Trent’s eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open for just a second before he covered it with a smooth smile. “Hey, Lana asked me to drop some papers up here.” He circled back around the desk. “You have a really nice hotel, did I mention that earlier? You must be so pleased with how everything is going tonight.”
“Yes, it’s been great.” Cami crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down. “What are you really doing up here? The room was locked.”
A flicker of anger erupted on Trent’s face, yet it vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. A congenial smile flashed onto his face and he moved toward them. “How about if we head back down to the party?”
Vince grabbed Trent by the arm as he tried to waltz by. “Not so fast. The lady asked you a question and you need to answer it.”
“Hey, get your hands off, lawn boy. I’m not doing anything wrong.” Trent tried to pull his arm out of Vince’s grip, but ended up with it twisted high behind his back.
“Then how did you get in here?” Cami pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and speed dialed Joel.
“The door was open.”
“I checked that lock myself. I know it was locked.” She looked at him, disgusted. “You’re a terrible liar, Trent. I have no idea how I never saw it before.”
His blue eyes flashed at her. “You saw what you wanted to see.”
“Hey, Joel,” Cami said when he picked up. “We have an intruder in Lana’s office. Could you come up here?” He stated he would and they hung up.
“Who did you call?” Trent asked.
“Our head of security. He has a knack for getting to the bottom of things.” Cami leaned back against the desk and looked at Trent, whose face was turning red from anger. “Tell me, Trent, what else have you been up to lately?”
His eyes darkened and his jaw hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Really?” Vince twisted Trent’s arm more, causing him to suck in a pained breath.
“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Cami said. “The news reports, the pictures and rumors. I know you’ve heard of them.”
“Of course. Everyone’s heard about them. That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it.” Trent winced as Vince gave his arm another yank. “Stop that. I’m not doing anything wrong here.”
Cami called Lana and asked her to come up to the office. She would need to take a look through her papers and make sure nothing was missing. When she finished, she looked at Trent again. “How about if you come clean now and save us all a lot of hassle?” “Right. Because you’re one of the mighty DiCarlos, so I should just kowtow and do whatever you want. Follow your rules, accept your decisions. Your father did everything he could to ruin me. It’s only by luck that I still have a business.”
“He’s hardly to blame if he chose to go with a different company. He had to make the right decisions for the hotel chain—regardless of personal relationships.” Of course, he’d never liked Trent, and actively tried to convince her to break up. No use mentioning it, though.
He snorted. “Right, what’s best for the company, which is why he put his six daughters all to work here—it had nothing to do with personal relationships.”
She decided to ignore that as he was both right that the decision had been a personal one, and wrong that it had been a bad move for the business.
The hall door opened and Joel entered the front office with another security guard. Lana and Blake entered in their wake and Alex wasn’t far behind.
The second security guard took Trent into the next room while Joel did a sweep for bugs—finding several that hadn’t been there last he’d checked. Since the day he’d found the bugs and cameras at their home, Joel had been doing a sweep of each of the sisters’ office areas every couple of days, but until now they had been clean. “Looks like we found our problem,” he said as he finished Lana’s office. “I’ll have to do a full sweep of everyone’s areas again tonight, just to be sure he didn’t manage to sneak in any others. Also, I’ll get Mrs. Grady to meet us at the police department for a lineup, see if she recognizes him.”
Cami felt faintly ill at the thought that Trent might have been behind everything. She knew he’d been unhappy about their breakup, but she had no idea he could hate like that.
“I know everyone’s upset,” Alex said after Joel left the office, “but we do still have a party going on downstairs, and an awful lot of the key people are up here instead of there. We really ought to head back down, put on our social smiles, and get through the evening.”
He was right, though it didn’t make Cami any more excited about returning to the crowd and pretending everything was great. She was glad for Vince’s arm around her shoulder as he led her toward the hallway. “Okay, let’s get back to it.”
“Don’t look so excited,” Lana teased, following on their heels. “Someone might get the idea that you aren’t an avid social climber.”
“And that would be a terrible shame.” A thought popped into her head and she turned to Lana. “Trina. She’s got to be wondering what’s happened to Trent by now.”
Lana cursed, then let out a huff of irritation. “Right. So who gets that pleasure?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Alex volunteered, though a glance in his direction showed grim lines bracketed his mouth.
Relief filled Cami as she allowed Vince to lead her back down the staircase. She had barely eaten anything before the confrontation, but though her stomach was still empty, she didn’t think she could eat anything more.