last thought that had popped into her brain. Alex? While sitting in wet pants in a girl fight with her ancient nemesis?
Why had she thought of him?
Now? Of all times?
Her brain had started doing this weird thing. If she didn’t think of Alex consciously at least once, oh, every hour, some sort of subliminal alarm went off, popping him into her awareness.
For no reason whatsoever.
Aside from how attracted she was to the man. How much she liked him.
Aargh.
“You know what looks like super trashy behavior to me?” The voice came from behind Sydney. She had to twist around to see who it was, and was shocked to discover the cutting tone belonged to Everleigh. Sweet, bubbly Everleigh. “A woman who thinks she’s too good to help someone. Who can only muster up the effort to denigrate, rather than pitch in. That’s someone without an ounce of goodness, in my book.”
Amelia, who stood beside Everleigh, thrust a pair of gloves at Sydney. She pulled them on in a heartbeat.
Gesturing at her outfit, Nora said, “Do I look like I should be wallowing in the trash?”
Amelia nodded. “From here, you sure do. I think you’d better take your snooty, sorry ass out of this alley.”
“And once you’re gone? Spend some time thinking about if being a jerk is really how you want to live your life. Because we don’t want to have to explain to you again that this?” Everleigh made a wide semicircle with her arm. “Is a no-bitches zone. And if you’re not in this zone, you’re missing out.”
Nora huffed. Looked between all three of them, then huffed again. “Your new friends need to learn who matters in this town, Sydney. You ought to enlighten them.”
She sashayed off—with an enviable amount of grace in icepick heels that never once faltered on the uneven stones.
Amelia and Everleigh each grabbed underneath Sydney’s arms and hoisted her up. “Are you okay?” Amelia asked.
“Of course,” Sydney replied automatically.
That was the answer she’d always given over the years. Traveling was her profession. And when you traveled for a living, things went wrong. All the time.
You got sick. Sucker punched by jet lag. Run into by a tuk tuk. Bitten by hundreds of ants when someone thought a hilarious prank would be adding sugar to your bug spray.
The only rule? No complaining.
If you complained about every little thing—or even semi-big things—then you weren’t cut out to work for a media empire that revolved around and worshipped travel.
And Sydney was literally counting the days—eighty left—until she got back to that job.
“Are you sure?” Everleigh pressed, with a frown. “I’m assuming you fell. That you didn’t choose to sit down on the ice. Because then we’d need to mock you.” But even as she spoke of mocking, the woman pulled off her coat and wrapped it around Sydney.
The warmth was blissful.
“It was my own fault. I deserve the bruises,” she said ruefully.
Amelia shook her head. “Actually, my question is are you okay from being verbally slapped by that woman?”
Yet again, the answer was automatic. Thinking about it didn’t matter. Feeling hurt by a few slings and arrows? That was a luxury that she couldn’t afford. “Of course.”
“She’s a bitch,” Everleigh pronounced.
“She was in high school,” Sydney agreed. “We’ve all grown up and hopefully matured since then, though. I can’t say if she still is one way or the other. Nora could be a perfectly lovely person—just not to me.”
“Nope. She didn’t offer to help and was rude to you.” Everleigh wedged her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “We caught the whole thing. She’s on our blacklist. Nora, was it? We’ll remember,” she said, exchanging a glance and a nod with Amelia as if swearing a vow together.
That was…nuts. Appreciated, sure. But wholly illogical. Not to mention detrimental to a business they were trying to grow. It appeared that they were as oblivious to how small towns worked as Alex was. They’d rescued her—not that she’d needed it—and now Sydney needed to rescue them from making a mistake.
“Look, you just moved here. It’s too soon to be picking sides in feuds, for crying out loud.”
“Too late. Already did,” Amelia said with a grin. One that was very similar to her brother’s infectious smile. Oh geez, there went her subliminal Alex alarm going off again. “Team Sydney all the way.”
Everleigh linked her arm through Sydney’s in solidarity. “Yup. Nora does not give good first impression. And my first impressions are right a solid eighty-two percent of the