Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Rocky.
Now, whatever boat I’ve boarded is being capsized, and I’m used to it. I’m also used to having backup—where people wait in a life raft and pull me from the rough ocean. Then we flee unseen together.
None of them are here. I am alone.
Drowning.
Leave, Phoebe.
“She can be a little slow,” Stella tells Elizabeth into a sip of mimosa. They’re all appraising me like I’m a pet project. Great, I’ve become the fascination of the bored elite.
“This is Wendy St. James.” Elizabeth motions to Addison at her side. “We own the northeast’s most prominent and exclusive matchmaking service. Eros. It’s designed for individuals who require a similar lifestyle to their own.”
Similar lifestyle is code for the rich just wanting to date rich. Tempering my feelings, I plaster on the world’s fakest smile and ask, “And you think I fall into that category?”
“Absolutely not,” Stella answers first. “You could never afford them or even qualify, but these lovely women have so graciously agreed to extend their services to you at the request of Claudia.”
Correction: Claudia is paying these women because she hates that I’m dating her son. Eros isn’t real, and Elizabeth and Addison are already profiting from this scam. How long have they even been setting this up?
Elizabeth smooths out one of her blonde curls and looks me over with a slow, excavating gaze like she’s hollowing out bones from beneath the earth. “Hmmm,” she muses. “We might need to work on some things to make you more…” Her eyes hit mine. “Just more.”
Heat bathes my cheeks, and a memory floods me.
I was thirteen.
My mom had slipped into high social circles in Charleston and landed on the cotillion’s board of directors. She’d pretended to be my wealthy aunt who was presenting me to society at the upcoming debutante ball. She examined the length of my thirteen-year-old body with the same intrusive gaze, and she said, “We might need to work on some things to make you more…just more.”
This is a way for her to tip me off. To let me understand this is a ploy like in Charleston. An act. She might as well be winking at me.
It just makes a wave of sudden grief roll over me, and my eyes burn. I’m trying not to glare like I have gnarled, rooted history with her.
Stella fingers her teardrop diamond earring. “Like I was telling you”—she speaks to Elizabeth and Addison—“Phoebe is a work in progress, but if you’d seen how rough around the edges her ex-husband is, you’d understand how perfect they are for each other.”
Little does Stella know, my mom has always drawn hearts around me and Rocky and tried to smush us together like two slices of PB&J.
Nausea flips my stomach. Rocky. I need to find Rocky.
The urge grows tenfold. At least Hailey is safe from our moms. If she was at work serving with me today, she’d go sheet white seeing Addison. I rest easy remembering she’s at the loft and taking care of Trevor after the Halloween horror story from last night.
He was stabbed.
I feel like I’m being metaphorically stabbed, so there’s that.
Stella adds, “Grey makes much more sense than pairing her with Jake Waterford.”
“She has good bones,” Addison announces, pushing her tortoiseshell glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. “We can work with it.”
I don’t want them to work with anything that belongs to me. Not my body, not my mind, and stay the hell away from my heart. It already feels pulverized from one betrayal. Before anyone can stop me, I say a quick “I’m not interested” and beeline for the exit.
Katherine Rhodes, the manager of guest relations and my boss, intercepts me. “Where are you going?” Her red eyebrows arch in both panic and disapproval. “We’re swamped, and ladies are waiting at the bar.”
“I don’t feel goo—”
“No, no. You leave now, I’ll have no choice but to terminate you.”
I use the only card I have. “Jake won’t be happy about that.” It comes out sharper and more threatening than I intend.
She bristles.
Jake Koning Waterford is a Koning boy. It’s Claudia’s maiden name and often touted over Waterford since Koning is the true source of their wealth. Jake is an heir to one of the oldest beer companies in America, and his family owns this country club.
I might be two seconds from breaking up with him, but Katherine doesn’t know that.
Surprisingly, she waffles. I thought it’d be a knockout punch. An ace in the hole. What the fuck? “You’ll be suspended then,” she snaps. “He’ll compromise with me on this.”
“Will he? I’m his girlfriend.”
“I’m his godmother.”
I blow back a little. I did not think they were that close. “Jake never said…”
“Well, I’m not shocked. You’ve barely been dating.” Not wholly untrue. She’s eagle-eyeing the restless ladies at the bar. “You leave, you’re suspended for two weeks. No pay.”