigable optimism quaked. “But maybe we can—”

“I’m sorry.” Hazel stumbled out of Sadie’s bedroom on jelly-weak legs. She didn’t stop until she’d made it out of the house. Deep, gulping breaths did nothing to help her regain a sense of balance. The world threatened to spiral around her, a carousel of memories tainted by what was—what couldn’t be—the single greatest lie she’d ever swallowed.

Somehow, Hazel made it to the car and stuck the key in the ignition. The Volvo roared to life around her after a couple of attempts. Hazel white-knuckled the steering wheel.
Where to now? What’s left?

The answer was so simple that Hazel nearly barked out a cheerless, shattered laugh.

* * * *

“Malcolm Pryce?” Hazel asked, leaning both elbows against the front desk.

Politely cool smile in place, the receptionist canted his head to one shoulder. “Unfortunately I can’t divulge our guests’ information—”

“I know he’s here,” Hazel said. “Call the room. He’s expecting me.”

Perhaps not right now, perhaps not after their last run-in, but Malcolm didn’t make mistakes. If he name-dropped the hotel he was staying at, he had done it for good reason.

When the receptionist hesitated, Hazel folded her arms across her chest and made a show of getting comfortable right there in the lobby. “I’ll wait if I have to.”

“That won’t be necessary,” a familiar voice said.

Hazel turned slowly, fighting to keep her breaths even, to clamp down on the swell of white-hot resentment boiling in her chest. “Malcolm.”

He was like a dream standing there in his virgin wool suit, silver gray shirt cuffs peeking from beneath dark sleeves. “I knew you’d come.”

Did you.
She leaned back when he reached up a hand, but aborted the attempt to deny him as he twirled one of her blonde curls around his index finger.

“I liked you better with straight hair,” he mused, the corners of his lips tugging down. “Although I must say, I’m coming around to the whole…hobo-chic thing you’ve got going. Mom jeans and flip-flops.
Very
California…”

“You don’t approve?”

“I’ve seen you look better,” Malcolm replied.

Tough
. “Where is she?” Hazel hadn’t stepped on pride and common sense to endure his fashion advice.

Malcolm’s gaze snapped up to meet hers, surprise morphing into amusement in a heartbeat. “Ah, you figured it out. I always said you were bright.”

His smug satisfaction made Hazel want to punch him. The urge to give in to violence hummed in her bones like a tuning fork.
It’s what he wants—me the irrational, dangerous ex and him, the tragic victim.
As long as she concentrated on that, she wouldn’t have to think about the gut-punch confirmation that, yes, Malcolm and Sadie were in cahoots.

That they had been, perhaps since the beginning.

That everything Hazel had shared with her was probably reported back to the man she’d fled from years back.

“Come upstairs,” Malcolm entreated. “We’ll talk.”

“We can talk here.”

His smile said otherwise.

Hazel meant to dig her heels in, to refuse.
You want me—you’ll work to earn my attention.
But Malcolm wasn’t Dylan. He didn’t believe in working for anything when it came to Hazel. He was still smiling at her as the elevator doors began to close.

God damn it.
Hazel spurred her feet across the lobby floor. He put an arm against the sliding doors to allow her to penetrate into the cabin. They cinched shut in her wake.

Over the throb of her pulse in her ears, Hazel picked up the dulcet tones of some jazzy muzak pouring into the confined space as they ascended toward Malcolm’s suite. There were cameras in the elevator. Hazel drew comfort from that, buttressing her resolve as best she could.

“What gave it away?” Malcolm wanted to know. “Or did Sadie tell you herself?”

“She didn’t tell me,” Hazel replied as the elevator slowed to a smooth stop. “Surprised you don’t already know that.” Her reflection was hazy in the stainless steel doors when she turned to Malcolm. “Here I thought you had us all figured out.”

He chuckled. “You’ve gotten lippy. We’ll have to see what we can do about that.” He gestured her out of the elevator with a lackadaisical wave of the hand.
Ladies first
.

Hazel committed the floor number to memory, sighting the exit signs first and foremost. She didn’t have much time to get her bearings before she heard the elevator doors sigh shut. For all intents and purposes, she was now alone with Malcolm.

Expecting him to do something and dreading what that might be was familiar terrain. Typically, Malcolm did nothing to elucidate the mystery. He took the lead as they ventured down the hall, patterned wall-to-wall carpet muffling their footfalls. Hazel turned at the sound of a door clicking open down the hall.

“Here we are…” Malcolm slotted his keycard out of the lock and leaned on the handle. The massive wooden door swung back. “Try to ignore the color scheme,” he urged in a saccharine voice. “It’s murder in beige.”

After nearly a month of squatting at the loft, Hazel’s idea of luxury had evolved. She wasn’t as easily bowled over by buffed hardwood floors and satin-thread upholstery. A view of downtown LA could have triggered a gasp, but she didn’t let herself enjoy it.

“Did the piano come with the room,” she wondered, “or did you have them put it in just for you?”

Malcolm followed her gaze to the grand Steinway slotted into the space behind the sitting area. “Believe it or not, I didn’t think to request more than the champagne. And now I have someone to share it with. Please,” he entreated, palm warm on the small of Hazel’s back, “have a seat.”

“It’s barely noon,” Hazel pointed out, a delaying tactic.

“You know what they say,” Malcolm announced in a sing-song voice. “It’s always happy hour
somewhere
.”

What happened to Penelope?
Hazel resisted the urge to ask. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, conscious that she had few cards to play and needed to be careful not to reveal her hand too soon. She sat down without protest, pinning an elbow into the surfeit of cushions at her back. “Swanky place. Must be costing you a fortune.”

“What good is having money if you don’t spend it?” Malcolm shot back.

“I wouldn’t know.”
Has Sadie kept you abreast of my financial woes, too?

The champagne cork came free with a deferential pop, bubbly liquor spilling out. Malcolm was slow to angle the bottle toward the pair of flutes. He didn’t seem to notice the trickle of foam onto the coffee table. It was beneath him to wipe it off.

“Oh, I don’t know that that’s true… I hear you’re living large now.” He met her gaze, emerald blue-gray eyes crinkling at the corners. “I don’t judge.”

Hazel didn’t return his smile. She hadn’t thought that Malcolm would know details of her new, fledgling relationship with Dylan and Ward. But if Sadie told him everything there was to know about Hazel, then he’d had a first-hand account of where she lived and who she slept with. He could ruin everything.

By the time she rallied, Malcolm was already holding out a champagne flute. “To old friends,” he toasted. “And new beginnings.”

In your dreams.

Hazel brought the glass to her lips and sipped. Liquid courage could only help. “So where are you hiding her?”

Malcolm arched his eyebrows, as though he didn’t know whom she meant.

“I gather she’s not here?” Hazel pressed. “Penelope would notice.”

“There are many rooms,” he replied, evasive. “Want me to give you a tour?”

“Maybe later.”
Maybe never.
Her skin prickled at the thought of being led through the suite with Malcolm’s hand on her back, steering her like a wayward pup.

Ward could put a collar around her neck and tug her around on a leash and it wouldn’t be as humiliating. Hazel knew it from experience.

“Hmm, I hope you didn’t come
just
for Sadie,” Malcolm said. He circled the coffee table and sat beside Hazel, crossing his legs. He was close enough to touch her if he wished. He made no attempt to prove it.

Too easy
. Hazel swallowed another mouthful of champagne. Thanks to Ward’s sideboard, she had learned how to hold her liquor better than ever before. She wasn’t the wide-eyed innocent Malcolm had zeroed in on in the campus coffee shop. She wasn’t so easy to shock anymore.

“I’m going to assume Penelope doesn’t know…about all this.” Hazel pinned a foot against the coffee table. “She never liked sharing.”

Sighing, Malcolm tilted his head back against the couch. “She shared just fine, when it was the two of you. After that…”

“She said you still watch the video we made.”
That you made. Of me. After badgering me to agree to it.
The same video Malcolm claimed to have lost along with his stolen laptop. If Hazel had been tempted to believe him in the past, that naiveté had been eradicated in the space of the past week. “She’s livid, you know.”

“Yes.”

Hazel huffed out a breathy laugh, feigning mirth. “You do it on purpose.”

“She’s my wife. She belongs to me. If she is jealous—”

“She should get over it?” Hazel guessed. “She thinks you’re hung up on me.”

Malcolm glanced at her through half-lidded eyes. “Who says I am?”

Common sense. Nearly ten years of silence.
Hazel held his gaze. She had a harder time controlling her voice. “Malcolm… Is Sadie here?”

He sighed, the way he had once done when she did something disappointing, or when he changed the rules mid-scene and Hazel wasn’t able to keep pace. With a careful fingertip, he brushed a stray curl from her cleavage, barely touching skin. The sight of goosebumps on her flesh elicited a smile.

“Would you like to see her?”

“You know me,” Hazel answered, heart in her throat, “I always do better when I have someone to learn from.” In Malcolm’s eyes, she had never been good enough on her own.

She relinquished her champagne flute when Malcolm pried it gently from her hand. His palm was slightly chilled against hers. She made herself grab hold anyway.

“Goodness, your hands are so callused now,” Malcolm carped as he pulled her up with him. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

The desire to tell him where to stuff his plans shot through Hazel like a bolt of lightning.
Focus.
Silence was her best recourse—he could always mistake it for tacit agreement.

She followed him around the piano with slow steps, toward the double doors at the rear of the sitting room. A lavish master bedroom lay beyond. Hazel sucked in a breath as the narrow gap between the doors widened to a full, unfettered view of the room.

And of Sadie.

Chapter Eleven

Heavy silk drapes blocked out the midday sun, but the light that splashed through the double doors was enough to see by. The king size bed was arranged before a Chinese screen, black and gold marrying beautifully with the Art Deco bronze tables on either side.

“Wakey, wakey,” Malcolm called. “Can’t sleep the day away, sweetheart. And look! You have a guest.”

Sadie groaned as she peeked over one pale, bare arm. Her lassitude faded as soon as she saw Hazel in the doorway.