A Smile as Sweet as Poison Read Free Page B

doorbell.
    “Last chance to back out,” she muttered.
    He pinched her in retribution, right at the junction of thigh and hip where either he or Dylan had whacked her earlier with the flogger. The sensation was slightly dulled through her jeans, but Hazel still greeted the opening of the door with a yelp.
    Sadie hitched her eyebrows. “Hazel? This is a—”
    “I know, I know. I’m late.” Hazel stepped up to buff her cheek with a kiss.
    “That’s okay…” Surprise was audible in Sadie’s voice. She wore a powder blue cashmere sweater over a gray and white polka dot dress, neither one fitting her quite right. A pink headband held her hair out of her eyes. She was playing Good Chinese Daughter Sadie tonight, not to be confused with Party Animal or Late Night Joyride Sadie, both of whom were far more familiar to Hazel. “And this is?”
    “Ward,” Hazel put in quickly, sliding her arm through his. Behave .
    She didn’t know whose forked tongue she dreaded more.
    “Think we’ve met,” Sadie replied archly.
    Ward took no notice. “We did indeed.” He held out his hand the way he might have done to an associate—brisk and formal, but not without the hint of a smile twitching at his lips. What he lacked in effortless charm, Ward more than made up for in clever maneuvering, his mind like a steel trap. “Congratulations,” he added. “Hazel didn’t say you were getting married.”
    “What?” Hazel gaped. “She’s not…”
    Ward nodded to Sadie’s hand, so small and pale in his. A trio of pink gemstones mounted on a silver base gleamed on her ring finger.
    “You’re engaged?” Hazel squeaked.
    Sadie heaved a sigh. “You’d best come in.”
     
    * * * *
     
    Between them, Mrs. Ling, Mrs. Yu and Mrs. Shen were more than happy to show Ward the ins and outs of mahjong. The click of bakelite tiles echoed rhythmically beneath their overlapping instructions while Sadie’s mother plied Ward with tea and assorted pastries.
    Surrounded by permed, rouged ladies of a certain age, Ward seemed utterly at home. He joked with them, he tried out what little Mandarin he knew.
    He was like a fish exchanging rivers for oceans.
    Hazel startled as Sadie took her hand.
    “I was going to tell you.”
    About the ring. The wedding. The shock hadn’t worn off yet, but Hazel forced a smile to her lips. “I haven’t exactly been available…” She spent a lot of time at the loft, true, and their schedules at Marco’s didn’t always align. But they’d worked a shift at the diner just this morning. Sadie could have mentioned the engagement.
    She’d chosen not to.
    “He seems like a handful,” Sadie agreed, gaze drifting over Hazel’s shoulder to the round dining table that separated kitchen and living room.
    Mrs. Ling’s home wasn’t large. Hazel had grown up in a center hall colonial back in Missouri, in a family of wealthy ranchers turned well-off, respectable members of the community—until her scandal had brought a dark cloud over decades of carefully curated virtue. She knew that her own mother would have turned her nose up at living in such cramped conditions.
    Mrs. Whitley would never have placed doilies on her couches, or collected smiling clown watercolors. She would’ve called the cat figurines over the TV tacky.
    Then again, Hazel’s mother had always told her children they could do anything, be anyone. She was wrong a lot.
    “It’s been an interesting couple of weeks,” Hazel replied diplomatically.
    “Have you—?”
    Hazel cut off the question with a single look. Not many people knew details of her past. In LA, Sadie alone had that dubious honor. It was she who had alerted Hazel to the latest volley of online publicity.
    “I’m handling it,” Hazel lied. Badly, with more stops than starts, but she was doing the best she could.
    The last time the video—and assorted screen grabs—popped up, she’d been able to email a C&D to the webmaster and get the evidence erased, the uploader’s account