Page 2 of The Heiress

Fine. I will snatch my purse and leave with my head held high. At least I’ll have tha–

“Ah!” My heel! It’s broken! Shit, shit, I forgot! Here I go, down, down to the floor in one of the city’s nicest brunch spots, latching onto the tablecloth as if it’s going to save me…

More like I take the whole damn thing down with me!

The tablecloth drapes over me as I look up at the ceiling. Cutlery sings around me as it plunks onto the floor. The whole restaurant has stopped functioning. Why pay attention to your own table when you can gawk at the mess I just created? Pull out more cell phones and snap more pictures, why don’t you!

Lorde is the first to try to help me up. While I would love to shirk her off out of principle, I grasp her hand and wobble my way back to my feet, sans one heel. Nope. Can’t do it!

She slams back into her chair as I topple onto her. “Oh, boy,” she grunts, catching me by the armpits, my left foot scrambling for purchase on the floor. I’m such a mess by now that all I can do is sink to my knees.

My head rests most unceremoniously on the side of her lap.

“I was gonna buy you a drink first,” she murmurs, so only I can hear. “But hey, if you wanna get right to it…”

I’m up in a flash, hopping on one foot in a mad dash to get away from this morbid humiliation. A waiter rushes up to me, asking me in accented English if I need someone to call 911. Ashleigh gets up and rounds the table. Angus puts both hands on his face, and I can’t tell if he’s holding back more awful laughter. Everyone at the nearest table continues to gawk.

I ignore them. With my chin tilted far too high, I slip out of my broken heels and carry them with me out of the restaurant barefoot. Who knows? There might be a pap around here, and if I’m gonna show up inThe Daily Social, it will be with my pride intact!

Then here I am, standing on the sidewalk, realizing that I left my purse, phone, and sweater in that cursed place.

Deep breaths. Remember, you’re Daisy Fucking DeMonte. One of the most put-together girls in all of New England. Heiress to a department store empire.

I’ve got what many women don’t. Long legs. Great hairline. Blue eyes and the lightest brown hair around, as expected of an upstanding young woman. Plus a mega-rich Daddy who thinks I’m his shining star.

Nobody…nobodyfucks with me and gets away with it!

Daggers fly from my eyes as Lorde Sheen steps out of the restaurant with my things. I yank them from her grasp, tell her one more time that I do not appreciate being treated like a rotten piece of meat, and go hail the first cab I find.

We drive by her still standing on the sidewalk. “Sorry,” she mouths. Too little, too late!

Chapter 2

Lorde

Imet a girl today.

Just a regular ol’ walking cliché, that’s me.

This one, though? She’s special.Reallyspecial. I’m not talking about her cute face or her attractive figure, either. I’m talking about the whole damn package.

Feisty. Big, smart mouth. Yet still so damn elegant in the way she chews me out. You know, the only kind of girl I could think of as “my” girl if I were to settle down at this point in my life. Not that I have any intention of doing so. I’m young, I’ve got wild oats to sow, and no lack of women lining up to take a ride on the Lorde Sheen Express. I learned that good shit from my mother. You might know her… Camilla Sheen? Even though she had me later than most at the time, I still had about four different Daddy figures and a real Dad who didn’t give a shit about me growing up. That does stuff to a young, impressionable woman. Somehow, when I wasn’t screwing around, with girls, I did wellenough in school to get accepted to Stanford for undergrad and Harvard Business School after. Not that I’m thinking about going…

But I don’t blame my mother for any of it. Considering our unique situation, she did the best that she could to raise me between here and California. Let’s say she was working her ass off to win another Oscar when I was hitting puberty and had no idea where to transfer my crazy, sexual urges. So started my life being with a different girl every week. Okay, sometimes only one for a whole month. You get what I mean! I like to date around!

The sudden thought of having one girl for the rest of my life is brand spanking new to me. I’ve got Daisy DeMonte to thank. That gorgeous vixen who hails as one of the country’s most expensive heiresses.

She’s snobby. She’s annoying. She’s the hottest girl ever, and I’ve seen a million.

It’s not unusual for me to see a hottie and instantly start thinking of sex. How I’m going to seduce her. How I’m going to make her mine. Even if it’s for one day, I want that woman to think that she’s all mine. I’m going to blow her mind and take care of her unlike any other could. They usually leave in the morning, but they’ve got that fantasy now stashed away for the next time they’re alone – or with someone who can’t find her clit.

That’s what I was thinking when I met Ashleigh a few days ago. That I wanted to see how quickly I could get under that tight skirt and bury my face in that long neck of hers.

Anyway. Daisy DeMonte. A girl I’ve only heard of in passing and the tabloids, when I bother to flip through them. When I saw her today, strutting into the restaurant like the hottest shit on Earth, I was overcome with that same feeling ofmake her mine. Yet it was somehow different. It wasn’t only my body begging me to do unseemly things to another one of society’s good girls. It was my… heart? Yeah, that thing. Thumping harder than ever! Icould make a crack about it pumping extra blood to my hands so I could impress her with how well I feel her up, but I don’t think that would make my point well.

So what did I do? What I always do when I have no idea how else to seduce a woman. I say whatever the hell comes to mind without a damn filter, hoping that whatever natural charm I exude will be another to garner her interest.

Instead, I took it way too far, and now she absolutely despises me. She stormed out of the restaurant in the middle of a double date.

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