“Is he gone yet?” Liz asked her friends when she exited the bathroom about fifteen minutes later.
“He is,” Scarlett confirmed. “But it was really weird…”
“Yeah, he kind of looked through your things first.” Lauren frowned as she made this revelation.
“My things?” Liz searched the room, her heart racing. Her instincts were dead-on. This guy was definitely up to something, and a big part of her was afraid to find out what that might be.
Scarlett placed a hand on Liz’s shoulder. Her voice came out soft and worried and not like Scarlett at all. “Yeah. Your pumps, purse, pashmina. All of that.”
Liz contemplated telling her friends about their strange encounter on the dance floor, but she didn’t want to worry them until she knew more. Besides, they had another problem to focus on right then. “I can’t believe this. What a creep! Did he take anything?”
Lauren shrugged and shot Scarlett a worried glance. “Shane scared him off before he had too much time to root around, but you may want to check. Just to be sure.”
Liz marched back to the table with her friends and, sure enough, her clutch had been left open when she was certain she had closed it. Nothing was missing. She made sure of that. But why? Why had this stranger taken such an interest in her? Why had he invaded her privacy so thoroughly? And why did she feel as if he were still here, watching her from the shadows?
“I saw you two arguing earlier,” Scarlett said, her eyes widening. “What was that about?”
“Not arguing,” Liz corrected. “But he was seriously overstepping some boundaries. Like he had the right to question my entire life just because he’s writing some puff piece on Vanessa. And then he insulted me.”
“Insulted you?” Lauren grimaced. She’d always been fiercely protective of her friends, and she and Liz had bonded last year over their shared love for Lolly Winston’s music.
“Yeah, when I called him out on being nosy, said he might be flirting. He laughed and said I wasn’t his type.” She tried to make light of it, but the rejection still hurt. Strange men who rifled through her things weren’t Liz’s type either, but still, nobody liked to be insulted. Especially on such a sensitive day already.
Scarlett’s face grew as red as her name. “Well, he’s not your type either!” she shouted.
Liz couldn’t disagree there. Although Dorian had been tolerably handsome, his personality and decorum left too much to be desired. “It’s almost like he knew something we didn’t know, and he thought he was better than us because of it.”
“Nobody—and I mean, nobody—is better than you, Lizzy,” Scarlett said, wrapping her in a hug.
“Yeah, forget that jerk and let’s go dance,” Lauren said as she stretched her arms around the both of them.
“Shane and I will stay here in case he comes back,” Henry offered after clearing his throat. “Go have fun, ladies.”
Liz reached for her purse. Even though she trusted the guys, she’d still feel safer if she had her things with her.
Scarlett followed suit, grabbing up the pashmina and draping it over Liz’s shoulders like a cape.
“I think I’ll leave the shoes,” Liz said with a laugh. “I’d actually be happy if someone decided to walk away with them.”
“That bad?” Scarlett asked, shaking her head.
“That bad,” Liz confirmed.
“What a passive aggressive monster,” Scarlett said with a sneer, grabbing Liz by the hand and tugging her toward the dance floor.
“Yeah, and there are, or were, at least two monsters here tonight, too.” She shivered as they crossed over the spot where she and Dorian had shared their tense dance.
Scarlett lifted her arms overhead and bumped her hip into Liz’s. “Enough with the monsters and witches. Let’s dance.”
Liz tried to lose herself in the music, but despite her general fitness, she had a hard time keeping up with her friends who regularly raced and ran sled dogs, making them the very definition of “in shape.”
“It really is a shame,” Lauren said after a while as the band prepared for their next song. “If you ask me, he was kind of cute.”
Scarlett scrunched up her face in disgust. “Ick, Lauren. Really?”
Their friend just shrugged. “I mean, you never know, right? Sure, he’s a creep now, but Shane wasn’t exactly Prince Charming when we met the first time. Or second. Or, umm, third.”
Liz laughed. She hadn’t known Lauren back then, but she’d heard plenty of stories, each more amusing than the last. Still, Shane had turned out to be a prince in disguise. Dorian could only be a monster.
She sighed and tried not to show how much the encounter still bothered her. “We may have danced at the ball, but Dorian is no prince, either. And I’m definitely not Cinderella.”
“Cinderella would have been so much cooler if she had your red hair,” Scarlett said, boinging one of Liz’s curls that had fallen loose despite copious amounts of hairspray.
“It’s really not fair, though,” Lauren said. “Seeing as you got the evil stepmother, but not the prince. Fairytales are supposed to be more balanced than that.”
“Fairytales?” Liz laughed. “I’m just trying to live a normal life here.”
Just then, almost as if on cue, Liz’s new stepmother, Vanessa, strode over to the group. Though she wore a practiced smile on her face, her body language suggested she was anything but happy.
And poor Liz seemed to be the object of her malcontent.
Vanessa grabbed her by the arm and pulled her in close as if to dance. Instead she squeezed her fingers hard around Liz’s soft flesh and hissed in her ear, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Liz gasped and tried to pull away, but Vanessa held tight. “Dancing with my friends.”
“Who was that man, then? Don’t think I don’t recognize the press. They were not invited for a reason.”
“He was writing a society piece and needed to know about the flowers that were in your bouquet and other details like that.”
Vanessa’s grip loosened. “Are you sure?”
Liz nodded, though she wasn’t sure at all.
The older woman let go, leaving little white and red marks on Liz’s skin where she had squeezed. “For your sake, I hope no family secrets make their way into this weekend’s papers.”
Liz found it funny that Vanessa only considered her a member of the family when their reputation was at stake, but said nothing as she watched Vanessa make her way back across the hall. Every few feet, she stopped to greet another guest, giving hugs, smiles, and kisses on cheeks.
Of course the woman was kinder to near strangers than to Liz. If she loved her father so much, shouldn’t she also love Liz? Or was that love missing for the both of them?
Liz couldn’t make sense of it, no matter how hard she had tried.
She needed to put Dorian Whitley clear out of her mind, too. She had bigger, more immediate problems to worry about, after all.