Can't Buy Me Love

by Rin Daniels

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thank you!

  Don't Let Me Go

  Other Books by Rin Daniels

  Copyright

  Olivia G., Cathy Y., Laurie K., Renae J., and Noelle P.

  Friends with unmitigated generosity, with

  brilliant ideas, and who are endlessly patient.

  You make my world better.

  CHAPTER ONE

  KATHERINE HARRIS FROZE in the doorway, a blast of cold air ruffling her bangs. Compared to the sticky heat outside, the foyer to her own personal hell was ironically cold.

  A silver-haired man in a host’s neat black suit watched her from a podium. Was she coming in? Leaving? His expression radiated patient welcome tinged with expectation.

  Kat was pretty sure she radiated manic. And nervousness. And outsider.

  Uh-uh. No way. Not tonight.

  Maybe next time.

  Nope, nope, nope.

  Smiling a crooked, awkward apology to the host whose eyebrows lifted, Kat took a step backwards—one step closer to muggy freedom.

  A hand at the small of her back shoved her two steps in. “Don’t hog the air conditioning.”

  Kat turned, resisting the urge to wipe her sweaty palms down her short cocktail dress. “I just remembered that I have to feed my cat.”

  Nadine Sherwood blocked the exit, both arms spread wide and a glint in her baby blues that said she wasn’t buying. “You don’t have a cat,” she replied, her red lips curved up into a fierce grin. “And your mom can feed herself. You’re going in there, Kat Harris, and you’re going to shake that moneymaker ‘til they fall at your feet.”

  Kat laughed weakly. “By ‘they’, you mean clients, right?”

  “Or Bennies,” she replied, winking. “Diamonds. Champagne. Crude oil. Gold bouillon. Whatever.”

  The visual nearly stopped her heart. “God, no,” Kat breathed, hooking one foot behind the other leg in protective horror. “The last thing I need is anything falling on these shoes.” Her palms smoothed down the black fabric flaring out from her hips, despite her efforts to keep the nervous tic under wraps.

  She’d chosen this dress for the event primarily because the structured waist and high lace back made her look elegant and fashionable. It didn’t hurt that the low neckline, as her mother had gleefully pointed out, did amazing things for her eyes.

  The vivid fuchsia sandals Nadine had insisted she wear added four inches to her five-six height, which only partially made up for her nerves. She’d never say it was like on walking on clouds.

  More like strutting along piles of money.

  Nadine laughed, waving a hand in front of her face. Her nails were a matte turquoise blue, scoring a colorful arc in the air. “Girl, if it nets you clients, you can do whatever you want in those shoes.”

  Kat’s eyes skittered to the impassive host. Did his mouth just twitch at one corner?

  He met her gaze without comment.

  Heat rose to her cheeks. “I’m not planning on it,” she muttered, adjusting the hammered gold fashion cuff on her wrist. She’d chosen her jewelry to be understated enough to accentuate but not alienate. She wasn’t here to compete with the women at this party. She wanted to target the women.

  Wait, no, she wanted to befriend the women. Coach? Convince? Still not right.

  Get it together.

  Butterflies tumbled in her stomach.

  “Hey.” Nadine looped her arm through Kat’s, tugging her towards the podium. “Relax. It’ll be fine.”

  Fine. Sure. If by ‘fine’, Nadine meant that Kat would successfully walk away from this high-class party with enough clients to keep her upcoming hair salon going for the next, oh, say, forty years. Maybe include a few bricks of cold, hard cash?

  And an older rich guy with a taste for married woman whose felon husbands were in jail. That should get her mom off her back. Level of hotness flexible.

  Money always made a man look good.

  And that was her mom talking. Now this was getting ridiculous.

  Kat pressed her lips together, took a deep breath through her nose. She could do this.

  By sheer instinct, her lips widened into the kind of smile her father had drilled into her. Feminine. Innocent. Confident.

  Too confident.

  It was a con artist’s smile, too much of a habit. She abruptly softened its curve before her friend noticed. “It’s just mingling,” she assured herself. Too much desperation, now. Great. She dialed that down, too. “I can make some contacts.”

  That was better.

  “You got this.” Nadine shrugged out off her filmy white shawl like she didn’t care what happened to it. Even watching her hand it casually to the waiting host gave Kat mental hives. The shimmery piece had to be worth Kat’s entire outfit, minus the shoes she’d already borrowed.

  Five years ago, it would have been the kind of item that mysteriously vanished from the coat checker’s inventory. Most anyone would recall would have been a blonde causing enough of a fuss at the front door that the poor guy manning the coat check would have rushed to send her off.

  He’d have been so flustered that details would have been easily forgotten. Maybe a wealth of bleach-bottle blonde hair would have stuck in his mind, or maybe the fact that he’d given her the wrong item twice, adding to her fury until he’d found the right piece. Relief to see her go would only have been eclipsed later when the rightful owner came back for the stolen item.

  An alteration of the change raising game. Hound them to the point of distraction and walk away with practically anything.

  Five years ago, Kat was a very different girl.

  “Love the LBD,” Nadine added cheerfully, breaking through an unwilling trip down a memory lane Kat didn’t want to dwell in. “Way hot. You need a necklace, though.”

  “I tried,” Kat admitted, rolling her shoulders self-consciously. The solid black material of the dress dipped lower in back than the front, with a black lace panel stretched from shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t couture, but if no one looked too hard, she could fake it.

  “Tried?”

  Kat winced. “The end of the trailing clasp got caught in the lace and I had to nail polish the snag.”

  “No,” she laughed. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  Nadine’s eyes sparkled with amusement. Her heavily highlighted blonde curls had been twisted into a deliberately messy bun, leaving strands around her cheeks. A subtle hint of pearlescent blush gave her a sculpted elegance Kat only wished she could mimic. “Trust me, girl. Nobody’s going to be looking at the back of your dress.” She paused. “Well, probably not that high up.”

  Kat’s smile flipped into wry. “I’ll take that as a compliment from you.”

  Nadine Sherwood dressed like she had her own personal closet genie. She didn’t. Kat had asked. What Nadine had was a sixth sense for clothes, in the same way that Kat had a talent for people. Only Kat collected suckers.

  Nadine collected couture.

  Tonight’s dress was a diamond blue cocktail number, shockingly pale against her friend’s suntanned skin. With a Grecian shoulder and a pencil hem a few enticing inches above her knee, she looked like she belonged on a red carpet. Not in a prettily lit foyer patterned by a sprig of small lights in the shape of willow branches.

  Kat knew money.
Maybe she didn’t know what it felt like to roll in it, but she’d been raised to identify the signs, and Nadine oozed wealth. Kat couldn’t help the way she noticed it—couldn’t help how much she felt like an intruder in her friend’s social sphere.

  The question she didn’t want to ask herself was how much it mattered.

  Frankly, Nadine should have had better sense than to hang around the Harrises of the world. Kat always felt a step away from pointing this out, except then she’d have to explain why she thought so. Seventeen year old Kat, never more than a shadow away, didn’t want to tip her hand.

  All of that was ancient history. Kat was twenty-two years old now, an all-new woman. With all-new plans for an old dream.

  And those plans did not include lying. Or stealing. Or taking advantage of anyone else’s weaknesses.

  Or catching someone else in a compromising position.

  Or blackmail.

  Hit it and quit it. Her new motto. All she had to remember was how to meet people, make an impression, and get out. Don’t linger to drive home the con. Don’t game the system. She could do this.

  “Kat?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  Nadine’s smile slipped into a worried line. She had eyes like a porcelain doll, wide and blue. That perfect blend of sparkling and flirty. Men probably fell into those eyes.

  They fluttered now. “Are you all right?”

  Kat wanted to hug her. And then find the bathroom so she could throw up her anxieties. “Nervy,” she confessed.

  “Don’t be. You’re super talented.” Confidence oozed from every scrubbed pore. Even Nadine’s makeup looked fresh and clean, while Kat wondered what kind of virginal sacrifice she’d have to make to look that effortless. “Your hair is amazing, just like always. I’m beyond jelly you can do that.”

  Comments about her hair should have been easy to handle by now, but Kat still struggled to remember why they bothered. She’d changed it drastically, cutting off most of her bleached and dried ends and returning to her natural dark chestnut. She constantly surprised herself when she looked in the mirror. The fringe of sable looked like it belonged to someone else.

  Even the vamp red streaks she’d layered through it didn’t look like her own. As a hair stylist, she’d thought it would be a good idea to stand out a little bit more from the rest. Kat’s classes had been full of stylists with sleeve tattoos, piercings, colored hair and wild makeup.

  A few red streaks seemed appropriate. From bleach-bottle blonde to dark brown and bright red. No one would ever know.

  She almost ran her fingers through her hair, except she’d worked hard at the double French braid pulling her angled bob from her cheeks. It was loose enough to drape artful tendrils by her temples, a blend of careless and styled. The kind of trendy look a woman would expect from her stylist.

  Set the scene, lay down their expectations.

  Just like she’d been taught.

  Her mouth twisted.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Nadine laughed, tugging Kat down the narrow hall. Dark wood trellises marked the way to the party site, and the dull murmur of conversation already filled the air. “I’m a trophy wife waiting to happen. You look like someone I’d want to give money to.”

  Kat almost flinched. Almost. “Well, let’s hope that rubs off on everyone else,” she said, willing herself to be cheerful. This was a cheerful party. A real event. Some kind of commemoration for one of Sulla Valley’s wealthy elite, which meant lots of people with very deep pockets.

  And, if Kat was lucky enough, a need for a hair stylist of her caliber.

  Her new life was a mere, if chilly, vestibule away.

  “You got this,” Nadine said again, lowering her voice as the foyer opened underneath a stained wood trellis archway. “Just stick with me, I’ll introduce you and then wander off if it’s going good.”

  Kat knew the drill. Hell, she knew about three different short cons she could pull with her unwitting accomplice, but that wasn’t the point.

  The point was that Kat needed to be here. Now. And she needed to walk away with people interested in what she had to offer.

  And she had to do it all without anyone recognizing her.

  She’d done the research. The odds of discovery were so low that she felt stupid worrying about it. She looked different. Her name was different. And aside from one stray, she’d never dabbled with Sulla Valley’s elite.

  That stray wasn’t in the Valley right now.

  The vestibule opened into a wide hall, rustic stone and wood but too modern to be anything but expensive. Lights twinkling in the vaulted ceiling decorated faux willow branches twined around the rafters, while tastefully procured lamps hung on wrought iron chains. Elegantly arrayed seating tables had been set up for those who preferred to sit, while drinks were ferried out on trays carried by staff in long black aprons and pristine white dress shirts. Soft rock plucked out of the eighties peppered the ambience, as out of place in the elegant décor as Kat felt.

  Rich people did weird things. She’d have chosen classical, or jazz. Or even a live band.

  Then again, she wasn’t wealthy enough to shrug off expectations like they didn’t matter.

  Or wealthy at all.

  Kat had no doubt exactly what kind of class she strolled into. The amount of privilege gathered under the twinkling lights would probably make her parents weep tears of joy. The women wore Van Cleef and Chanel. The men wore Hugo Boss and Gucci. They mingled like old rivals with long histories and enormous bank accounts.

  This time, when she felt the smile tug at her lips, she let it ride. Her lipstick matched her borrowed shoes, a shade of fuchsia bright enough to compliment her dark green eyes. She had the look. She had the walk.

  She was sure she had the talk.

  All she had to do was make a few contacts, and there was nothing wrong with that. People did it every day, even without running an angle.

  If she told herself that enough times, it’d make it true. Right?

  At her side, Nadine brightened, her slim back stretching as she rose up on her tip-toes—balanced precariously on gladiator heels taller than Kat’s—and waved to someone Kat couldn’t see. “Come on, there’s your first target,” Nadine whispered, tugging on her arm. The language was entirely too familiar.

  Resigned, but oddly comforted, she let her friend guide her towards what Kat could only call a swarm of money.

  “Kira!” Nadine’s smile upped by about a thousand watts. Even Kat had to blink to clear stars from her eyes. Whoa, the girl was a weapon. Jack Harris would have loved to meet her.

  Mold her, more like.

  “This is Kat,” Nadine announced to the crowd. “She’s, like, the best hair stylist you will ever in your life know.”

  How was that for an introduction? No freaking pressure.

  Kat reached across the small circle of girls that looked closer to her age and shook Kira’s hand. “Kat Harris,” she offered.

  “Kira Dawson.” A tall brunette with a shock of purple through her short hair, she wore a Versace blazer paired with an edgy leather pencil skirt and black pumps. Stylish.

  Exactly the kind of client Kat wanted.

  “This is Holly and Mikaila,” Nadine added, and Kat dutifully shook hands with a cultured blonde and a dyed redhead. Not a bad job, she noted critically, but a shade too warm for the girl’s complexion. She’d have softened it with a cooler base.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said brightly. “Don’t let Nadine con you, I’m only, let’s say, the second best.”

  Kira’s mouth twitched as she gave Kat the kind of once-over only the really well-off managed to deliver and make it seem like standard operating procedure. Kat’s grin widened when they hooked on her shoes. “Love the shoes.”

  “Thanks.” Score one for Nadine. Her fingers closed around the fruity pink cocktail her friend pushed into her hand. “I was just admiring your skirt. Is that Edgar Dane?” She knew it was, but she needed a yes. A few of them. A series
of positives turned into a friendly foundation.

  Keep it cool.

  “You know him?” Kira’s surprise played out as expected.

  The fact she asked if Kat knew him, and not of him, was telling enough. People didn’t just know designers.

  Except people like this.

  Fortunately, Kat knew a little about a lot—enough to pull facts out of thin air and jam with just about anybody on anything. It was a handy tool in the business, and something her father drilled into her. A whisper of guilt nudged her now. She tamped it firmly down.

  This was mingling. People found common ground all the time. Right?

  That small voice in her head wouldn’t stop asking.

  “Totally a fan,” she replied. “I’ve been dying to see his designs out of LA. Is that a spring line piece?”

  “Show her the back,” the blonde said, and Kira turned obediently, holding her tumbler to the side in studied grace.

  Ballet? Maybe. Kat filed that away for later.

  The pleats in the back of the skirt drew all her attention. “That. Is. Adorable.”

  Kira chuckled, patting her hip. “It’s possible I may get married in this skirt.”

  Kat laughed with the others, but her mind had already clicked ahead. The ability to score a piece from a new fashion line from a rising star? She was so far out of Kansas, even Toto had dollar signs in his eyes.

  Good ground to be in. She had this.

  Kat gestured to the other girl’s hair. “Your hair is badass, by the way.”

  As expected, Kira’s fingers slipped into her short hair. “I need to redo the color.”

  “Sticking with purple?”

  “Maybe.” Not a yes, but not a shut-down. “It doesn’t hold up well.”

  Nadine nudged Mikaila, the curvy redhead, and asked about her last date—casual talk. The blonde couldn’t stop herself from watching the crowd, her expression intent. Looking for a specific face, probably.

  Kat focused on Kira as the social leader of the three. “It’s gorgeous. Do you have a hair stylist for that?”

  “No, I do it.”

  Surprising. Rich girls didn’t usually do their own color.

  As if aware of her train of thought, Kira’s mouth tightened a fraction at the corner. Whatever her reasons, she didn’t want to be asked.