The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Eighteen

The Aldridge house had a ballroom, and it had a name card for me.

TABLE NINE, it said, in gold script.

Nash read it over my shoulder and went still.

"Table nine is by the kitchen door," he said.

"I figured."

"She put you with the staff."

"Looks that way."

I smoothed the front of my borrowed dress.

It was dark green and a size too long.

It had come out of the drama club costume closet.

Hattie had pinned a note to the hem: Do not tell them it was Lady Macbeth's.

Candles burned on every table.

A string quartet played in the corner, and the faculty stood around in tuxedos.

A hundred people turned toward the door to look at the girl with the bad boy.

At the head of the room Camille wore white silk and a diamond necklace.

She smiled at me across the floor.

"I'll make a scene," Nash said under his breath.

"You will not."

"Aileen."

"You're my boyfriend this week, not my bodyguard." I squeezed his hand. "Go sit at table one. Look sad about it."

"I hate this."

"I know. It's why you're good at it."

He went, and I walked to table nine.

The people there were not what Camille had planned.

There was a woman in a caterer's black uniform on her break, and a man who ran the lake docks.

There was Hattie, in a cardigan and a clean skirt.

Beside her sat her father, a big quiet man with grass-stained hands.

He stood up the moment I came near.

"Miss Brannigan," he said, as if I were someone's grandmother.

"Please call me Aileen."

"Hattie says you're the one who read Teddy's phone the riot act."

I looked at Hattie.

She smiled so sweetly I could have thrown a bread roll at her.

We ate the salmon, and I asked the dock man about ice fishing.

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