Staying On Top(14)

“I can’t believe he doesn’t know who you’re dating, Audra. Whitman isn’t that big of a campus. He’s going to find out sooner or later, and don’t you think it’s going to hurt his feelings that you didn’t tell him about a guy you’re so obviously crazy about?”

“I’m more worried about what piece of Logan he’ll hurt if he finds out at all.”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the folder of financial reports off my desk. “The Stuart brothers can’t possibly have expected you to never date a single soul until you married. Right?”

She shrugged and slipped into a pair of heels, declining to answer the question. “Ready?”

We left the room together, her knee-length skirt and mine making swishing noises in the empty hallway. It bothered me that Audra was so keen on keeping her relationship a secret from her brothers. If Logan was a good, upstanding guy then she would trust him to win her family over . . . wouldn’t she?

Spending years watching other people—brothers and sisters, parents and children—meant that I knew them well enough to scent their weak spots. It taught me nothing about how to live inside a family unit. There were surely more complications than I could guess, so maybe Audra deserved some slack.

But if she and Logan were still dating when I got back from Christmas break then my sleazy private investigator would have another project. I lived by my instincts. I’d learned to trust them, and even though Audra would probably hate me as much as everyone else once she found out about my dad and what we’d done to Sam, she was the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend. My greasy worry over this obsessive relationship wouldn’t go away until I figured out the source.

We lined up in alphabetical order to enter the Chapter Room. The other girls bitched about the formality and traditions. It was kind of a pain to follow them to the letter every time, but it made this experience feel special to me. Like we were part of a giant family, one that had been formed a hundred years ago by a group of women not too unlike us, and we all still belonged to one another, bound together by the little things that we’d done together over and over.

When I reached down to make sure my phone was on silent, I saw a text message from Captain Sleazeball, the private investigator.



Westin hotel in Melbourne, and according to my sources, has plans to spend the majority of the next two months in the area. I’ve sent the address and room number to your private e-mail account. Let me know if you require any additional specifics.



Great. Fucking Australia. Despite what I’d told Audra, it looked as if I might not be able to finish the semester on campus. It would be tricky, since I’d used the family emergency excuse last spring, but my professors would probably let me take the finals remotely. I was a good student, and they trusted my devotion to academia. Taking into consideration the fact that plenty of Whitman students had less-than-average lifestyles, with the right explanation, they’d be falling over themselves to let me finish from the road.

The music started in the Chapter Room and the line of chattering sorority girls fell silent. We stepped through the white-painted doors, and I took my place at the table toward the front. I watched the rest of them file into rows of cloth-adorned folding chairs, wearing their Kappa Chi letters on their chests and varying expressions of interest.

They were the only sisters I’d ever have, the only family who had ever chosen me. Like true families, even the girls I didn’t particularly like, I loved. A hole opened up in my chest at the thought of losing a single one of them.

I couldn’t afford to think like that. They weren’t family, which meant I didn’t get to keep them. It had been a hard, early, lesson in the days and weeks after my mother’s death.





Chapter 5


Sam





I’d opted out of Thanksgiving with my family. They didn’t know about the stolen money yet, but they had seen the same gossip on the news that Quinn had. They’d been relentlessly asking me to explain, unwilling to accept my “it was a mistake” explanation.

Not unwilling. Afraid. If I lost everything, so did they, and my parents had no intention of getting a job other than following me around the world. The only member of my family that I felt close to was my cousin Melody. She was three years older than me and a successful book editor in New York City, and we’d been close ever since she’d spent a year traveling with me during college.

She’d never once asked me for money. It shouldn’t matter, but it did.

Summer held Melbourne tight in its grasp. Choosing to come here for my six weeks off had multiple benefits, the warm weather being a big one. The massive time difference and jet lag followed close behind, because it also meant that I wouldn’t be expected home for Christmas, since the Australian hardcourt season began at the beginning of the new year.