I got into Harvard, Yale, and Wilton.
(Fuck Yale.)
Can you believe it? The Eastridge Prep scholarship kid at Harvard. Probably won’t go, but still… Some things you’ve just gotta say out loud to make sure they’re happening.
Nash
You know how they say money can’t buy happiness? Everyone on this side of Eastridge is so damn rich, and I have a theory. I think they’ve managed to buy themselves different degrees of misery.
The Kensingtons are both richer and less miserable than the Abbots, but the Abbots are richer and less miserable than the Grimaldi family, who is richer and less miserable than the Stryker family. I wonder if it’s like that anywhere else. Norway? Côte d’Ivoire? Trinidad and Tobago?
Nash
It occurred to me that I knew parts of Nash no one else did. I didn’t know what to think of that except to exorcise it from my head.
I cut off Ida Marie’s complaints about being assigned the North Carolina location, “Giving up sets you up for failure. It’s like saying you want something, but not hard enough to work for it.”
“Being assigned the Haling Cove branch set us up for failure.” Ida Marie perched a fist on each hip. “You know it only happened because we’re on Mary-Kate’s team. They’re not going to let Chantilly take over a project that actually matters to Prescott Hotels. She doesn’t have the experience.”
“Every project matters to Prescott Hotels,” I argued, except doubt trickled in.
This all started to feel like fate—as if so many events clicked into place to land me this job.
Mary-Kate’s Tinder one-night stand led to a baby.
That baby led to her maternity leave.
The maternity leave led to Chantilly’s promotion as the interim head of the design team.
Nash’s need to dominate North Carolina led to a branch opening in Haling Cove.
Chantilly’s inexperience led to the team being assigned to Haling Cove because Ida Marie had been right—Nash did treat the North Carolina Prescott Hotels as throwaways.
A gazillion events led to me needing a job.
Something Reed did for Delilah led to Delilah owing Reed a favor.
That favor led to Prescott Hotels hiring me.
Someone retiring on Chantilly’s team led to me being assigned to Haling Cove.
Being assigned to Haling Cove led me to that elevator and my work with Nash.
How many moving pieces was that?
Eleven.
More, actually, if you broke down my dive into poverty. What more could Fate throw at me? Hell, what was it trying to tell me?
Ida Marie stretched her arms above her head instead of answering and nodded to Hannah and Cayden as they entered with Chantilly. The three of them eyed the fridge before Cayden walked up and studied the contents.
“Neat.” He pulled out some cold cuts and a can of soda. “It’s the good stuff. Perhaps the king has a heart after all.”
Ten years ago, maybe. It’s long gone now—buried so deep, he has forgotten it ever existed.
“You just ate!” Hannah joined Cayden and grabbed an apple juice. “Whoa. These are, like, ten dollars a pop at the juice bar. Nash bought this? For us?”
Chantilly and Ida Marie followed suit, riffling through the fridge. Meanwhile, I sat with my hands tucked under my thighs, knowing if I allowed myself to indulge, Nash would probably walk in ten seconds later to witness the moment of weakness given my luck.
I avoided the heavy stares from my coworkers when my stomach conjured a growl that resembled two dogs fighting over a bone. “What? We don’t have time for food.”
By the time Nash stepped into the room, everyone had settled in and begun their afternoon sketches. He eyed the Coke can in Cayden’s hand, the yogurt in Chantilly’s, the string cheese in Ida Marie’s, and the organic juice pouch in Hannah’s.
Then he clocked my empty palms, ran his hand through his hair twice—which implied he thought I was an idiot—and stalked to the refrigerator. Swinging the door open with the grace of a drunk sumo wrestler, he skimmed each row as if to double-check they had been stocked and eyed my empty hands once more.
His fingers hovered over the fridge, almost curled around the handle. My face flushed at the memory of them inside me, then hardened at the reminder he’d left. Civility should have been a foreign concept, but it felt weird to hate him over the way he spoke to me in the soup kitchen.
Not because he didn’t deserve it—he so did—but because I had touted forgiveness and moving on as a lesson to Ben. If I didn’t lead by example, I would be a liar. I could do that to Reed, Virginia, and Nash, but I couldn’t lie to Ben.
The stare-down with Nash lasted nearly a minute. The questions simmering inside Ida Marie and Chantilly lashed at me, but I didn’t dare look away. I would deal with the consequences later.
“Have you eaten?” Nash spoke as if no one else was in the room. His eyes dipped to my stomach like they would give him some answers.
“No.”
I didn’t elaborate.
Didn’t waver.
Didn’t tell him that it had been fourteen hours since food last touched my lips.
Didn’t tell him I used his app to talk to Ben.
Didn’t tell him I couldn’t stand the idea of his dad’s death on my dad’s hands.
Didn’t tell him it gave him no right to be cruel to me.
Instead, we communicated with our eyes.
Mine said, “I’m not built to lose.”
His said, “I’m only built to win.”
Another minute.
Two.
Chantilly approached Nash on the third.
He ignored her, speared one last glare at me, and left.
I released a breath with him gone.
Victory felt as hollow as an aluminum baseball bat.
Cold.
Hard.
Never permanent.
If I had to watch Chantilly wiggle her ass for me one more time, I deserved a monument in the fucking Smithsonian.
She parachuted a tablecloth in front of her, letting it float to the office carpet. It laid flat on the floor, but she took her time bending on her hands and knees. Ass in the air, she smoothed out the wrinkles.
Our new office lunch ritual, ladies and gentleman.
If this is hell, I’ll change my ways. Fucking promise.
“Will you help me, Nash?” She peeked back at me, her body arched doggy style.
My eyes remained glued to my phone.
Candy Crush again.
Full volume.
Victorious dings filled the air.
“Unless capitalism has changed in the past twenty minutes, the whole point of paying people money is so I don’t have to waste my time with pointless shit.” My thumb ran miles across the screen. The light cast a shadow from my lashes to the phone. Candy wrappers crushing echoed in the room. “Did I miss a memo?”
Cayden eyed Chantilly’s ass as she ran a palm along the polyester fabric. He had two working eyes and a healthy libido, and Chantilly bore the body of a Sports Illustrated model. Yet, I didn’t glance.
Not once.
Definitely not in the past ten days, as each attempt grew more desperate than the last.
You’d think she’d take the fucking hint.
Office picnics for lunch had never existed before I started my feeding attempts, and Chantilly caught on.
If Emery—fucking Emery and her stubborn ass—would cave, everyone in this office could go back to ignoring each other, please and thank you.
Chantilly spread five sets of silverware across the cloth—one for everyone but Emery. “It’s just lunch, Nash.”
“It’s Mr. Prescott to you, and because you have such difficulty understanding boundaries, allow me to teach you a lesson in them.” I pocketed my phone, stepped on top of the cloth, and rattled the silverware, shattering a crystal plate with my three-thousand-dollar dress shoes.
I continued, “This is what happens when pe
ople overstep my boundaries.” My heel dug into the crushed plate and twisted. “They become as useless to me as a broken plate. People are expendable, including you. Clean this mess and clear the office. In the future, Chartreuse, do not overstep if you’d like to keep your job.”
Problem was, Chantilly cared about her job as much as she cared about melting ice caps in the Arctic. As in, not at all. I’d become her goal the second I’d stepped foot in this office and introduced myself to the team.
Perhaps earlier, considering her behavior at the corporate party she'd crashed. If it weren't for her uncle, I'd fire her. Easily.
Cayden left with Ida Marie and Hannah, his phone pulled up to his Uber app. Cheeks the same shade as her hair, Chantilly folded the edges of the tablecloth to the center, bundled up the mess in the middle, and shoved it under Cayden’s desk.
Emery slid her sketchpad into her Jana Sport and flung it over her shoulder. Her toe hit the door’s threshold when I stopped her.
“Not you, Miss Rhodes.”
A mouse squeaked.
Or Chantilly.
They sounded the same.
“Yes, Mr. Prescott?” She pivoted, rested a hip against the frame, and studied me.
I eyed Chantilly, who took her time gathering her belongings into the Birkin bag she wore—something her salary did not afford her, but her family did. The silence allowed Emery to scrape her eyes down my body, trying to satiate her curiosity.
Good luck, Tiger.
That ember between us never extinguished. Proximity drew sweat from her palms. She rubbed them on her jeans, staring at me like she needed to taste me, fuck me, use me. To affirm our one-night stand meant nothing. A fluke orgasm that would have happened if anyone experienced touched her.
Yeah, right, my lifted brow told her. Keep fooling yourself.
She muttered something under her breath. Not weird words this time. Actual sentences. I edged closer, trying to hear them.
Something along the lines of, “It felt worse than the first time, which makes sense, considering I mistook you for the better Prescott.”
“Thank you for the fuck. I have no intention of doing it again. No desire to either.”
“I liked who you were, but I hate who you are.”
“Bye, Nash.”
I popped a brow up and watched her watch me, leaning against my desk. The same desk I worked from everyday, efficient and diligent. I offered input when needed and minded my own business if I had nothing to contribute.
Exactly what I wanted everyone in here to fucking do, but Chantilly seemed incapable.
When dinnertime approached, I would look at Emery, read her unwillingness to accept my food offers, and order her takeout that ended up in the palms of the night guard.
By the time the furniture orders had been placed and shipped, everyone else began ordering in, too. Hence Chantilly’s newfound picnic fetish, where she dished out mood candles and heavy silverware like an overachieving mom handing out healthy Halloween candy no one wanted.
“What?” Emery snapped as soon as Chantilly left, whipping the hair out of her face with a rough swipe.
“Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?” I eyed her hair like it supported my theory. It did. Wild and crazy as ever.
Irritation masked her lust.
“Is there a point to this?” She patted her stomach just below latibule on her shirt. “I’m hungry. It’s my lunch hour.”
“Anyone ever told you that you need a Snickers? You're as pissy as a toddler when hungry.”
“For the record, this is the reaction you inspire from everyone who has ever met you. And if you were hungry and couldn’t feed yourself or talk, you’d throw worse tantrums than toddlers. In fact, your daily setting seems permanently stuck on tantrum.”
I pretended to ignore her—of fucking course, I couldn’t—fetched something from my desk drawer, held it up, and shook it. “Ma made these for you.”
Check. Mate.
I recognized the neon pink as soon as I saw it. A surge of homesickness throttled through me like an earthquake. My fingers twitched with the need to pry it from Nash’s fingers and claim it as mine.
I played it cool. “You saw Betty this weekend?”
“We’ve been over this. I see her almost every weekend.”
He ate the distance between us in two strides. I loosened my grip on my shirt, leaving huge wrinkles above my belly button. When he plopped the Tupperware container onto my palms, I latched on.
A koala clinging to a eucalyptus tree, except my home was a one-hundred-and-forty-pound, five-foot-two woman with graying hair and two hazel eyes that matched Nash’s.
“You have your mom’s eyes.”
The words slipped past my lips before I could swallow them. An accidental gunshot wound to the gut, fired from my own weapon. Embarrassment mixed with a shit ton of pain. I mouthed magic words and cataloged my body, searching for a wound.
Nope. Just inside, you dolt. You are the reason guns come with a safety latch.
Those hazel eyes studied me and drew me into their current. I refused to look away or explain myself. Breaking the silence would be tantamount to losing, so I suffered in it. Not masochistic. Just stubborn.
Why is being near you always a series of lose-lose situations, Nash?
“I know, considering they’re in my eye sockets.” He threw back my words like a Major League pitcher, striking me out while I failed to consider why either of us remembered them. “Ma baked those yesterday.” Nash flicked his attention to the container I refused to loosen my grip on. “White chocolate macadamia nut. Your favorite.”
“Snickerdoodles are my favorite.”
“Liar. Snickerdoodles are your least favorite.” He gave me the stare people gave crying babies. Irritation hidden behind a patient smile. “You once faked a cinnamon allergy, so Ma would stop making them instead of the white chocolate macadamia.”
“Until she told me she mixed cinnamon in the white chocolate chips, too.” I kicked at one of the tablecloth packages on the carpet, digging this trip down memory lane, even if it was with my least favorite Prescott. “Betty’s secret ingredient for every damn dish she cooks.”
“She made you watch us eat white chocolate macadamia nut cookies while you ate the snickerdoodles.” Nash leaned against the doorframe, kicking one ankle over the other. His suit pants tightened around his thighs, but I. Would. Not. Stare. “Ten years later, you still haven’t learned your lesson about lying, have you?”
I didn’t want to reminisce with him. It delved too close to a line I wouldn’t cross—focusing on better times. Forget the past, and it can’t haunt you. That included forgetting the good stuff.
“I don’t want food from you.”
Another lie.
Betty stacked her Tupperware in a cabinet next to the sink. I’d sneak a few out of the cottage and repaint them black with lilac-colored Northern Lights and white stars in the shape of magic words.
I not only wanted the food, but also the container.
“They’re not from me.” Nash’s North Carolina accent sounded more pronounced as he folded his arms across his chest. “They’re from my mom. Would you really deny my mom’s gift? She spent hours baking them.”
Indecision ran laps around my brain until I heaved a breath and distanced myself from him. My shaky hands stretched out, offering the Tupperware to him.
If he grabs it, y’all better let go, Fingers. Don’t embarrass me.
Nash eyed the container, taking his time to examine the way my fingers clenched around it. “Stop.” Harsh. Gruff. Loud. A command I felt above my neck and below my waist. “Just stop.”
“What?”
“This.” He gestured to me like he meant all of me. My entire existence. “You’re lucky pride doesn’t come armed with a dagger, because yours would kill you if it could. Stop being embarrassed. It’s not embarrassing to need help. It’s not embarrassing to be poor. None of this is embarrassing.”
I edged back an inch a
t his words, knowing he had a point, but not wanting to address it.
He continued, ruthless, “You know why I call you the tiger?”
No, but I had a good idea. A statue of Dionysus riding a tiger consumed the expanse of the foyer at the Winthrop Estate. Virginia used to pet the tiger each time she passed it. Right along the jugular vein.
“Because Dionysus rides the tiger.” I hitched a shoulder. The outstretched Tupperware stilted the awkward movement.
“No.” Nash pushed the container until it shotgunned to my chest, still squeezed between my palms. “Because the tiger cannot be tamed. The tiger rules the jungle, and only a god can worship the tiger properly. Your mother is an uncultured idiot, who mistook a tiger for a panther.” His scathing laughter tasted like candy against my lips as he leaned close. “Dionysus doesn’t ride a tiger. He rides a panther. The tiger is his sacred animal.”
And gods worshipped sacred animals.
It’s why I’d chosen Durga as my username.
A goddess known as The Inaccessible.
The Invincible.
Her sacred animal is the tiger, and I wanted to feel sacred.
“What are you saying?” I asked, hoping Nash would give me an answer that would make me hate him more. I clung to the container, the only thing separating us.
His breath fanned my cheeks.
Actually, it also sounds fucking cute.
“I’m saying eat the cookies, Tiger.”
Saudade.
Sciamachy.
Thanatophobia.
Useless words.
Nothing could tamp my frustration.
“We need a centerpiece!” I waved a picture on my phone of a giant abstract monstrosity we had no budget for.
This had become my hill to die on.
Destined to perish from a wound in the shape of Chantilly’s indifference, and my tombstone had better be a damned centerpiece.
Ida Marie flicked her eyes between the two of us, lips pressed together. She swallowed her saliva every ten seconds.
She agreed with me. So did Cayden and Hannah… but they also agreed with Chantilly’s point—we didn’t have room in the budget.
Devious Lies: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Cruel Crown Book 1) Page 28
