Cruel Money

by K. A. Linde

  “Disappointed?”

  I shook my head. “If I could change in six years, maybe you could too.”

  “Maybe?”

  “It’s still up for debate.”

  “Seems fair.”

  I held up the empty glass. “Want another?”

  “I can get it.”

  “Yeah, but I offered.”

  “Are you going to get your own or keep drinking mine?”

  “That’s up for debate too.”

  “Then, make it a double,” he said with a flash of a smile.

  “Be careful, Kensington. Leading an ethical life comes from creating good habits. Wouldn’t want to see you slip up,” I teased as I walked back toward the house.

  “One philosophy lesson, and she’s already teaching the teacher.”

  “I’m a quick study.”

  “Don’t I know it?” he said, his eyes molten.

  I knew that look. I knew exactly what he was thinking about—every minute we had spent together where he taught me just how much sex wasn’t for procreation. Now, I was thinking about it, too. And I knew that we absolutely couldn’t have a repeat. Ever.

  Lord help me. This man. Fuuuckkk.

  Natalie

  13

  “Aristotle, you cannot drive,” Penn said. He tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at his puppy, who was currently standing in the driver’s side of the Audi convertible with his paws on the steering wheel, as if to say, Ready to go, Dad!

  “Aww, let him drive,” I said. “What would it hurt?”

  “Us!”

  I laughed as he hoisted Totle out of the driver’s seat.

  We’d spent the last week slowly getting used to being in each other’s presence. I’d been careful not to veer the conversation back to dangerous waters again. Being attracted to him was one thing. Inevitable. But acting on it…that would be blatant stupidity. I trusted him about as far as I could throw him.

  The last thing I wanted was to fall back into his trap. So far…we seemed infinitely better as tentative friends. And I was okay with that.

  “Give him to me.” I held out my hands for Totle.

  “By all means.”

  He passed him to me, and I let Totle nuzzle down into my lap in the passenger seat. Penn threw our things in the trunk, and then we were off.

  “I still can’t believe that you only brought one tiny bag.”

  “We’re just in the city tonight,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, but every other woman I know would need a whole suitcase for that.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Not by much,” he said, fiddling with the stereo.

  “Well, that’s absurd. Katherine is the one who is going to doll me up. I literally only need pajamas, a change of clothes for tomorrow, and my toothbrush.”

  Penn shrugged. “I agree, but that’s not the norm.”

  “I guess not.”

  Penn drove around the circular drive and out onto the main road toward the city. His phone connected to the stereo, and soon, music filled the speakers. To my surprise, I recognized the song.

  “Is this ‘Bad Habit’ by Liz Longley?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, it is. I didn’t think you’d know this one.”

  “Oh my god, I love her music. I went with my little sister to see her perform with Delta Rae once, and she’s so funny in person.”

  “I’ve never seen her before. Every time she’s in town, I’m too busy.”

  “Well, next time, we can go,” I said before I could stop myself.

  Penn grinned.

  “As friends,” I quickly clarified. “Just friends.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I didn’t know that you had a sister either.”

  “Oh, yeah…Melanie,” I said, turning to look off in the distance.

  “You’re not close?”

  “Are you close with your brother?” I may or may not had Googled the Kensingtons since Penn moved in and found out he had an older brother, Court, who seemed like a troublemaker.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He slid his gaze to mine and then back to the road. “You’re avoiding my question.”

  “Melanie is wonderful. She’s seven years younger than me. She dances and sings and has straight As. She’s had the same boyfriend since we moved to Charleston when she was eight. Basically, she’s perfect.”

  Penn snorted. “Possibly the opposite reason as to why I’m not close with Court.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “My brother is...a professional fuckup. He’s never actually held a job, he has no real passion, he’s fucked nearly every eligible woman in the city, and he doesn’t give a shit who sees.”

  “How does he even survive?”

  “Charm and a trust fund.”

  “Well, I guess Melanie isn’t looking so bad.”

  “I don’t get why you don’t get along with her,” Penn said. “What did she do to you?”

  “Nothing. It’s more how she made me look to my parents. Hard to compete with perfection. I’m not your brother, but this isn’t exactly what my parents thought I’d be doing with my life.”

  “Now, that I completely understand. I’m pretty sure no one in my life wants me to be a philosophy professor.”

  “But you’re so passionate about it.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I couldn’t imagine Penn doing anything else. Not when I’d heard him speak about what he was working on in his book. Maybe other people just saw what he was doing rather than how much he clearly loved it and made snap judgments. Obviously coming from money and the Kensington name, it had to be hard. Most families would be ecstatic if their son had such a prestigious job but not the Kensingtons.

  I decided to let the subject drop. It was clearly a sore subject. He’d been studying philosophy for more than a decade, and his family still didn’t accept it. Talking about it wasn’t going to help.

  We changed the subject and got on easier topics. The music changed multiple times with all sorts of songs I’d never heard before. I was considering stealing his playlists. But he shocked me even further when he turned on Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” With the top down and the wind whipping my hair in my face, we sang at the top of our lungs and enjoyed every minute of it.

  The drive seemed to take half as long as it had when I first came out to the cottage. Either it was because I had an idea of where I was going or if it was just Penn.

  Between the three weeks we’d spent alone in that house.and the careful truce we’d drawn that night out on the deck, things had changed with us. Penn hadn’t come on to me since he had that look in his eye. But I couldn’t deny that I found him attractive, and he was easy to talk to. He was too good to be true, which probably meant he was.

  And I needed to stop fooling myself.

  There was a reason I had been angry with him.

  For everything he’d done to me that night in Paris. For the person I’d become due to those actions. How cheap and used I’d felt.

  I never wanted to feel like that again.

  But sometimes, when we were alone like that, it would all disappear. And I’d forget entirely why I was mad at him in the first place.

  It was dangerous. He was dangerous.

  I needed to be very careful.

  “All right. Here we are,” Penn said as he finished navigating the New York traffic like a pro.

  My eyes traveled up, up, up the building off of Central Park. Somewhere up there, Katherine was waiting for me. Nerves bit at me. I liked Katherine. She seemed nice enough, but I couldn’t figure out why she wanted to do this for me. I didn’t know enough about her to make a judgment about who she really was. And until then, I knew I needed to keep my guard up.

  “What are you going to be doing?” I asked.

  “I’ll be at my apartment with Totle. I brought some work with me,” he said, gesturing to the leather messenger bag in the backseat. “I�
�ll take your stuff up to my place with me.”

  “Okay. Maybe I should just…hang with you and Totle. I have work, too.”

  “Go on. Get out. Have a good time.”

  I sighed heavily and slung my purse over my shoulder. “Fine. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Looking forward to it,” he said with a brilliant smile.

  Then, I was on the sidewalk, alone, in New York City, and he was taking that beautiful smile and his even more adorable puppy far away. I double-checked my phone for instructions to get to Katherine’s apartment and took the elevator upstairs.

  I stepped hesitantly inside. I’d never seen an elevator that took you into a person’s actual house. That was a bit disorienting.

  “Hello?” I called out as I turned the corner.

  “Natalie!” Katherine squealed and rushed toward me. She hugged me tight. “I’m so glad that you made it. Come inside. Mimosa?”

  “Uh…sure,” I said, taking the champagne flute out of her hand.

  “How was the drive?”

  “Easy.”

  Since Penn’s friends didn’t know that he was staying in the Hamptons, we decided not to enlighten them. I didn’t mind them coming out to visit, but it would disturb the peace we had out there. And all the time I’d spent writing on my new project, which I still hadn’t figured out a title for. My agent had been asking about it because I’d finally confessed to putting the other book aside. But I just wasn’t ready.

  “Good. I’m glad. Okay, let’s get started.”

  “Started?” I choked out.

  She’d told me that we were going to have a full day of pampering, but I hadn’t thought she actually meant a full day. What could possibly take all day?

  “Yes! We have a full day ahead of us—massage, facial, waxing, tanning, hair, and makeup.”

  My jaw dropped. I’d had massages, sure. When I’d swam in college, the trainers and physical therapists would sometimes massage out knots from the pool. They were usually intense and made you cry. For some reason, I didn’t think that was the kind of massage she meant. The rest I’d never had the money to splurge on.

  “It’s going to be great!” Katherine said, tugging me into a bedroom that had been transformed into a day spa.

  Then I was quickly whisked away by Emmanuel, who was gorgeous enough to be a male model. He spoke the entire time about his boyfriend, who actually was a male model. Besides that, he had a constant stream about how much I clearly needed these treatments. About how my skin was begging for hydration and how my body had more knots than a sailor and how utterly transformed my face was with carefully sculpted eyebrows. When he trimmed my hair, I quaked in fear that he’d lop it all off. But he was right that it needed it…that I needed all of it.

  “This color is so trendy,” Emmanuel said as he blew my hair out.

  “Thanks. I like the silver more than my natural blonde.”

  “Well, it’s not something I see often around here. More likely in the Village than the Upper East Side,” he said with a laugh.

  I bit my lip and nodded. I loved my hair, but it didn’t exactly blend in. I could have walked off of the set of Game of Thrones with my Targaryen-white locks. Likely, I would be more comfortable in the Village too, but somehow, I’d landed on the Upper East Side.

  “Everyone will be raving about this,” Emmanuel said.

  I just didn’t know if it was going to be in a good way.

  But when I stared at my reflection in the bathroom after six hours of pampering and another half hour of trying on designer dresses, I hardly recognized myself, even with my signature silvery-white hair down in voluminous supermodel waves.

  “Look at you,” Katherine said. She twirled her finger in a circle, and I spun for her. “Who knew those incredible cheekbones and amazing eyes were hidden? Just look at your hair! It’s so glossy. So silver. And that dress. It’s perfect!”

  “I can’t thank you enough. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “Well, you will have to do it more often because damn.”

  I laughed and covered my mouth.

  “Don’t touch your face,” Emmanuel said in dismay. “Or your hair.”

  “Right,” I said, dropping my hand with a laugh. “You’re incredible. Thank you.”

  “Rock it tonight, ladies,” he said with a wink.

  “Okay, final touches!” Katherine cheered. “Come with me.”

  I obediently followed her out of the bathroom and across the apartment to her bedroom. We stepped into her gigantic closet. She entered a code into a punch pad attached to a dresser, and it clicked open. She pulled out one of the drawers and revealed row after row of glittering jewelry.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  She laughed. “Basically.”

  She pulled necklace after necklace out of its case and held it against my neck. She’d admire it for a few seconds and then veto the selection.

  “So,” she said, holding a sapphire-studded choker against my throat, “have you spoken to Penn since he left?”

  “I…”

  She giggled at my reflection. Seeing my uncertainty about how to respond as discomfort. “It’s okay. You can tell me. Obviously, you two have history.”

  “Yeah, but…it was a long time ago.”

  “Seemed pretty relevant that night he found you on the beach.”

  “Well, yeah, I hadn’t seen him in six years.”

  “You’re going to see him tonight though.”

  “Right. He’s going to be there.” I was a terrible liar. It was definitely not my forte, and sparring with someone like Katherine, it seemed relatively impossible to keep it up.

  “Oh, yeah. Of course. I would just be careful,” Katherine said, holding up a new necklace with a teardrop ruby at the center.

  “Careful?”

  “You know how Penn is.”

  “I know how he was.”

  Katherine shrugged. “Can a tiger really change its stripes?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? The one I’d been asking myself for three straight weeks. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to believe that people could change. But I didn’t really know if they could.

  “Oh, this is the one!” Katherine crooned. She strung the band of diamonds around my neck and nodded. “They’re perfect.”

  And they were.

  Who knew that adding thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds could completely transform but not overpower an ensemble? Not me.

  “Let me step into my Manolos, and we can head out,” Katherine said.

  I tried not to think about what Katherine had insinuated about Penn as we left her apartment and took a bona fide limousine to the gala. I wasn’t here for Penn. Nothing was going on with us. And Katherine had merely been curious because of our history. That was all.

  Luckily, it was easy not to think about seeing him again since I’d never been in a limo before. Nor had I ever been to a gala. And I couldn’t believe it when there was a real red carpet and photographers waiting for us. Katherine exited the limo like the socialite she was to a roar of approval and the flash of cameras. She reached back to get me to climb out of the backseat. To my surprise, the crowd cheered again.

  I was a nobody. Why the hell were they cheering for me?

  “Smile, Natalie. They think you’re beautiful. Own it.”

  I laughed and pushed my shoulders back. If I was going to spend one night living my fairy tale, I might as well enjoy it.

  We walked the red carpet like stars. Katherine, I supposed, legitimately was, but she included me so completely that no one guessed that I wasn’t. I was just another socialite out with my friend. Katherine assured me that, by the end of the evening, I’d have party invitations with everyone in the city who mattered. If we made it onto Page Six, then I’d have designers asking me to their fashion shows and offering for me to wear their clothes. It was the most bizarre night but totally addicting at the same time. No wonder Katherine did this full-time.

  I
smiled at the final camera and then took my last step into the main room where I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Penn stood at the bottom of the stairs in a sharp-cut tuxedo. He looked up at me as if I were a dream. His mouth hung open slightly. His eyes swept up my body from the blue silk gown that revealed a sliver of leg in a thigh-high slit and hugged my curves to the diamonds at my throat and finally landed on my face. Our eyes met and locked. A current of desire shot through me. Mirrored and matched.

  I walked the final steps down to his level.

  “You look stunning,” he breathed like a prayer.

  “Thank you,” I said. My cheeks flamed at his attention. I hadn’t been embarrassed by any of the photographers outside, but one look from Penn, and I was a goner.

  He held his arm out like he was a prince. “Shall we?”

  And lost in my own fairy tale, I nodded and let him whisk me inside.

  Natalie

  14

  “Katherine did a pretty good job, huh?”

  Penn’s gaze swept over me again. “Truthfully, you look equally as beautiful, lounging around in pajamas with your hair in a bun on the top of your head.”

  I laughed and swatted at him. “Stop. You’re joking.”

  “Am I?”

  And suddenly, I wasn’t sure if he was.

  “Well, a tux suits you. And I was just getting used to you in regular clothes.”

  “Just getting used to me?” he asked as he walked me through the room. He grabbed champagne for us off of a passing waiter’s tray and then continued toward his friends.

  “For so many years, you were this guy in a suit in my head.”

  “Did you think about me often?” he asked with a smirk on his pretty lips and raised his glass to take a sip.

  “Only when I wanted to murder the male population.”

  He sputtered on his drink and burst into laughter. “How often was that?”

  “Men do a lot of stupid shit. You’d be surprised how regularly I am prone to murder.”

  “Duly noted.”

  The truth was that I’d thought about Penn way too often in the last six years. He’d been my first. And the best. I might have been young, naive, and stupid, but I knew a good orgasm when it hit me. Nothing had really come close.