Chapter One
Abby
“Do you think they’ll let me drink? Oh what about the food, do you think we missed the whole meal? Honestly, Abby, I don’t know why you insisted we show up so late.”
I smiled at my sister as she looked out the limo window, eyes wide and talking so fast her words bled together. I envied that about her, the carefree way she enjoyed everything, not minding if she looked silly doing so. Her natural joie de vivre hadn’t been stomped out during adolescence, by mean girls, and rude boys, and rumors, like everyone else’s.
I gazed out my own window, watching the Park Avenue lights roll by, folded my hands in my lap and said, “You might get served, but you’d better keep it at a minimum. You don’t want Dad finding out.” Alicia nodded, face nearly pressed against the glass in her excitement to get to the ball.
The Viennese Opera Ball, held annually at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, was a combination fundraiser, debut for the year’s newly of age debutantes and, if you believed Page Six news, a front for the deviant sexual activities for the perverse elite of The Upper East Side.
Everyone knows the garbage “news” Page Six printed was mostly false. It was the tabloid version of click bait— plaster the faces of the newest it girl, power couple, or bad boy on the front page, without checking the facts of the potentially life-ruining story and watch the money roll in. It’s “mostly false” because no one knew how much my father “donated” to keep my face off the front page last year. No one except the parties involved knew that one of the ridiculous stories printed about last year’s ball was one hundred percent true. A deb really had been caught doing not one but two of NYC’s most eligible bachelors. But even with that juicy kernel of truth, they’d still inflated or flat out lied about the details. It wasn’t in the middle of the ballroom floor, for one. We thought we were being discreet by going to one of the smaller, closed ballrooms off the main one. And the deb in question wasn’t a virgin. I don’t even know how they came up with that angle. But the fact remained, they had gotten the bones of the story right. And I have the magazine’s own shitty reputation and my Dad’s money to thank for the fact that no one believed it.
“You know why we’re so late, Al. You have to make an entrance at these kinds of things.” I pushed the billowy tulle layers of my sister’s gown out of my lap. “And get your dress under control, silly. You don’t want to end up tripping on it.” I smiled as my baby sister rolled her eyes at me and gathered her enormous skirt closer.
Alicia didn’t know about the scandal I was involved in during last year’s Opera Ball. My debut two years ago had been so atrocious, with my date never showing and me spending the night feeling like the last kid to get picked in gym class, I vowed to have fun no matter what last year. And boy did I. So much that I ended up costing my father a small fortune.
Alicia and I shared everything but what happened that night was one secret I kept to myself. I didn’t want her knowing I’d willingly been with two guys at once. I didn’t want her thinking less of her older, supposedly more reserved sister. Honestly, even thinking about it now I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that it happened. I’d had a few covert boyfriends before that night. Covert because our father was taken with an antiquated notion that his little girls shouldn’t date before they were eighteen. A notion I didn’t agree with so I got really good at being sneaky.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I had a ton of experience before that night. Mostly because I wasn’t so easily caught up in the smooth-talking, charming rich boys in my social group. All the refined taste and best schools on the East Coast didn’t actually make you make you interesting, and I refused to spend my time with boring people, even if they were beautiful, filthy rich boys.
Because to me, that’s all they were. Boys.
No, my tastes were a little more esoteric. At least that’s what I liked to tell myself. I needed someone to stimulate my brain. Teach me something, or make me think about something in a new way. Show me you’ve got opinions outside the scope of whatever textbook we all had to read. Show me you know the difference between Fauvism and Expressionism or that you don’t just have a working knowledge of something and then, then you might get somewhere.
I’d been fooled once or twice by pretty boys who knew big words. Mistakenly thinking a large vocabulary meant a large intellect. But, it never took me too long to realize my mistake, and I always ended things quickly and graciously. There was one guy who’d been pretty quick. I could have really fallen for him if he hadn’t moved to L.A. to start his software empire, but we never got the chance. So when two gorgeous, full fledged men approached me at last year’s ball asking if I had a preference between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, I was so shocked I couldn’t form a sentence.
But they didn’t skip a beat. They discussed the topic between themselves, adding, “don’t you think’s” and “wouldn’t you say’s” in my direction every so often. They probably thought I was an airhead but when I finally got my brain to function properly and a sentence came out of my mouth, I was delighted by their stunned expressions.
“Not just the most beautiful girl at the ball, is she, Chase?”
“Definitely not, Luca. This one’s the whole package, isn’t she?”
“I’d say so.”
I stood there blushing, gape-mouthed as these two very gorgeous, very smart, and very different men flirted with me to each other. I could barely process the attention, let alone form a response to it. They plied me with sweet words, soft, grazing touches, and sharp wit until I was floating from desire, and so confused about it that I blurted, “Okay, which one of you is actually interested in me? Because I can’t tell which is the wingman.”
Chase smiled at me as Luca stepped to my other side and whispered, “There are no wingmen here tonight, Abigail. We both want you.”
I shivered at the memory, leaning against the cool leather upholstery as the limo pulled up to the hotel.
“You okay?” Alicia asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine, Abs. You look kind of flushed.”
“I’m fine, really. Let’s just get you in there,” I said, and pushed at my sister’s ridiculous skirt.
We exited the limo and walked into the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel arm in arm.
I tried to get myself and my hormones under control. I could not afford to be in another scandal. But I knew they’d be here. That was the agreement after all.