Cruel Money (Cruel 1)

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.