Cruel Money (Cruel 1)

Brunch was divine. As was the rest of the weekend as Penn and I entertained them back at the beach house. It was so nice, having them there that I almost forgot that I was there to work. But it was worth taking the weekend off to be with them. And I wasn’t ready for them to go when it was time.

Amy kept giving me looks, as if she knew me better than I knew myself. She tried to give me advice on how to keep things casual. Apparently, even though she was the one to suggest it, she had never thought it was possible. Typical Amy.

I tasked her with looking out for Melanie. Because the way she had been talking and moping, I was worried she and Michael were going to get back together. High school drama and all that. Even though Melanie had insisted that wasn’t going to happen. She was going to be strong. Blah, blah, blah. I had a feeling she’d be back with him by the end of the week after he continued spewing whatever bullshit he had been saying to her all weekend.

“She’s going to be okay,” Penn told me later. “She’s stronger than you think.”

“I know she is. I just still see her as my baby sister. Hard to get over that.”

“I don’t have a younger sibling, but it’s how I feel about Lewis’s sisters. They’re like family to me. More so than my own family most of the time.”

I was surprised he was even talking about his family. I knew that they weren’t on good terms. That he didn’t talk to his mother and hated his train-wreck brother. I didn’t know anything about his father. He’d said in Paris that he wanted a different family, a different life. Clearly, he’d worked toward that the last six years, getting away with at least a bit by being a professor. But the Upper East Side almost seemed like a gang. Once you were in, you were in, and they never let you out.

“Do you talk to them much?”

His face went from open to utterly blank in a second. “My family? No.”

“I see.” I knew when to push and when to retreat. “Me either. Though I think I had Melanie wrong before. Maybe I just pushed my own frustrations about not being perfect on her.”

“She seems great. You’re lucky to have a sister like that. Someone who loves you.”

“She is great,” I admitted. I’d never thought that Melanie and I would be close. I was kind of glad to be proven wrong. “And I do feel lucky.”

“I have so much work to catch up on,” he said, reaching for his beaten-up leather notebook. He sank into a chair at the breakfast nook.

“Me too. My agent asked for the first fifty pages of my new book. I feel like throwing up, sending it to her.”

“I could read it for you, if you want.”

My stomach knotted. “Oh god, no. I think I’d actually vomit if you read it.”

He laughed as he flipped open his notebook to a blank page. “I know the feeling.”

“Though…I do think we should talk about us.”

The laughter died on his lips. “No take-backs, Natalie.”

“Take-backs?” I asked with my own smile. “What makes you think I want to take back what happened?”

“I heard you talking to Amy earlier. It sounded like you didn’t want to do this,” he admitted.

“That was…not the conversation we were having,” I said, biting my lip.

It had been more about how to keep things casual. How to keep him at a distance. How not to get my feelings involved. How to let the sex lead and the rest just rest. Because I only had a month, and I didn’t need the complication of a relationship that would go nowhere. Not with a guy like Penn. He didn’t exactly seem like Mr. Relationship even if Melanie did think he was marriage material.

“I see. Is this about your rules again? Because I’m pretty sure sex is self-explanatory.”

“No. I think I get it. Sounds like you’re the one worrying about it.”

“Not worry exactly, but I do want to make sure that you’re comfortable. For some reason, this doesn’t seem like something you would normally do. I want us to be open with each other.”

“Okay,” I said easily.

“Okay?” he asked with a smirk. “That easy?”

I stepped up to where he was sitting and straddled his lap. “What I was going to say was that I think, next time…I should be on top.”

His eyes turned devilish. “That can be arranged.”

“Like…right now?” I asked.

“Right fucking now.”

Natalie

21

“Natalie, can I speak to you?” Kristen, the interior designer, called from the living room.

I stared at the email I’d drafted to my agent on my phone. It had the first fifty pages of my new book, which was currently untitled, and an outline of the rest of the book as I had it set up now. I wasn’t ready to go out with this one yet. Not while Told You So was still out on its miserable run. But Caroline wanted to read it. Before I could think better of it, I clicked Send and rushed out into the living room.