CRUEL MONEY (Cruel #1)

2. Natalie

Natalie

2

My dream and nightmare stood before me.

Clothed like a god walking off of a James Bond set with dark hair and midnight-blue eyes that flickered in the dying embers. Six years had only intensified his magnetic allure. The sharp planes of his too-beautiful face. The ever-present smirk, which sat prominent on those perfect lips. The coy glance as he slid his hands into the front pockets of his black suit pants.

I had been a girl then. Young, naive, and incredibly innocent. I’d thought him a man—bold, honest, emotive, and utterly larger than life. Now, as I looked upon him, I had no idea how I’d thought of him as anything but a rogue. The kind of man who could charm you with a glance and entice you out of your pants with a few pointed words. The sort of man I purposely walked away from now.

I’d never imagined I’d see him again. Never considered what would happen if I came face-to-face with him. But, now that I was, the words just tumbled from my mouth.

“What the f**k are you doing here?” I gasped.

He c****d his head to the side in surprise. An emotion I was sure that he wasn’t accustomed to. He was definitely the kind of man who liked his life in a certain order. People didn’t surprise him. He didn’t let people in his life enough for that.

“What am I doing here?”

His voice was just as I remembered it. Smooth as butter and deeply entrancing. I thought I’d made it up. Like no one actually talked like this. In my mind, I’d magnified everything he was and everything he’d done. But standing here, I was wondering if I had remembered him better than I gave myself credit for.

I braced myself for this conversation. I’d built steel walls up around my heart, mind, and body. I didn’t let people in as easily. And I needed to prepare myself for his manipulation. Let the anger I’d harbored all of these years tear him down as he had once hurt me.

“That’s what I said,” I snapped back.

I’d finally reached him, and I scrambled for my dress. It was a floor-length white boho number that had more fabric than sense, which made finding how to get it on incredibly difficult under good circumstances.

These were not good circumstances.

I struggled with the dress and the layers of material, desperate to find the opening for me to slip my head through. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I was seeing Penn again for the first time in six years, I had to do it completely naked.

Seemed fitting. That was the last way he’d seen me then, too.

“Yes, but you are the one who is out of place, skinny-dipping on this beach. Don’t you know these are private residences?”

“I’m well aware.”

I finally found the bottom to the dress and yanked it over my soaking wet head. My long silvery-white hair was such a nuisance sometimes. If only I’d let my best friend, Amy, convince me to chop off my ass-length hair, but no. I had to have another weapon to make getting my dress on more difficult.

“And you’re only supposed to have bonfires in preapproved metal containers.” He glanced down at my makeshift fire. It had almost completely died out by now. “Not to mention, have at least a two-gallon bucket of water to douse the flames.”

I rolled my eyes. Was he actually serious right now?

My euphoria from the ritual began to evaporate. Well, that hadn’t lasted long.

With a huff, I ruffled the bottom layers, pulled my sopping wet hair out of the back of the dress, and then grabbed the shovel off of the ground. With a mighty heave, I covered up the dying flames with a heap of sand.

“There!” I spat. “Now, can we get back to what is important? Like what you’re doing here after all this time.”

He frowned, as if confused by my statement. And that was when it hit me.

He didn’t remember me.

Penn had no clue who the hell I was.

Oh god.

I hadn’t thought that this could get worse or more humiliating. Sure, I looked like a crazy person, burning soul-crushing rejection letters and then stripping nude into the Atlantic. But, now the guy I’d cursed for years was standing before me … and he was staring at me as if I were a stranger.

Six years was a long time.

It was.

Most people might not remember someone that they’d had a one-night stand with from that long ago. I knew it was maybe a little irrational to be upset about it all. But, f**k it, I was upset.

You didn’t have the most amazing night of your life with a total stranger and then completely forget that person! I didn’t care who the hell you were. I didn’t care how many times you’d had a one-night stand.

And it had been pretty clear that it wasn’t Penn’s first time—though it had been mine—but still, how could he have forgotten me?

“After all this time?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I grumbled. “The real question is, what are you doing here? Do you live nearby? I thought this was the wrong time of year for the rich and entitled to be in the Hamptons. Memorial Day to Labor Day, right?”

I couldn’t keep the snark out of my voice. No point in filling the bastard in on how I knew him. If he lived nearby, this was going to be one hellacious house-watching.

“Most people are gone. But this is my home, which is why I was wondering what you were doing here.”

“This is your home?” I whispered, pointing at the house off the beach. “No, this belongs to Mayor Kensington. She hired me to watch it this fall. You can’t possibly own that house.”

He shrugged and then sighed. “I didn’t think anyone would be here,” he said, clearly frustrated at my appearance.

“But…but…why would you…”

Then, it dawned on me. My heart stopped. My jaw dropped. I released a sharp breath in disbelief.

“You’re a Kensington.”

He gave me a sheepish grin. “I suppose it’s my family home.”

“You have got to be f*****g kidding me.” I shook my head in disbelief.

I thought this ritual was supposed to cleanse s**t from my life. Not bring in another issue. f**k.

I could not deal with this right now. Not with my anxiety high from the rejection letters. I’d only been here three days. I’d thought this was a dream come true. Everything was pointing me to get the f**k out of Dodge. Because, man, what else was life going to throw at me? Everything always came in threes. That was what my mom had said.

“I can’t,” I said. I held up my hand to keep him from saying anything. Then, I grabbed the remaining matches and the bourbon, which he eyed curiously, and then stomped off with the shovel over my shoulder.

“Um…where are you going?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” I told him.

I didn’t care that I was being incredibly unprofessional. Or that I was probably ruining my chance at staying at this house. Not that I wanted to work for the woman who had birthed this asshole. But I just needed to get away. I needed to get away and decompress and figure out how to proceed. If I saw his gorgeous face and that come-hither smile anymore, I was likely to stab him with the shovel.

Penn didn’t seem to listen though. He barged right up the beach after me. Heedless of the sand in his loafers or messing up his probably bajillion-dollar suit.

“Uh, you left this,” he said, holding out my bra.

I squeaked, juggled my full load, and snatched it out of his hand. Just f*****g great. It wasn’t the first time he’d held my bra or anything, but, god, at some point, I had to catch a break. I had to.

“You’re welcome,” he muttered under his breath.

I had no intention of thanking him for anything. So, I kept my mouth shut.

“Are you going to tell me why you seem like you’re ready to set me on fire?” he asked. He was calm—curious but calm.

I was a puzzle he needed to solve. He needed to be able to put me in a box so that he could figure out how to manipulate my emotions to his whim.

“No.”

“All right,” he said. But it only made him inspect me harder. “I really don’t understand why you’re mad. This is my house. I thought you were the one trespassing.”

“Well, I’m not,” I growled. “I got this job a month ago. And I had no idea that you were going to be here. In fact, I had no idea you were even a Kensington.”

He peered at me inquisitively, as if he were memorizing the span of my face and the curve of my figure. As if he were about to take a test and was having a last-minute cram session to remember all the little things he already knew about me but promptly forgot. “Have we met before?”

I snorted. “Observant.”

“And it was a bad meeting?”

I snapped my narrowed eyes to him.

He held his hands up. “Okay. Very bad meeting.”

“The fact that you don’t even remember is…” I trailed off.

“Bad?”

“Reprehensible.”

“You know, you do look familiar. I thought you did this whole time.”

I rolled my eyes skyward and then deposited the shovel back where I’d found it. Better to keep it out of arm’s reach for the rest of this conversation. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Sure,” I said sarcastically.

I wasn’t sure he knew how to do anything else.

“No, really, how do I know you?”

I shook my head. Hurt broke through the anger. Hurt that I hadn’t let myself feel in so long. “If you can’t remember, then I don’t really see any reason to enlighten you.”

Then, I reached for the door, but he stopped me in my tracks.

“Paris.”

I whipped around in shock. He did remember. That bastard did remember something. But hurt was then immediately replaced with that boiling anger. That righteous, vindictive flame that shot through me every time I remembered my first time.

I yanked the door open and glared back at him. “That’s right. We had one night in Paris. You wooed me, you f****d me, and then you ghosted!”

Pushing the door the rest of the way open, I stepped into the Kensington summer cottage. And I froze in place as four people turned to face me. Four people who had clearly heard me screaming at Penn and airing our dirty laundry.

Just…wonderful.