CHAPTER ONE
When you’re climbing the ladder, always assume someone is looking up your skirt.
—Paige
“PROMOTION. I THINK it might be my favorite word. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.” Swept along by the tide of commuters, Paige Walker followed her two friends Eva and Frankie up the steps from the subway and emerged to blue skies and sunshine. Far above her the skyscrapers of Manhattan reached up to fluffy clouds, a forest of steel and glass winking in the bright morning sunlight, each competing to be taller than the next. The Empire State Building. The Rockefeller Center. Higher, bigger, better. Look at me.
Paige looked, and smiled. Today was the day. Even the weather was celebrating.
New York had to be the most exciting city in the world. She loved the vibrancy, the promise, the pace.
She’d landed a job at Star Events straight out of college and had been unable to believe her luck, especially when her two best friends got jobs there, too. Working for a big company headquartered in Manhattan was her dream. The sheer energy of the city seeped through her skin and into her veins, like a shot of adrenaline. Here, she could be whoever she wanted to be. She could live her life without being asked how she was feeling twenty-five times a day. In the breathless bustle that was New York City, people were too busy thinking about themselves to have time to think about other people. Interaction skimmed the surface and never went deep. She blended into the crowd and that suited her just fine.
Paige didn’t want to stand out. She didn’t want to be different, precious or special. She didn’t want to be anyone’s poster girl for brave.
She wanted to be anonymous. Normal, whatever that was. And here in New York, finally it had happened.
Urban chaos offered its own type of privacy. Everything moved faster.
Everything, that was, except her friend Eva, who was not a morning person.
“Promotion isn’t my favorite word. Love is probably my favorite word.” Eva yawned sleepily. “Or maybe sex, which is the next best thing. I think. I can’t honestly remember because I haven’t had it in so long. I’m worried I’ve forgotten all the moves. If I ever get naked with a guy again, I might have to buy a ‘how to’ book. Why is no one in Manhattan interested in a relationship? I don’t want a hookup. I want to mate for life. Ducks can do it—why can’t we?” She stopped to adjust her shoe and soft waves of blond hair bounced forward along with her breasts, as generously curved as the plumpest cupcake. The man walking toward her stopped abruptly, mouth open, and four other men slammed into him.
Attempting to avert a human pileup, Paige grabbed Eva’s arm and pulled her to one side. “You’re a walking hazard.”
“Is it my fault my laces untie themselves?”
“Your laces aren’t the problem. The problem is that you just announced to the whole of Manhattan that you haven’t had sex in ages.”
“The problem,” Frankie said, closing in to form a blockade, “is that a dozen investment bankers are now getting in line to manage your assets. And I’m not talking about your finances. Stand up, Sleeping Beauty. I’ll tie your shoe.”
“I don’t have any finances to manage, but at least that means I don’t lie awake at night worrying about yield and interest rates. That’s a bonus, although not quite the bonus those bankers are probably used to.” Eva stood up and rubbed her eyes. Before ten in the morning, she had trouble focusing. “You don’t have to tie my shoe. I am not six years old.”
“You weren’t this lethal when you were six years old. It’s safer if I do it. I don’t have cleavage that should come with a health warning or a brain incapable of filtering what comes out of my mouth. And move to the side. This is New York City. It’s virtually a criminal offense to block the flow of commuters.” There was a hint of irritation in Frankie’s voice, enough to make Eva frown as she stuck her foot out.
“You can’t be prosecuted for being in someone’s way. What’s wrong with you this morning?”
“Nothing.”
Paige exchanged glances with Eva. They both knew “nothing” meant “something,” and both knew better than to push for answers. Frankie spoke when she was ready, which was usually only after she’d bottled it up for a while. “Blocking the flow of commuters could be deemed provocation.” Paige said. “And she was this lethal. You’ve forgotten her eighth birthday party when Freddie Major threatened to beat up Paul Matthews if she didn’t agree to marry him.”
“Freddie Major.” The memory drew a ghost of a smile from Frankie. “I put a frog down his shirt.”
Eva shuddered. “You were an evil child.”
“What can I say? I’m not good with men. Of any age.” Frankie thrust her can of drink into Eva’s hand. “Hold that, and if you throw it in the trash our friendship is over.”
“Our friendship has survived more than twenty years. I like to think it would survive me throwing your junk food in the trash.”
“It wouldn’t.” Athletic and supple, Frankie dropped into a crouch. “Everyone is allowed a vice. Unhealthy eating is mine.”
“Diet cola is not breakfast! Your eating habits are life threatening. Why won’t you let me make you a delicious kale and spinach smoothie?” Eva pleaded.
“Because I like to keep my breakfast down once I’ve eaten it, and my eating habits are no more life threatening than your dress habits. Anyway, I wasn’t in a breakfast mood today.” Frankie tied the laces of Eva’s bright green Converse as a river of commuters flowed past them, all intent on reaching their destination as fast as possible. She winced as someone knocked into her. “Why don’t you ever do a double knot, Ev?”
“Because I dressed in my sleep.”
Frankie stood up and plucked her diet cola from Eva’s hand, her hair tumbling in fiery flames past her shoulders. “Ouch! Excuse me.” She adjusted her glasses and turned her head to glare at the retreating figure of a man in a suit. “It’s good manners to anesthetize someone before you remove their kidneys with your briefcase.” Mumbling threats under her breath, she rubbed her ribs with her hand. “There are days when I want to go back to living in a small town.”
“You’re kidding. You’d move back to Puffin Island?” Paige shifted her bag onto the other shoulder. “I don’t ever feel that way, not even when I’m on the subway and I’m so squashed it feels as if I’m being hugged by a boa constrictor. Not that the island isn’t pretty, because it is, but—it’s an island. Enough said.” She’d felt marooned from civilization by the choppy waters of Penobscot Bay, smothered by a thick blanket of parental anxiety. “I like living in a place where people don’t know every detail of my life.”
At times it had felt like collective parenting. Paige, why aren’t you wearing a sweater? Paige, I saw the helicopter taking you to hospital again, you poor thing. She’d felt trapped and constrained, as if someone had grasped her in a tight fist, determined to keep her from escaping.
Life had been all about keeping her well, keeping her safe, keeping her protected, until she’d wanted to scream out the question that had burned inside her for most of her childhood—
What was the point in being alive if you weren’t allowed to live?
Moving to New York City was the best, most exciting thing that had ever happened to her and it was different from Puffin Island in every possible way. Some would have said worse.
Not Paige.
Frankie was frowning. “We all know I can’t set foot on Puffin Island again. I’d be lynched. There are a few things I miss, but one thing I don’t miss is everyone staring at me angrily because my mother has had yet another affair with a husband who doesn’t belong to her.” She shoved her hair out of her eyes and finished her drink. Anger, frustration and misery radiated from her and when she scrunched the empty can in her fist her knuckles were white. “At least in Manhattan there are a couple of men my mother hasn’t had sex with. Although there is officially one fewer than yesterday.”
“Again?” Finally Paige understood the reason her friend was so brittle. “She texted you?”
“Only when I didn’t answer her fourteen calls.” Frankie shrugged. “You were asking why I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast, Ev—apparently he was twenty-eight and banged like a barn door in a gale force wind. The level of detail kind of put me off my food.” Her flippant tone did nothing to disguise how upset she was, and Paige slid her arm through Frankie’s.
“It won’t last.”
“Of course it won’t last. My mother’s relationships never last. But in the time she’s with him she’ll manage to strip him of a significant quantity of his assets. Don’t feel sorry for him. I blame him as much as her. Why can’t men keep it zipped? Why don’t they ever say no?”
“Plenty of guys say no.” Paige thought about her own parents and their long happy marriage.
“Not the ones my mother hooks. My biggest dread is that one day I’m going to meet one of them at an event. Can you imagine that? Maybe I should change my name.”
“You’re never going to bump into them. New York City is a crowded place.”
Eva took Frankie’s other arm. “One day she is going to fall in love, and all this will stop.”