CRUEL MONEY (Cruel #1)

4. Natalie

Natalie

4

I needed to get my phone.

Or at least that was my excuse.

I had my notebook and computer, but after those rejection letters, I didn’t feel like writing. My scant few paperbacks held no sway tonight. I just wanted my phone, so I could kill a few hours scrolling through Crew, the latest social media app the entire world was raving over. Maybe, if I had the nerve, I’d call Amy and tell her how much of a disaster this new job already was.

But I wouldn’t let that disaster hold me back from going out there to retrieve my phone. I needed to persevere and manage to escape this encounter unscathed.

Bolstered by the lingering side effects of all the bourbon I’d imbibed, I left my bedroom. The confidence I’d had while blow-drying my hair the last twenty minutes—thank god Amy had gotten me a Dyson for my birthday—was quickly evaporating like water on blacktop during a hot Texas summer. Trust me; I’d know. We’d spent two years in San Antonio when I was in elementary school.

I creeped down the hallway and stopped when I heard voices coming from the living room.

“We’re actually going to leave because of this girl?” I heard a female voice ask with annoyance in her voice.

Probably Katherine. Lark had seemed kind of cool at least. Understanding for sure.

“It’s my fault,” the other female voice said. Definitely Lark. “I should have known.”

“Stop saying that,” Katherine said. “We don’t have to apologize to anyone for showing up to a house one of us owns.”

“We could just go to your place,” a voice said. Sickeningly sweet. A taunt.

I peered into the living room and saw that it was Lewis who was grinning like a fool at Katherine.

“You know why we can’t go to my place,” she ground out.

“Yeah, stop goading her,” Lark said.

“Have you met me?” Lewis asked.

Rowe gruffly laughed once. He was staring down at the tablet in his lap. His laugh was the only indication that he was paying attention to the conversation.

“That’s enough from you,” Katherine said, gently smacking him on the arm.

He looked up once, quirked an eyebrow, and then looked back down.

“Well, we’re here tonight. It’s too late, and I’m not leaving,” Penn said, his voice the commanding presence of his friend circle. They all looked up at him standing with his hands in his pockets. “Not after that party.”

From a bird’s-eye view, I felt like I could watch them interact all day. The writer in me—my writer’s curse, as my father had always called it—made me pick out all the various details about them. The feel of their connection. The depth of their affection for each other. The little smiles and quirks and tics that made them function as a unit…practically a family. Not my family, of course. One even stronger than our dysfunction. Family where you found it. It was magic in its own way.

I’d hardly even observed them, and I could tell that something had drawn them together. Something strong, deep, and unyielding. Tying string around each of them and knotting it into place. Speaking words of a spell around the string to let the magic bind them.

Something about it was mesmerizing. Knowing that life had chosen these five people and cast them together. Not nature, not because they had been forced into a unit. But because they had chosen this familial bond.

A brief memory fluttered back to me of Penn saying that he’d taken his best friend to her debutant ball. That his friends had all gone together and had such a good time. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see them all there in ball gowns and tuxedos. Paired off but together. Apart but one.

Then Katherine’s eyes shifted to my hiding place, still standing in the hallway, peeking out. And her eyes lit up with something like excitement.

Shit. I’d been caught.

“Natalie, come on out,” Katherine said.

I straightened even further and stepped from my hidey-hole. “Sorry to disturb you. I realized I’d left my phone out here.”

“By all means.” Katherine gestured with her hand to come in.

I didn’t glance at Penn, but I could feel his cold eyes track me through the enormous space. I tiptoed through the Kensington cottage, trying to keep my feet from squeaking on the hardwood floor. I’d failed miserably at ballet when I was younger and had the grace of an elephant unless you threw me in the water. Years of competitive swimming in high school and later at Grimke had made me a Little Mermaid in reverse; I’d practically grown a fin.

I’d thought that would be another perk of staying at this incredible home. Besides the fact that it was a square two-story home with bay windows, the most comfortable bed in existence, and a freaking library, it had a massive refitted Olympic-sized pool. The place had been on the island since the 1800s and continually brought up to modern standards while keeping its old-timey charm. And the pool was one of the best parts.

Too bad I’d never get a chance to step foot in it.

And there was my phone. Lying on the side table where I’d left it. I picked it up and held it aloft for them to see. “Got it. Thanks.”

“Why don’t you stay and have a drink with us?” Katherine suggested.

“I…” I had no words for that.

I hadn’t expected them to want to include me. As much as a unit they looked from the outside, it had never occurred to me that they would allow outsiders into that dynamic.

“Come on. It’s one drink. Anyone who can annoy Penn as much as you have in the short time since you’ve been here is someone we want to toast to,” she said with a tinkling giggle.

Penn grumbled something under his breath that I didn’t catch, but Katherine just grinned like a Cheshire cat at him.

“Really. Come sit.” She patted the seat next to her on the couch. “I insist.”

“Yeah,” Lark said, joining in. “It’d be nice to get to know you since I wasn’t able to meet you when you came into the city.”

My eyes flitted to Penn’s and back reflexively. Should I do this? He clearly did not want me to be around his friends. I could tell in the change of his stance. The way he crossed his arms and looked away in frustration. Was it me he was embarrassed by, or was I just intruding on his perfect little life?

He’d told me to stay out of the way. But no, I didn’t have to listen to that. And I didn’t have to care whether or not he wanted me to hang out with his friends.

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe we should polish off the rest of my bourbon.”

Lewis laughed from his corner chair. “I like her already.”

I wandered back into the dining room where I’d left the bourbon and lifted it into my hand. I’d had more than I thought, even counting the amount I’d poured on the letters. No wonder I’d yelled at Penn. I probably would have done it anyway, but the alcohol had sure helped.

My eyes wandered to my phone. No new text messages or emails. My agent and her assistant must have gone home after sending me the bad news. I huffed and switched to Crew to see if I had any notifications. Mostly nothing, except for a guy from Grimke who I’d swam with. I closed it out and hefted the bottle up as I walked back in. I took the seat Katherine had offered and I set the bottle down on the coffee table.

Lark bit her lip. “Glasses?”

Rowe snorted. Katherine smacked him.

Lewis stepped up and reached for the bottle. “Like the good ole days.” He opened the bourbon and took a long swig. “Phew! That’s the good stuff.” He admired the bottle with a nod. “Jefferson’s Ocean. Girl has taste.”

I wasn’t about to admit that I’d had no clue. I’d just liked the name of it. Not that I’d thought there would be a bottle in their wet bar that wasn’t high quality.

Rowe held his hand out and nodded his head at Lewis. Lewis seemed to understand Rowe’s silent request because he handed him the bourbon.

Katherine reached out and twirled a strand of my silvery-white hair between her fingers. “I love this. So original. You don’t see this…sort of thing where we’re from.”

I shrugged. “Thanks. I started doing it in college, and it’s kind of my signature now.”

“It suits you,” Katherine said, releasing my hair. “How exactly did you meet our Penn?”

I pursed my lips, and my eyes met his in the distance. He arched an eyebrow. A question or a command?

“We met in Paris. We were at the same party.”

“Anyone I know?” she asked Penn.

He sighed as if this was a great hardship. “Harmony Cunningham.”

Lark chuckled. “Oh, that’s too good.”

“Was her mother there?” Katherine asked with a sigh of almost lust.

“Who…is Harmony Cunningham?” I asked softly.

Katherine’s eyebrows rose. “Only the heir apparent to Cunningham Couture.”

“Oh,” I said softly. “That Cunningham.”

I didn’t follow fashion, especially expensive designers. I had no need for their clothes, and I couldn’t afford them even if I wanted to. The most I knew were the fancy shoe designers that Amy was obsessed with. She called them the trifecta—Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin.

“She’s almost as famous as Lark’s mother,” Katherine said with a wink.

My head snapped to Lark. Who was her mother?

Lark sighed through her nose and looked like she wanted to throw her shoe at Katherine. “My mother is Hope St. Vincent, and she runs St. Vincent handbags and cosmetics.”

Now, that one I did know.

“My best friend carries St. Vincent bags.”

Lark smiled shyly. “I love what my parents do, but that’s not me. So, ignore Katherine. I have no interest in working with my mother. You all know that I prefer campaigns.”

“Yes, yes,” Katherine said. “We tolerate you doing your charity work.”

Lark rolled her eyes.

“It’s like Penn working as a philosophy professor,” Lewis said with a smirk of his own. “Totally impractical, but we think he’ll come around one day.”

I tried not to look too interested at that tidbit.

When I’d met Penn, he’d been a budding philosopher. Always writing down his own philosophical musings in his leather-bound journal. He’d wanted to be a professor despite his family.

Hmm…maybe it hadn’t all been a lie. Just…most of it.

“And what do you do?” I asked Lewis.

“I work with money.”

“Like…a financial planner?”

A burst of laughter erupted out of Rowe. “Lewis. A financial planner. What a riot.”

“No, I manage hedge funds and try to get hotels on Boardwalk,” he said casually.

“As you do,” I muttered.

“It’s for the best. We keep things going, like Broadway and museums and publishing.”

My ears perked up at that. But it was Penn who beat me to it.

“Natalie is an aspiring author.”

I wanted to hit him even though it was true. Every time he pulled a fact about me out of thin air, it felt false. Like a joke to him. That he could remember anything from that night and not immediately want to apologize to me for being an asshole made me viscerally angry.

“Stop acting like you know me,” I snapped at him. “You don’t know me. That was six years ago.”

“You no longer wish to pursue your passion?”

“I do, but…”

Penn’s lips just quirked up in a smile that said he’d won that round.

“Lewis is a Warren,” Lark safely interjected.

My brain caught up with the rest of me, and I turned to Lewis, gaping slightly. “That Warren?” I asked. Like the Warren who had just sent me a nasty rejection letter today. Though I didn’t say it. The words were on the tip of my tongue.

“Indeed,” Lewis said.

“Jesus,” I whispered. I turned to Katherine and Rowe. “And what do you two do?”

“Katherine here is a socialite,” Penn said. “She looks pretty, so she doesn’t have to work.”

Katherine shrugged. “Whatever. I’m good at it. And who wants to work if they don’t have to? Being pretty is way underrated.” She nudged me with her shoulder, as if we were old girlfriends.

What the hell was this life?

“And Rowe?” I asked, uncertain if I even wanted to know.

“Tech,” he said.

It was his friends’ turn to laugh at him in that short, abrupt way of his.

“You working in tech is like saying that Lewis is a financial planner,” Lark said with an eye roll.

I looked between them all as if I was missing something. Who did I know by the name of Rowe in tech? I was sure that I’d heard it before. It was on the tip of my tongue. s**t.

“Rowe designed Crew,” Penn said.

My jaw dropped. “Like…the social media platform?”

“Yep,” he said with a shrug.

“Wait, wait, wait, you’re Archibald Rowe?”

Rowe groaned. “Please. Don’t ever use that name.”

The rest of the room tittered at the name that apparently was never used, except in press briefings and public appearances.

“So, like, f*******: tried to buy you out, and you wouldn’t sell?”

He nodded. “Didn’t need the money.”

“And Crew…” I looked between Penn and all of his friends. Wasn’t that what Penn had said earlier. That I shouldn’t have to meet the crew like this. “That’s…you guys.”

Penn nodded. “Welcome to the crew, Natalie.”