Filthy Rich Alpha - Virna DePaul Page 0,1
tears.”
“Yes, I was.” They’d started off at one of the French restaurants near their office, where Greg had attempted to illustrate his knowledge of fine dining and wine. He’d been loud and cocky, and while that had attracted the fawning attention of a couple of sleek young women at the bar, it had flattened her libido. Once the check came and he’d tried to convince her to go with him to a nightclub, she’d fake-yawned, thanked him politely, and said she’d already requested an Uber.
“Drinks with him weren’t much better, were they?”
Not really but then again it had only been drinks. “He was fine,” Cara said.
“Fine. Safe. Just like every other guy you’ve dated the past few years. Would you like me to fix you up with someone?”
“No thanks,” Cara said quickly. “I can manage. Besides, you and I seem to go after men that are complete opposites.”
“Yeah, you do have a thing for employed men,” Iris joked.
Cara laughed. Iris had been an artist, actress, gossip blogger, and stand-up comic. At the moment, she was waiting tables in Brooklyn at a dive that served nachos and two-dollar cans of beer to poets and artists. The borrowing type. Usually the men were sexy as hell but so totally unreliable. And unreliability wasn’t something Cara could afford in her life.
“So about the party…What’s the occasion?”
“An important client is throwing it and there’s to be a big announcement. Attendance is strongly encouraged, which translates as show up and suck up. Maybe it’s about a new contract. Or someone’s retiring.” And by retiring, Cara meant checking in for an extended stay at a mental-health rehab facility. It happened in her line of work. A lot. Between the intensity of the work weeks—surgery residents and stock market traders were neck-and-neck for most hours worked per week—and the pervasive alcohol and drug use that came with trying to stay on top of the game, people crashed right and left. Not her, though. She stayed on the straight and narrow. Did her job and only her job.
Maybe that’s why lately she’d been feeling so…uneasy. Discombobulated. As if her world had shifted off center and she was standing at a tilt. The only thing that seemed to bring her any sense of satisfaction were those rare occasions when she went by herself to dance in nightclubs, although that obviously wasn’t cutting it anymore.
She rubbed her temple, trying to ease the headache slowly building.
“Whatever the announcement is, you should probably hear the news firsthand,” Iris said, interrupting Cara’s thoughts.
“You’re right. I suppose I’ll go.”
“As if there was any real doubt.” Iris snorted. “You live and breathe that job, Cara.”
“Yeah. Unfortunately.” Exhaustion hit, settling into her bones. She leaned back in her chair. How much longer could she push this hard? A memory of her childhood, an image of her family on the shore during summer, swam into her mind. How gentle and relaxed and warm that day had been…her and Glenn chasing waves up and down the beach, their mother reading a book under the sun umbrella, their father combing the beach for seashells…
Just as quickly, the mental image slipped away, leaving her with the sting of nostalgia and the strong desire to be back there, on the beach with her family and her once-idyllic childhood. Impossible, yes… “But—”
“But what?”
She started. She hadn’t realized she’d said the word out loud. “I do have three weeks of vacation I’ve never used. Maybe I’ll actually take a few days to escape.” She tried to imagine it. Warm sand and water. A frothy drink in her hand. Nothing to do but read a good book and flirt with a hot cabana boy. Not quite like her childhood experience at the Jersey shore, but something similar…something relaxed. Maybe in the Bahamas or even South Carolina. Someplace where she could hear the roar of the surf at night and feel the heat of the sun during the day.
“You seriously should. So where’s the party at?”
“A private house along Long Island Sound.”
“Classy. You’ll have to find something appropriate to wear in that black hole of a closet of yours. Seriously, you’re in dire need of some retail therapy. All you have in there are suits, suits, suits. Navy, black, gray. Blouses, blouses, blouses. Cream, ivory, white. You should dress up. With your long blond hair, skin an angel would pay to have, and body made for…well, you know. You never play up those amazing assets of yours, and you should.”
Iris was exaggerating about the plethora