CRUEL MONEY (Cruel #1)

5. Natalie

Natalie

5

Oh god.

I couldn’t believe this. I needed a minute to process.

I was so overwhelmed with the money and influence in the room. A billionaire professor, a publisher, a socialite, an heiress, and the most influential tech designer since Mark Zuckerberg.

These were Penn’s friends? His crew? How had he found me interesting at all? Had I been a total joke to him that day?

He had to have known that I didn’t have connections or wealth like him. Yes, I’d been at the right party that day when we met, but he wasn’t stupid. Surely, he’d thought it would just be funny. I couldn’t fathom another reason.

“How…how did you all meet?” I stammered out.

“We grew up together,” Lewis said. “Prep school, all the way up.”

“Crew is what they called us in high school,” Katherine filled me in.

Rowe laughed. “Sure they did.”

“Fine. They called us the Cruel Crew,” Katherine said with an eye roll. “We stole the name and made it ours. It’s what prompted Rowe to design Crew for us, so we had a place for us to meet online. It branched out to our all-girl and all-boy private schools and then, as you know…worldwide.”

I was too stunned to respond. I had only one thing to say to that. “Pass the bourbon.”

Lewis grabbed it and walked it over to me. His eyes glittered with interest and humor. “That’s a good answer.”

“So, what about you, Natalie?” Katherine asked.

“Me?” I asked, trying not to squirm.

“Yeah. Where are you from?”

I laughed. “Nowhere. Everywhere. Depends on the day.” When everyone stared back at me in confusion, I confessed, “My father was in the Air Force. He retired in Charleston. But I was born in California. My sister, Melanie, was born in Texas. And my parents are from Iowa. So…nowhere.”

“Military,” Lark said with a smile of understanding. “That must be why you like this vacation-home-watching thing. I couldn’t figure out who would want to travel that much.”

“I can’t figure out why anyone wouldn’t want to travel this much,” I told them honestly. “Nowhere has ever really felt like home to me. Now, I get to see all these amazing locales and live there for a time while I write.”

“Except Paris,” Penn mumbled under his breath.

“Have something to share with the class?” I drawled, holding out the bourbon bottle and waving it around.

Penn’s eyes darted to mine, and I narrowed my eyes. He removed his hands from his pockets and stepped carefully across the living room. All eyes were on him as he reached forward and plucked the bottle from my hand.

“You felt like Paris was home,” he said casually before tilting the bottle to his perfect lips and drinking.

I watched the way his lips wrapped seductively around the bottle. The amber liquid disappearing down his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbing as he savored the liquor.

I swallowed. Why did he have to be so damn sexy, even when he was so f*****g irritating?

“Right?”

“Someone ruined Paris for me.”

I reached to take the bottle back, but he walked it back across the room with him.

“You’re still a lightweight.”

Cleansing breaths. Deep, cleansing breaths. Because whatever was about to come out of my mouth was going to unleash on him.

But it was Katherine who laughed and defused the tension. “Don’t make her snap your head off, Penn. We’re in a safe place. She can drink as much as she wants.”

“That’s right. I can,” I told him.

“It’s not like you’ve always been virtuous,” Lewis said with a smirk.

“You all are enjoying this, aren’t you?” Penn asked.

“Immensely,” Katherine said at the same time that Lewis said, “Oh god, yes.”

Lark laughed, and Rowe just shrugged, as if to say, Obviously.

“My own crew. Traitors, one and all.”

But a smile had returned to his face. One that seemed to be reserved for the people in this circle. And, for a second, that smile moved to me. And I felt like I was part of that secret place in his life.

It was absurd, of course. I had just shown up. If anything, I was an irritating nuisance rather than part of his crew that he’d known practically his whole life. They had something truly unique here. Something that I’d always craved and never found, except with Amy.

“You’re lucky to have them,” I told him.

He startled, as if surprised to hear me speak in his favor or to address him without mirth.

“I mean, I can tell that you’re close.”

“We are lucky, aren’t we?” Katherine said. She threw her arm around Rowe and laughed as if having these close-knit friendships were as natural as breathing.

Rowe took one look at her and said, “Don’t hug me.”

That just made her laugh harder. She kissed his forehead and then stood. “I haven’t been this giddy since…” She trailed off.

“The engagement?” Lewis asked with a devious smirk.

“You’re engaged? Congratulations!” I said.

Katherine lost her pep and then glared at Lewis. “Look, you ruined it.” She turned back to me and held out her hand to reveal the most massive diamond ring I had ever seen in my entire life. “Yes, I’m engaged. Camden Percy.”

I took her hand in mine and admired the stone. “It’s stunning. I’m sure you’re going to tell me that he’s the same Percy as the hotel chain or something equally ridiculous.”

Katherine didn’t blink. “He is.”

“Oh!” I gasped. “Well, wow.”

“I can’t believe you brought it up, Lewis,” Lark said. “None of us like to hear about that asshat.”

I glanced between the crew and realized that my excitement might not have been warranted. Perhaps Katherine’s engagement wasn’t a good thing. I couldn’t see why a woman like Katherine, who had the beauty of Audrey Hepburn and an exorbitant amount of wealth, would ever marry someone she wasn’t in love with.

“Always here to bring the group back to reality.”

I felt like there was something I was missing in this. But I didn’t know what it was. And, quite honestly, I was too drunk to try to figure it out.

My eyes involuntarily skittered to Penn’s, as if to find my footing in this misstep. His eyes were focused on Katherine with a flash of concern. Then, it was quickly replaced with something neutral before finding me. Whatever that neutral was…it was intense. It was smoldering.

“Nothing like an arranged marriage to ruin the party,” Rowe muttered under his breath. Then, he held his phone up victoriously. “Update complete.” He tossed it to Lark. “Should have all the new settings now. Crew 3.0 activated.”

“Thanks!” Lark beamed. “I promise not to go so long between seeing you next time.”

“I thought Crew was only 2.0,” I muttered.

“It is.” Rowe smiled, and it was the first real one I’d seen from him.

It was that moment I realized he was nearly as handsome as Penn and Lewis. Dark blond hair with hazel eyes and a square jawline that gave him old-school Hollywood vibes. But then he quickly averted his eyes and reached for his tablet once more.

“Ugh!” Katherine groaned. She stood and stretched her long, lean limbs. “You’ve all ruined my fun. So, I think the get-to-know-you sesh is over. Let’s go for a swim.” She held her hand out to me. “Come with?”

“Sure,” I said, standing unsteadily on my feet. Oh s**t, how much had I had to drink? I really didn’t have an answer to that question. I teetered. “Whoa!”

“I think we need to switch you from the hard stuff,” Katherine said. “I happen to know where a bottle of bubbly is. Lark is an expert at opening them.” She tilted her head to the side, and Lark laughed before following her out of the room.

Lewis looked at Rowe and coughed. “So, man…pool?”

“Huh?” Rowe asked.

“Now, dude.”

Rowe looked up from his tablet and seemed to realize that it was just the four of us. He glanced between me and Penn and then said, “Oh! Right. Social cues. By all means, we’ll leave them alone.”

Lewis tilted his head to the ceiling and sighed. “Tact, dude.”

“What’s that?” Rowe asked as Lewis shuffled him out of the room.

Penn shifted from one foot to the other and then stilled. His eyes were on me, and I knew that I should look up and meet them. Also that I should probably let this anger cool. He’d been kind tonight. He’d let me hang out with his friends even if unwillingly. He’d even remembered some of our night so long ago. I shouldn’t blame him.

But I did.

And I couldn’t push that away. Definitely not while I’d had this much to drink.

While I loved his friends and how good it felt to be included in their antics, I knew it was temporary. They’d had Penn for a long time. They liked annoying him, but if I had to guess, my first instinct was right. They didn’t let strangers in their circle. The Crew was a solid group of five, and my presence was a fun one-time thing. Just like my presence had been with Penn in Paris.

A one-time thing.

That was it.

I realized then that I didn’t have anything to say to him. He’d used and manipulated me into sleeping with him. Then, he’d disappeared without a thought for me. He’d shown me what men were really like. That those fantasies I’d had about romance were fiction. And men who agreed and dreamed about the same passions and who spoke of them so sincerely were probably just using it as an opportunity to get in my pants.

Par for the course.

I heard a cork pop in the other room and moved in that direction. Katherine must have found the champagne.

They giggled and then dashed through the back door, calling out to us as they slipped through, “Hurry up, you two!”

Penn stopped me with a hand on my elbow. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

I finally looked up into those too-blue eyes. “And I don’t think you get to make that decision for me.”

“You should just go to bed.”

“Why?” I sputtered.

“Natalie, please, you don’t belong here.”

I wrenched back out of his grasp. “Excuse me? I don’t belong here? Because I’m not a socialite or a tech genius? Your friends don’t seem to care.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“And we all know that you have trouble saying what you mean,” I spat back.

He breathed out in frustration. “Stop twisting my words.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You do that all on your own.”

“Look, I remember that night. I remember us in Paris. Taking you around the city and showing you the real Paris and being so present with you. But this wasn’t you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re right. It wasn’t.”

I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t tell him about the end of my innocence. The realization that my dream of love had been just that—a dream. Reality was so much more of a slap in the face.

No matter that I’d felt that love-at-first-sight feeling with Penn, it had all been a lie. And it was still a lie. He was a lie wrapped in a pretty package. Like tearing into gorgeous Christmas wrapping paper on the morning of the twenty-fifth, only to find coal on the inside.

I pushed past him, and he turned to watch me go.

I heard him call out, “I’m warning you. This is a bad idea.”

“What’s a bad idea?” I asked, whipping around. “You? Trust me; I already know.”

“Natalie…”

“What upsets you more, Penn? That your friends like me or that I’m not falling all over myself for you?” I gave him my best look of faux sympathy. “Doesn’t seem like you handle either very well.”

His jaw unhinged at my comment. As if he couldn’t believe I’d just said that. To him. He’d probably never been spoken to like that.

And it was a glorious victory.

The most glorious victory that made me feel utterly hollow.

But I still forced myself to savor the last word.