Party Foul - Abby Knox Page 0,17
Holden and Dash, the place would be covered. But he knew that the Saturday night crowd didn’t take kindly to Billy. If Levi was the de-escalator, Billy was the opposite. A foot shorter than the rest of the bouncers with double the temper and triple the ego. He was always scrapping for fisticuffs. Mavis only kept him on staff because he was the meanest and the quickest.
Levi felt like a rotten grandson when he had to tell YaYa he couldn’t make it to the cancer benefit at Holy Rosary because he had to go pick out a fucking suit.
YaYa couldn’t be happier to learn her grandson was going on a date—he didn’t tell her it was a fake date—and yet somehow her extreme acceptance and unconditional support made him feel somehow worse.
The negative voices in his head repeated the same thing over and over again as he drove up to Shoreline. Fiona had tried to insist on sending a car for him, but he’d refused.
As soon as he pulled up to the front gate, he knew the whole scheme was a mistake.
The enormous beachfront mansion looked like something out of a magazine. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d seen photographs of that very same house in a magazine that Mavis was reading at the bar one time.
He idled for a moment at the edge of the driveway, considering his options.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said out loud, turning down the radio. “No one is going to believe she’s your girlfriend.”
He texted Fiona. “Are you sure this is gonna work?”
She didn’t text back. She phoned him.
“What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t tell me this was at some fancy beachfront mansion,” he grumbled.
“It’s my house. Well, my family’s house. If I had, would you have come?”
“No.”
“What are you afraid of?”
He looked down at the gray and black pinstripe suit. “Feeling like a phony in a thousand-dollar getup that I didn’t pay for myself.”
His two minds about the current situation dukes it out. He wanted to call it off most of all because he felt like a phony pretending to be her boyfriend. On the other hand, all he’d thought about all day Friday, and all day today, was her.
She paused for a moment. “If you feel that strongly about it, you can go. I will understand. I can suck it up, and my parents can deal with me not having a date. I’ll pay you for your trouble. I won’t hold it against you, and I won’t bother you again.”
This was not what he was expecting her to say. He was expecting some sass. Some entitled princess’s temper tantrum. A reminder that they had an agreement.
Was this some kind of reverse psychology?
“I’m coming in. I’ll be there in a few minutes. As long as your butlers don’t throw me out.”
Fiona laughed, and the sound of it grabbed his heart and squeezed it into a pulp. How the hell he was going to be able to stand next to her all night and not drag her into the nearest bedroom was anybody’s guess.
“Shut up and get your ass in here,” she said. “Nobody is going to make a fuss. And if they do, you just fake it ’til you make it.”
Levi thought about that for a minute. “Fake it ’til you make it.” He’d heard it in passing but never had it applied to himself. He’d never pretended to be anything for anybody. If he faked being her boyfriend, maybe eventually he would end up being her real boyfriend.
The final nail in his coffin was a honking of a horn behind him.
Out of instinct, he rolled down his window and leaned his head out. “Hold your panties, dickweed!”
The driver of the Bentley behind him rolled down his window and stuck his head out. Levi was wrong about not knowing anybody at this party. The guest waiting behind him was the Newcastle Police Chief Arthur Daley. He knew because that dude’s mug was on TV about every other damn day, being interviewed by a news team about one murder or another. Guy had been chief for almost 20 years, and the murder rate in Dockside just seemed to keep going up.
Even so, probably not the best idea to shout at the chief about his panties.
This did not bode well for his evening.
Roll me in sugar and call me a jelly donut, ’cause these people are for sure gonna eat me alive.
Chapter Six
Levi
* * *
Fiona didn’t walk down the stairs. She glided.
The long, slinky gown shimmered