‘Well,’ Ivy said. ‘There’s someone Holly really, really likes . . . Olivia.’
Ivy didn’t tell her dad or grandparents the part that really scared her. If they were going to ask Olivia for her help, she would have to make a choice about who mattered most to her – Ivy or Holly. And for the first time since they had met, Ivy couldn’t be sure where Olivia’s loyalty would lie.
Chapter Nine
Olivia was still asleep when her cell phone rang the next morning. It had taken her hours to finally drop off – she couldn’t stop worrying about what Ivy was up to. She woke only just in time to grab the phone and mumble, ‘Wha– ?’
‘We need you over here right now,’ Ivy said. Her voice sounded tense. ‘Emergency meeting at my house. Please.’
Olivia bit back all the anxious questions she wanted to ask. Before anything else, she needed to see that her twin was safe after last night’s adventure. ‘I’m on my way.’
She scrambled into a pink vest and a pair of white Capri pants. Barely five minutes later she was fully dressed and ready to go.
Her adoptive parents both stared at her as she raced downstairs. ‘My goodness,’ Mrs Abbott said. ‘We don’t usually see you up so early on a weekend.’
‘I got a call from Ivy,’ Olivia explained, and forced a smile. ‘She’s cooking me a special breakfast.’
‘That’s nice, dear,’ Mrs Abbott said.
Mr Abbott beamed at her over his newspaper. ‘As Henry David Thoreau once said: “Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation.”’
‘Um,’ Olivia said. She remembered the tension in Ivy’s voice, and thought of the emergency meeting waiting for her. I think there might be plenty of perturbation, actually. ‘I’ll try,’ she told her adoptive dad. ‘But I should really hurry now, or the breakfast might burn.’
Both of her parents smiled indulgently and waved her off as she ran out of the house and jumped on to her bicycle. As she cycled to her twin’s house at top speed, worries swirled through her head. What could have gone wrong last night to make Ivy sound so worried and upset even now? Had she been exposed as a vampire in front of the blogger? Worse yet, had she been hurt?
By the time she reached the Vega house, Olivia was feeling so frantic she jumped off her bike and left it sprawled on the lawn, in too much of a rush to prop it up neatly. She let herself in the front door and hurried inside to find the household in utter chaos.
She stopped in the dining-room doorway, staring in disbelief. A plate of smoked kippers sat ignored in the centre of the table while the Count and Countess were hunched over a laptop with Ivy. Olivia would never have believed that the rigidly proper Countess would allow computers at the table during a meal!
Meanwhile, Horatio seemed to be having a nervous breakdown in the kitchen. Olivia could hear Lillian making soothing noises, but his voice rose above hers in a near-wail: ‘If this bread doesn’t finish baking in the next five minutes the whole meal will be ruined!’
Mr Vega stomped into the room behind Olivia, a clothing catalogue in his hand. ‘Quick, everyone: pick out more bunny clothes! The uglier, the better.’
‘Don’t we have enough already?’ Ivy said, without looking away from the screen of the laptop.
‘Who knows how long the VITs will be in town? And Horatio has got enough on his plate without having to wash a bunch of bunny clothes.’
Olivia was impressed: her bio-dad finally seemed to be really getting into the spirit of all this! Until now, he’d always seemed too distracted to completely participate. She gave him an approving smile.
He leaned over to mutter in her ear on his way to the table, ‘I was meant to be getting ready for this afternoon’s engagement party by now!’
Aha. Olivia hid a smile. There was still a little bit of the Groomzilla lurking beneath her bio-dad’s surface after all.
‘There you are!’ Ivy finally turned around and saw Olivia. Looking even paler than usual, she gave a weak smile and waved Olivia over. ‘Um, there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘We’ll be back in just a moment, my dears.’ The Countess rose hastily, giving her husband a meaningful look. ‘I think Horatio may need some calming in the kitchen.’
‘He is a perfectionist, you know!’ the Count said jovially. ‘That’s why his bread is so excellent.’ Despite his hearty tone, Olivia caught the worry in his eyes as he looked from one granddaughter to the other.
Uh-oh.
Olivia waited until their grandparents had left the room before she moved cautiously to perch on the chair next to Ivy’s. What’s this about ? Olivia thought. I can’t bear another argument. The air felt thick with tension. Olivia clasped her hands together to keep them from tapping on the table. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘First . . .’ Ivy took a deep breath. ‘I want to apologise to you for being so tetchy lately.’
Olivia felt a rush of relief. ‘That’s OK.’ She shrugged, but it was an effort to smile. Don’t cry! Whatever you do, don’t cry ! ‘I understand it’s been a tricky time.’
‘I’m still sorry.’ Ivy reached into a bag that sat underneath the table. ‘And I made this for you.’
Olivia gasped. A pretty pink corsage lay in her sister’s pale hand. Mingled in with the pink blossoms, she saw pink rhinestones.
Now tears really burned behind Olivia’s eyes. She knew exactly why Ivy had picked those rhinestones – to match the pink rhinestone cowboy hat Jackson had once bought Olivia, the one she still cherished even after everything that had happened.