Page 4 of Wicked Royals
The mere sight of Logan made heat rush to my cheeks. Every other woman within twenty feet seemed to be blushing at the sight of him,too.
I couldn’t blame them. He was gorgeous with a steel-cut jaw, high cheekbones, and deep-set gray eyes which smoldered with confidence. As the son of Chuck Thorne and Elizabeth Hale, he was uber-rich and well-connected to boot; one of those guys who had women throwing themselves at him every second of theday.
Not me, though. I couldn’t standhim.
Both the Thorne and Hale families existed in the stratosphere of wealth and power in this country, and they were also famous rivals of my own family, the Rhoades. Despite the animosity between everyone, we all ran in the same social circles, and they were always invited to our parties and vice versa.Keeping up appearances, my father called it. My mother preferred to word the sentiment as ‘keep your friends close and your enemiescloser.’
Even though our families were so-called rivals, Logan and I used to be friendly. We also spent one perfect evening together at my junior-year prom four and a half years ago. It was unexpected but wonderful, and I spent the next day walking on air, my skin practically glowing with excitement and anticipation. I’d viewed our little liaison as some sort of Romeo and Juliet scenario; two young people desperately wanting and needing each other in spite of their feuding families. The concept was so romantic. Sohot.
Of course, I was sixteen back then and also a complete idiot. Logan turned out to be an asshole, and he never spoke to me again after the night we spent together. For some reason, he also seemed to actively despise me now. Over the last few years, I’d heard more than one nasty rumor he’d allegedly started about me, and whenever we ran into each other at events such as this one, he either shot me nasty looks all night or flat-out ignoredme.
Tonight was no different. When he saw me looking over at him and Teddy Rutherford, his eyes narrowed on mine. Clearly, he didn’t like what hesaw.
Don’t worry, Logan, I don’t like what I see either,I thought bitterly, wishing that was actuallytrue.
If I said it to myself enough, perhaps it would come true, and I’d finally see him for all of the ugliness that lay beneath that handsomeexterior.
“Shit. Don’t look to your left,” Marissamuttered.
I whipped my head back around to face her. “Huh?”
“Rowan Harris is here,” she whispered. “Oh, no, he’s coming over to us. Ew, ew, ew.” She cringed as Kate and Simone curled their lips indisdain.
I turned around and spotted the young man they were talking about, slowly pushing his way through the crowded room. I smiled and gave him awave.
I’d known Rowan Harris for most of my life, because his family had always been friendly with mine. His father was a high-ranking White House official, and his mother ran some sort of investment company in thecity.
Unlike his parents, Rowan was very quiet and shy, and he seemed to have a lot of trouble with socializing. Simply put, most people found him to be very weird. He was incredibly smart, though, and I didn’t think he wasthatweird. He loved talking about conspiracy theories, which was kind of strange, but that didn’t make him a creep like all my friendssuggested.
I had a feeling it was his looks that cemented him firmly in the ‘creepy guy’ category with girls like Marissa, Kate and Simone. He wasn’t very tall, he was skinny, and he had a prematurely-receding hairline. All those things rendered him totally unfuckable in theireyes.
“Hi, ladies,” he said as he approached us with an uncertain smile. His forehead was beaded with sweat. “How… um… how’s your night been sofar?”
Marissa rolled her eyes. “It was fine until five seconds ago,” she said in a syrupy-sweetvoice.
Kate and Simone giggled behind their hands. My cheeks flamed, and I glared daggers atthem.
Sometimes I didn’t even know why I bothered being friends with girls like them. When they pulled shit like this, I fantasized about blocking their numbers and never speaking to them again. Unfortunately, reality always crashed back down on me within a fewhours.
As the daughter of the current vice president, it wasn’t easy for me to make new friends. For one, I always had a secret service detail trailing me, and that made most people view me as untouchable—and probably also a massivesnob.
Secondly, it was difficult to find other girls who had thick enough skin to hang out in my world. In the past, I’d tried making friends with some girls from one of my college classes, but they ended up fading me out after having terrible experiences at events I invited them to attend withme.
The first girl had been snubbed and derided by some other young women at a charity champagne brunch for attending a public high school and living on the ‘wrong’ side of the city, and the second had been offered five hundred dollars for a blowjob by some young asshole who thought it was funny to mock someone without an elite family name. He’d actually said right to her face: ‘How else are you gonna pay for Georgetown?’ while waving the cash at her, even though she was a genius who’d managed to score a full-ride scholarship to the university. It was like a bullying scene from a bad 80s movie, and if I hadn’t directly witnessed it, I might not have even believed ithappened.
I tried to apologize and make it up to those girls, but the damage was already done. They didn’t want to be friends with someone whose acquaintances had the power to make them feel so small andinsignificant.
I guess I couldn’t blame them, as much as itstung.
As the daughters of powerful government players, Marissa, Kate, and Simone understood this world and how to navigate it without letting all the typical D.C. assholes get them down. Besides, they weren’t always catty, and we had fun together most of thetime.
I definitely wasn’t having fun with them right now, though. They were being totalbitches.
I linked arms with Rowan and steered him toward the champagne tower. The girls tried to follow me, but I turned my head over my shoulder and shot them a dirty look, silently warning them not to followme.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Rowan, cheeks still aflame with embarrassment. “I think they’ve all had too much todrink.”
He gave me an awkward smile as he plucked a champagne glass from the top of the tower. “It’s not them,” he said softly. “It’s me. I have no idea how to talk towomen.”
