Tansy had swallowed the retort that Katherine had no idea what Tansy’s father would’ve wanted for her. That knowing him for two years in no way trumped the fifteen Tansy had had with him. But that would’ve been unnecessarily harsh, and Tansy was a lot of things, but intentionally cruel wasn’t one of them.
She’d racked her brain for any excuse that might’ve qualified as a decent reason in Katherine’s eyes, because Tansy would’ve rather spent an entire backbreaking evening single-handedly unpacking the store’s newest shipment of paperbacks—inevitable pesky paper cuts included—than celebrate the day Tucker van Dalen was born.
I have a date, actually.
She’d held her breath until, to her relief, Katherine had cooed. A date? You could’ve just said. Don’t be stingy with the details, Tansy. Tell me more.
Tansy’s eyes had landed and lingered on an open box of romance novels waiting to be shelved, had taken one look at the cover within, and blurted—
Gemma. Her name’s Gemma.
No sooner had the name popped out of Tansy’s mouth than had she full-body cringed. She couldn’t have made something up on the fly, a passable blend of two objects in her bookstore’s back room, like . . . like April Calendar. Heck, the author’s name was right there, low-hanging fruit if there ever was some. But no. Leave it to Tansy to complicate something that should’ve been straightforward, blurting out the name of the stunning cover model whose Instagram she’d spent an embarrassing two hours scrolling the night before, all thanks to Under the Covers, an IGTV series wherein cover models took readers behind the scenes of romance cover shoots.
Six months ago, a fake date had seemed like the Swiss Army knife of fibs. Only, one lie had led to another, and suddenly it wasn’t just a date; she and this Gemma were dating. Tansy knew none of it was real; she hadn’t fallen prey to some particularly pathetic parasocial relationship, the way some people believed they were kindred spirits or, heaven forbid, soulmates with some celebrity all because of a polite, impersonal interaction on a public forum that the star probably promptly forgot about.
Tansy didn’t know the real Gemma West, and Gemma West sure as hell didn’t know of Tansy, let alone know-know her. She definitely wasn’t under the delusion that she and Gemma would ever meet, let alone date.
No, the idea of actually dating Gemma West was painfully laughable. Not that she’d told anyone she was dating Gemma West, specifically, keeping the details of her lie scant to be safe. Not that anyone would have believed her if she had. Breathtaking didn’t begin to do Gemma West justice. With her striking green eyes, long blond hair, and sensual mouth, Gemma was the sort of pretty that if their paths were ever to cross—in some strange twist of fate—it would tie Tansy’s tongue.
What was meant to be a short-term solution to an enduring problem had snowballed out of her control, taking on a life of its own. And it needed to stop. She needed to stop it. Not only was the guilt giving her a near-constant case of indigestion, but she was in over her head. By some stroke of luck, she had managed to fool everyone for six months, but secrets rarely stayed secret for long. It was a miracle she hadn’t yet slipped, only a matter of time before she put her foot in her mouth, before someone went digging. Truth will out, and all that came with the inevitable, humiliating fallout.
After tonight, she was going to do the right thing and end this, once and for all. Fake a breakup before the whole thing blew up . . . or she developed an ulcer.
“Then where is she?” Ashleigh pressed.
The double doors to the ballroom burst inward with a bang, saving Tansy from fumbling through another lie. The last note the harpist plucked reverberated discordantly as a hush fell over the room, all eyes turning to—
Tansy choked, champagne dribbling down her chin.
The woman standing confidently in the doorway, an impish smile flirting at the corners of her full lips and a wicked gleam in her green eyes, looked as if she’d stepped out of one of Tansy’s wildest daydreams. As if she’d stepped straight off the cover of one of Tansy’s favorite romance novels.
Because she had.
Gemma West swept inside the room as if she owned it, the black satin of her slip dress clinging to her curves, the side slit revealing miles of smooth-looking skin all the way to—Tansy gulped—the crease of her thigh. Without breaking stride, Gemma plucked a glass of champagne off a table as she passed, knocked it back, and, upon reaching the center of the room, greeted Madison and Tucker each with an air-kiss. Tucker looked as dumbstruck as Tansy felt.
This was no daydream.
This was a nightmare.
Whispers traveled from the fringes of the room.
Is that who I think it is?
The prodigal daughter returns, someone sniffed.
Gemma van Dalen? I thought she was still living in New York.
I didn’t know she was going to be here.
Look at Madison’s face. It doesn’t look like she knew, either.
I heard Gemma was in town, but I figured it was for the funeral.
No, she’s been back since March. My sister’s best friend’s cousin’s girlfriend saw her eating on the patio at Carmine’s.
A real shame, someone said with a sigh. All that wasted potential. Poor Victor must be so disappointed.
Van Dalen? Van Dalen? No, no. Tansy’s stomach sank like an anchor dropped off the side of one of the yachts tethered right outside in the harbor. She needed to sit down. It didn’t matter that she was already sitting down; she needed to do it again. Better yet, she needed to lie down. Under the table, maybe. Preferably somewhere far, far away, where she could pretend this wasn’t really happening.
Maybe it wasn’t really happening. Maybe she’d heard incorrectly? Van Dalen could’ve been Van Something or Other. Or perhaps none of this was really happening. What if she hadn’t so much caught Madison’s bouquet as gotten knocked out by it and this was all some elaborate nightmare, her subconscious playing on her guilt at having lied about dating someone in the first place?
Gemma West couldn’t possibly be an alias of Gemma van Dalen, Tucker’s estranged cousin. The idea was preposterous.
Tucker had mentioned his cousin in passing—never often, but enough for Tansy to have picked up the basics: that she was older by two years and had attended some boarding school on the East Coast, followed by a stint at Columbia, and that there was no love lost between the two of them. But she couldn’t—the woman standing in the ballroom . . . her name was Gemma West. She wasn’t—she couldn’t.
Tansy sank down in her seat, the space under the table still calling her name. As long as no one else put two and two together, she—
“Hey, Tansy.” Jackie nudged her with a knee. “Isn’t that your girlfriend?”
Tansy smothered a whimper. Damn it, Jackie.
“Tansy dating Tucker’s cousin?” Ashleigh slumped back in her chair with a snort. “You’re hilarious.”
With her eyes, Tansy begged Jackie to drop it.
Jackie blinked back at her and frowned. “I don’t . . . you showed me her picture.”
No, she hadn’t. Jackie simply had no understanding of boundaries and believed it was perfectly acceptable to swipe to the next picture in someone’s gallery without permission. Tansy’s only mistake—fine, one of several—was being stupid enough to have saved a picture of Gemma West, er, van Dalen to her camera roll. Stupid enough to have said yes when Jackie had asked if it was a picture of her girlfriend.