Page 87 of Cozen

Yes, that worked.

It wasn’t entirely the truth, but it wasn’t entirely a lie, either.

“But … good weather, the beach, and all the beautiful people!”

Cozen tipped her wine up for a sip, and hid her smile in the glass. Swallowing down the sweet liquor, she finally replied, “Sometimes you just need a change. That’s what this was for me. A change.”

“I see.”

The blonde wasn’t too bad to talk to, really. Unlike some of the other guests who had been invited to the mansion for the evening, this woman didn’t make comments about Cozen’s job, or her status, and she had yet to give her a backhanded compliment. Something all women liked to do far too often to their counterparts.

Of course, out of the six guests there, Cozen found none interesting. They were all the same faceless, nameless rich people. Dripping in wealth, and arrogance. A touch too ignorant, too. Their snobbery couldn’t be matched when they thought Jett’s back was turned.

Cozen wasn’t going to tattle on Jett’s friends—she wasn’t a wilting flower, and they couldn’t exactly wound her pride with a couple of low-grade insults. They were not anything she couldn’t handle on her own.

And she had been doing that just fine.

Besides, Cozen was all too aware that they didn’t know her at all. They only knew the person Jett and she presented to them. The waitress he met—living in a small Manhattan apartment, and prettied up because Jett arranged for it to be so tonight.

To them, that probably screamed low class, and gold digger. She certainly wasn’t up to their kind of snuff, anyway.

It was amusing.

Cozen bet she had more zeroes in a Swiss bank account than they did. And even if they met her under different circumstances—in her real life, not playing this character for a job—she doubted they would know the truth.

Unlike them, she didn’t need her wealth or to show it off in order to feel validated or successful in her life. The money was nice, sure. Stability and reassurance money provided couldn’t be matched except for the feeling of having someone love you, but it was good, too. Good to have, and good to keep.

Just in case.

“Do you think we should get back to the rest of them?” the woman asked.

Cozen’s gaze slid in the direction of the entryway to the large library. “Why don’t we walk around some more? My legs are restless. I feel like I’ve been sitting down too much.”

That was her being nice.

And sly.

Cozen had zero interest in returning to the other guests where they were probably still drinking too much wine in the entertainment room at the Griffin estate. Jett had gotten a phone call for something, and excused himself to take it. That was a good hour ago, now. Maybe a little more.

None of his guests had seemed very surprised. One of the men even happened to mention that it was all too common for Jett to just up and go during social things because he never stopped working. Someone was always calling him back to the job. They didn’t seem very offended about him leaving them high and dry, either.

This was also a good chance for her to look around, and so, she had done that a little bit. She slipped out of the entertainment room while the others’ backs were turned. It wasn’t like they would miss her presence—maybe they would miss insulting her, though.

Who knew?

Cozen managed to look around several rooms on the bottom floor of the one wing. Two kitchens, staff quarters, and a living room with a television the size of one wall. Attached to both kitchens were two separate dining rooms. One very large, and another smaller one—more intimate in size and decoration.

She had also checked four bathrooms, what appeared to be a small office, though mostly unused and with nothing valuable inside, and a goddamn coat closet. It seemed—at least on the bottom floor—the entertainment room, the living space, the main kitchen, and the big dining room were the largest spaces and took up most of the square footage in the wing.

That, and the massive library she stumbled into. Out of all of the rooms on the bottom floor, she found this one most interesting. Cozen figured if a man was going to hide something valuable, or hide a safe keeping something valuable, this would be a great room to do it in. It was large, excessive, and distracting in far too many ways.

From the floor-to-ceiling shelving stained a cherry oak, to the silk draperies hanging from the tall windows. It all screamed riches and wealth. Not to mention, the gold and crystal chandelier hanging from a vaulted ceiling.

She would be remiss if she didn’t mention the constant displays of Jett’s wealth all though the bottom floor of the mansion estate, too. It was everywhere. From the gold plated crown molding, to the trim around the doorways. He liked gold—he also seemed to like anything that was crystal. Leather was another common theme in different rooms.

She wondered what was upstairs.

Or what was over in the second, smaller wing.