Beautiful Days by Anna Godbersen Read Free Book Online Page B

callously and wrecked her family, holding a half-full cocktail by the window and looking as crisp as ever. Her knees went to mush and her throat got hard and tight.
    As always Thom’s every hair was in place. His white linen suit fit him just loosely enough, and unlike the other young men, the heat of the day did not seem to have caused him to sweat even a tiny bit. The handsomeness of his features was as devastating to her as ever, and he still stood in exactly the same elegant, careless way. Yet there was something changed in him, in the way he looked at her. Maybe in the set of his jaw, or in the light in his eyes. For a moment she wondered if it was unrequited love, but then she reminded herself that he had had plenty of her (how it seared her heart to remember taking him into her bed), and that this quality probably had more to do with lust or hate or deepening enmity or an intention of violence.
    The last time they had stood face-to-face had been the night she’d lured him away from his family’s party with the idea of killing him. Even now the audacity of this made her feel sick. But in the weeks leading up to that night he had played a wicked trick and convinced her that he loved her and would do anything for her. Then he had managed to extract a secret about Dogwood and how to sneak into it, and someone working for his family had used that secret to murder her father. She had been so stricken with grief and self-recrimination that driving to the Hales’ home with a gun in her garter had seemed like quite a logical thing to do, the only thing to do, and it was not until she had seen Thom on the other end of the barrel and imagined his perfect features marred and bloodied that she had faltered, dropped the gun, and run.
    A waiter bearing a tray of wide-lipped glasses passed between them, breaking some kind of spell. Cordelia became aware of the room around her: The fine parquet of the floor gleamed and the deep red of the walls went up twenty feet, where it was crowned by elaborate picture moldings. The tall east-facing windows were open so that breezes could rise off the Beaumonts’ parterre gardens and soothe young girls who had been overheated by bourbon and dancing in the sun. Five conversations were going on at once, and she could faintly make out the exuberant playing of the band outside on the lawn, a soft wail of trumpet.
    Then Thom took a step in her direction with a curl to his lips that was unlike any expression she’d ever seen on his face before. The indifference of the previous few seconds was replaced by a ragged beating of her heart.
    But before she got a good look at the twist of his upper lip or had any chance of really knowing its meaning, she felt the touch of a gentle palm at her elbow.
    â€œDarling.” It was Astrid at her side, looking as gloriously Astrid-like as ever: Her hair was shiny and buoyant and only half covering her ears, and her smile was as easy and radiant as though all the world were just a little game set up for her amusement. She rolled her eyes in young Hale’s general direction. “You know girls like us never wear the same dress twice.”
    It had been a tumultuous half hour for Cordelia, and she was relieved when her friend drew her away from the parlor before she could be certain whether Thom had been about to come after her or not.

Chapter 5
    BY THE TIME IT WAS DARK ENOUGH FOR PYROTECHNICS, the star pilot had already packed up and gone home. The Beaumonts, who’d paid him handsomely for his show, had insisted that he stay long enough to shake hands with those female members of their extended family who were particularly enthusiastic about aviation, but he did not linger more than necessary. Soon after he departed, his silver plane growing ever smaller in the gathering dusk, most of the stuffier guests went, too, in a caravan of chauffeured limousines driving slowly out along the topiary-lined drive. Meanwhile, the sun had gone down