Page 41 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
We sat at a table overlooking a rotating kinetic sculpture. I tried to disappear. Tess, on the other hand, owned her space with the casual elegance of a retired KGB spy.
She picked up the menu.
I stared at her in horror. “What are you doing?!”
“Seeing what’s good.”
She flipped through the pages with the serenity of someone who’s never once checked a price before ordering.
“Are you out of your mind?!” I hissed, leaning across the table. “We can’t even afford the cheapest shot of espresso in here—and I highly doubt they serve ‘two-dollar watered-down drip coffee.’”
Tess adjusted her sunglasses, still glued to her face like she was under the Cannes spotlight. “Fear not, darling. It will all be repaid… in the future.”
I sighed.
I told her about the last phone call with my parents. How they’d decided to cut me off financially for good and let me face “real life.” That next month I wouldn’t even have enough for subway fare, let alone lunch.
Unless…
Well, unless I signed a million-dollar contract forHow NOT to Seduce a Rockstarwith a publisher so big they had an entire floor dedicated to every single genre. But I left that part out. My secret plan was still too fragile to drag into daylight. And besides, Tess would’ve been negotiating the merch rights by tomorrow.
“Stop thinking like a broke laundress, Bea. Very soon I’ll have access to half of Mr. Ryder’s fortune and all his properties. Do you really think a forty-dollar cocktail scares me? Tonight, it’s on me. I’ll blow the last pennies of my sad little librarian salary… Consider it a preview of my future as an heiress.”
The waiter appeared.
Early twenties, chiseled jawline, hair styled with surgical precision, and the air of a finance major moonlighting as a model to pay tuition.
Tess sized him up like she’d just won a couponfor mentally undressing him. She was buzzing—electric, intentional, hormonal. She looked at him as if her eyes alone had just ripped off his underwear.
“I’ll have a… Comet’s Tongue,” she said, her tone pure fireworks, crossing her legs with lethal elegance.
The waiter nodded, trying to stay calm, but his eyes flashed a briefoh God, help.
“And you, Bea?” Tess asked without taking her gaze off the boy.
“Uh… The Narcissus Protocol,” I said, grabbing the first vaguely philosophical name I saw on the menu. It probably contained something that would set my tonsils on fire, but at this point I was fully committed to the bit.
“Excellent,” the waiter said with a strained smile, then disappeared so fast he left behind a trail of cologne and panic.
Tess chuckled. She leaned back like she’d just won a court case, eyes sweeping the room with the calm authority of a woman who’d finally conquered her natural habitat: composed clients with crystal glasses in hand, twenty-thousand-dollar handbags dropped casually beside perfectly pedicured feet.
Her gaze lingered on the damask carpets and the paintings that were probably worth more than my life. She sighed in pure serenity. She was at peace with the world. Or at least with her future.
“So?” I asked, lowering my voice. “What’s the plan?”
I expected a whisper, a conspiratorial glance, maybe even a coded gesture.
Nope.
Tess didn’t lean in. She stayed reclined, regal, like she was about to recite a grocery list.
“Ryder should be in one of the top-floor suites. Twenty grand a night. Right now, he’s probably still asleep, recovering from last night’s performance. Or maybe not… maybe he dragged some random bimbo upstairs. One who’s bouncing around his suite like a caffeinated bunny, ready to brag to the nearest lamppost for the next six months.”
She shrugged, utterly unbothered.
“But you know what? I don’t care.” She locked eyes with me, cold and unwavering. “A seductress isn’t some cheap floozy. A seductress chains the mind and the soul. The body is just… collateral damage.”
“Okay,” I said, ignoring the detour. “So Ryder’s in the presidential suite…”
