Making Ripples Read online

  My lungs constricted as my irrational heart wanted so badly for it to be him.

  He must have felt my eyes on him because he turned and looked at me. I stared back at him until I realized I was being totally creepy and obviously it wasn’t Brady who was a world away in the States, nursing a broken foot. He turned away from me and laughed when the man across from him said something.

  Just two English guys having lunch. I shook my head and continued on my way, suddenly feeling like maybe I was losing it a bit. Maybe getting some distance from my life at Rosewood was a good thing.

  At least, that’s what my head said.

  My heart had other ideas.

  Three Rings

  I took my latte to the fountain and tucked my coat under my butt so I could sit down without getting soaked. By this time the drizzle had stopped, but the ground was still wet and cold. But Londoners (native and transplants like me) were used to the wet, so by the time I sat down, there were lots of people milling around the area for me to watch.

  Even with the waterproof jacket though, the ground quickly got uncomfortably chilly, so I finished my drink and was about to leave when two girls, maybe about my age, sat down near me. I didn’t want them to think I was leaving because they’d sat down, so I stayed where I was, figuring I’d give them a few minutes and then I’d get up. They didn’t even seem to notice me as they sat down, not missing a beat as they chattered to each other.

  “...off the market, I guess,” the one said in her London accent.

  “Like you ever had a chance with him,” the other chided, making me smile at the obvious best friend banter. Though it did make me a little more homesick (schoolsick? Is that even a thing?) for my Rosewood friends. I could see having a conversation like this with Chelly

  “I could have a chance with him. You don’t know.”

  I snuck a glance in time to see the friend roll her eyes as she said, “He’s not even in the country most of the time. Rumor is he’s off in America at school.”

  My ears pricked up at that. I took a pretend sip from my empty cup.

  “I heard he’s in Paris.”

  “The paper said the girl’s American. Some Hollywood celebuspawn.” My ears really pricked up at that. Kaylee? Could they be talking about Declan?

  A big sigh escaped the one girl. “It’s not fair. He’s our Dashing Duke. How could he go to America and pick one of their girls. He should be with a nice British girl.”

  It was Declan. It felt weird to hear them talking about him, well, Edmund—because that was his real name—when one of my best friends was the celebuspawn they were talking about.

  “A nice British girl like you, perhaps?”

  “Exactly,” she said indignantly, though I could hear the smile in her voice. Yeah, definitely I could be having this conversation with Seychelles.

  “Well maybe he’ll get rid of this one as quickly as he got rid of the last one.”

  As the girl said this, I couldn’t help but turn and look at them, surprised. I hadn’t heard anything about him having a girlfriend from before. Though admittedly, I was a bit out of touch and hadn’t ever really followed the tabloids, even when I lived here.

  “She must have just been a fling. She didn’t go to the wedding with him. He wouldn’t bring a hookup to a wedding. Can you imagine?”

  “The Queen would have had a stroke.”

  I froze as the girls laughed, thinking about how when I’d come back to London with Declan, he’d been returning home to attend a wedding. Trying not to look suspicious and realizing I probably looked like an idiot statue as I tried to figure out what they were talking about, I took another fake sip from my seemingly bottomless cup.

  Then, despite all my instincts screaming that I shouldn’t, I couldn’t help myself. I turned toward the girls and in my best English accent said, “Sorry for eavesdropping, but are you talking about Edmund Beaufort?”

  The one girl, the one who wanted to be Declan’s duchess, frowned a bit but the other smiled and nodded. “Yes, Portia here is upset because he’s got himself a girlfriend and it’s not her.”

  I gave Portia a sympathetic smile. “He is gorgeous, I feel your pain. But who were you talking about—some other girl?”

  The friendly girl’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t read the papers?”

  I shook my head.

  “Go get any one of them,” she said, nodding toward the other side of the street where I presumed she figured I’d be able to buy a paper. “The new girl’s in there, but also the one from last month when he came home. They got a snap of him and her at the airport. The picture never even came out until now. It can’t be anything serious.”

  “I don’t know,” Portia said. “They seemed pretty close.”

  Her friend shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re calling her some mystery girl, but she could be a cousin or something. You know the papers; I think they’re just trying to make a story where there probably wasn’t one.”

  I swallowed and lifted my cup to my lips, realizing I was more than likely that ‘some mystery girl’ and was at risk of being recognized. Suddenly very thankful for my disguise, I stood, gave them a “Cheers,” over my shoulder and headed home, going as quickly as I dared without arousing suspicion.

  Housebound

  “We have a problem,” my father said as he walked into the flat, shrugging his coat off.

  Mom and I looked up from where we sat at the dining room table, the tabloids spread out in front of us. My picture was in almost every one of them. That we had a problem was not news to us.

  I’d gone straight home from Piccadilly, but as soon as I told her what had happened, Mom went out and collected as many papers as she could. Sure enough, there I was beside Declan in a photo obviously taken as we left the gate upon arriving at Gatwick airport. To make matters worse, I was pretty much facing the camera and the shot was fairly clear. Anyone who knew me was going to recognize that photo, it was just a matter of time. And just like the girl had said, it did look as though Declan and I were really close, although most of it was a trick of the camera angle, making us look like we were practically fused together. The smiles on our faces didn’t help, but it wasn’t that I was smiling because he was my boyfriend; he’d just made a particularly funny joke about Prince Charles.

  Dad glanced at the papers and shook his head, letting out a big sigh.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling guilty for putting my family at risk again.

  He shook his head again. “Not your fault. I should have done something about the airport, but I wasn’t thinking straight after that threat. I was more concerned about just getting you home as soon as possible.” He exhaled loudly and started sifting through the papers as Mom and I watched, waiting for him to go on, because we knew he would. Sometimes, he just needed a few moments to process.

  It didn’t take long. “This isn’t the last of it,” he finally said, blowing out another long breath. “I checked in with our media liaison about this, and they said you’ll be identified in tomorrow’s rags. Someone from your old school here in London broke the story.”

  I wasn’t surprised, but Mom swore, something she almost never does. I couldn’t blame her. This was not good—I was always so careful not to have any sort of presence where I could be identified: no Facebook or Instagram accounts, I shied away from having my picture taken. All for nothing now that my face was all over the tabloids—the absolute worst place that would have the furthest reach. It was almost ironic.

  “What about Edmund?” I asked, Declan’s real name sounding weird on my tongue. But I was worried that in his good deed of getting me back to London, he’d put himself and his family at risk.

  “MI5 is on top of it and Scotland Yard is keeping a close watch, too; he’ll be fine. You haven’t been seen with him again.”

  “What about Kaylee?”

  “Who?”

  I pointed at the picture of her and him, next to the one of him and me. “His actual girlfriend.”<
br />
  He looked at me over the rims of his glasses. “You promise you aren’t his actual girlfriend? You said you weren’t, but this isn’t the time for lies. If there’s more to this story and it’s going to come out, you need to come clean with me now.”

  “No, I promise, Dad. He’s with Kaylee. He and I are just friends. Always.” I didn’t tell him about my own love life—it wasn’t exactly relevant since it had screeched to a halt the second I’d left American soil anyway.

  Dad looked down at the papers. “Have they connected you to her in any of these?”

  “No.”

  “Who is she?”

  “One of my friends from Rosewood.”

  “She doesn’t look familiar. So not an agency brat like you?”

  “No,” I said. “Her parents are Hollywood.”

  Dad blew out another breath. “I guess that’s interesting enough. We can use that.” He ran a hand over his head, his fingers splayed out wide. “We sent you there to be safe. How did they find you?”

  “Robert said the call came from somewhere in the Middle East. They weren’t on campus. Maybe they didn’t even know where I was, but got a lead on the name I was using.”

  “How did they get the phone information?” Mom asked.

  Dad and I both looked at her. “I don’t know,” Dad said, a line forming between his eyebrows. “That’s what we need to find out. How did they know what name she was using? Where did their lead come from?”

  It was a rhetorical question, because if he didn’t know, there was no way we could.

  “So now what?” I asked, more concerned about what was going to happen next than where the weak link had been—that was my dad’s job. And anyway, they’d busted the cell that had been behind the phone threat. That meant I wasn’t in immediate danger otherwise I’d be back in the Alps. I shivered at the thought.

  “I’ve worked out a story with MI5 that the boy and you were at the same school in Paris—it’s in his best interests to throw the media off of where’s been anyway—and you just got a ride home with him to spend American Thanksgiving here with us. You went back to Paris three days later.”

  “Isn’t anyone going to come forward and say we weren’t at the school in Paris?”

  “Not when the school doesn’t actually exist. It’s a ruse used by MI5, CIA and a few other international security organizations for just this sort of reason,” he said.

  Being the daughter of a secret agent meant I was never surprised at hearing about these kinds of schemes. “I was there as Brooklyn Jones?” The name I’d used while in London.

  He nodded. “Yes. Since you’re the minor part of the story it should blow over, but you can’t go outside anymore. At least not for the foreseeable future.”

  I gave him a pained look, but didn’t dare complain, considering this was all for my own safety. Still, he understood, “Look, I know it’s not ideal, but if anyone has facial recognition and catches you outside...”

  I nodded, standing up to get myself a glass of water—worrying is thirsty work. “I know. You don’t have to explain.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling me into a rare hug. “I never meant for you kids to get dragged into all of this.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. What you do is important.”

  He pulled back, his hands on my upper arms as he looked at me. “It’s not okay, but my number one job is to keep you safe. You know that, right?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a sniffle from behind me. Dad and I both turned and looked at Mom who was (almost) quietly crying, tears running down her cheeks.

  “I hate this,” she said through gritted teeth. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And now it’s almost Christmas and we’re not all together and I don’t even know what...” she dissolved into sobs and Dad let me go so he could move around the table to comfort her. I dropped into the chair across from them, wiping tears away from my own cheeks.

  What a mess.

  “I’ll make it right,” Dad murmured to Mom. “I’ll keep everyone safe. I promise.”

  Dad had never broken a promise. Ever. I hoped this wouldn’t be the first.

  ~ ♥ ~

  Three days later and it was Christmas Eve and I was back to worrying about cabin fever again. I hadn’t left the flat since that day I’d been in Piccadilly Circus and I was pretty much climbing the walls. I had become something of an expert on British media though, thanks to Dad bringing home every single paper and my relentless internet surfing for images of my own face.

  The story about me and Declan had quickly fizzled thanks to Dad’s planted story and Declan/Edmund’s own semi-fabricated stories being published. The ones where they went on about his new American girlfriend Kaylee and how she was from Hollywood royalty. The stories said they’d met at Cannes, which made sense since she could conceivably be there with her parents, and he was actual royalty and went to school in Paris, so would definitely fit in with the crowd there.

  It became obvious that I was a nobody and that they’d even published the one photo of me had been a stretch to make a story where one didn’t exist.

  Still, Declan had pulled out all the stops to make sure to deflect the media away from me. He’d even gone out in public with Kaylee, giving the paparazzi tons of opportunities to get pictures of them together. Despite the photo ops obviously being a distraction for my benefit and that I was sure she must have hated the attention, I could tell they were still happy together and I was so thrilled for them both that it almost hurt. Or maybe the hurt was from wanting to see them so badly.

  Especially Kaylee, who had been the closest thing I’d had to a best friend at Rosewood, but probably now knew that my name wasn’t really Brooklyn Prescott. Oh, who was I kidding? Of course she knew my name wasn’t Brooklyn Prescott. But what did she know? I was sure she’d been debriefed by Declan and maybe even some agent from MI5 or Dad’s agency, but I hadn’t asked what she’d been told. It didn’t matter anyway, since I’d never see her again. And while that made my heart ache, maybe it was for the best, since I was sure she hated me for all the lies. They were necessary lies, but still, I’d completely betrayed her trust. She was probably going to go back to Rosewood and tell all the other girls what a horrible liar I was and how my entire existence at the school had been a sham.

  Probably word would get to the guys, too. Dave and Jared and of course, Brady.

  I doubted any of them would have seen the tabloids, but there was always that chance, especially if any of the girls were looking for stuff about Kaylee while she was in London with Declan. Either way, they were all going to find out I wasn’t who I’d said I was. Goodbye to Brooklyn Prescott and any chance of her having something of a normal life.

  As I looked down at the papers in front of me, I realized everything in my life had far-reaching implications; a stone had been thrown into a pond and the ripples were radiating out, until they touched everyone I had called a friend at Rosewood. I’d learned from Emmie to count my blessings and be thankful for everything I did have, but now I wished I was just a normal kid. I wanted to be someone who didn’t have to look over her shoulder all the time and could go out and get a hot chocolate at Starbucks without having to worry about who might see her or want to hurt her to get to her father.

  No point wishing for any of that, though. I sighed as I closed up the paper and put it on the stack with the others.

  I looked around the flat, almost deafened by the silence. It was Christmas Eve, but we hadn’t listened to any carols or done any decorating; Mom had pretty much forbidden it since Robert wouldn’t be with us. It felt a bit dramatic since she had to know eventually we’d grow up and maybe not be home for every holiday, but with the threat and everything, we didn’t argue. She seemed pretty on edge and neither Dad nor I wanted to push her over.

  She was out getting groceries for what promised to be a subdued Christmas dinner, but Dad had convinced her that not only did we still have to eat, but that Robert would be upset if h
e knew we were moping around without him.

  I wondered how Robert would be spending his Christmas and hoped he had someone to spend it with, although knowing him, he would probably be happy sitting in front of his computer hacking codes and eating pizza pockets.

  Dad was at his agency office, but had promised he’d be home mid-afternoon after he made sure London was safe. Or at least, as safe as he could make it. Christmas meant more potential for threats, but many years on the job meant he got to spend the holiday home with his family. At least most of his family.

  The clock on the mantle struck eleven bells. It’s only eleven? Ugh, I thought, more bored and restless than I’d ever been in my life.

  I glanced out the window and was delighted to see a few flurries falling outside. I knew it probably wouldn’t accumulate and there was barely a dusting on the street, but it felt good to see the snow and it finally felt like Christmas. I just wished I could go out in it and feel the crisp chill of snowflakes on my face.

  Movement caught my eye and I noticed a man out in the courtyard, lowering himself stiffly onto one of the benches. He seemed to be around mid-twenties with dark hair, a chiseled jaw and plenty of the kind of rough stubble that makes guys look so sexy.

  Despite the overcast sky, he was wearing sunglasses and had earphones stuck in his ears. As I watched him, mesmerized, because it was the most exciting thing that had happened all morning AND because he’d the best-looking thing I’d seen since I’d left Rosewood, he turned his face up toward the sky and smiled. Despite how nice he was to watch, I was struck by a sudden pang of jealousy as it was obvious he was enjoying feeling the snowflakes on his face—the thing I’d wished for only moments before.

  I suddenly wished for it more than anything. Glancing at the clock, I calculated I had about an hour before Mom would be home and several before I’d see Dad. If I was careful—and of course I would be—they’d never, ever know.