Page 1 of Mr. Risky

Chapter One

It’s been two years, I reminded myself as my little beat-up car crested a hill and the shores of Oystar Bay came into view.

Two whole years away.

Two years without a visit.

Without a call. Without a text. I’d blocked everybody and everything that even reminded me of my hometown.

The guilt should be gone by now, shouldn’t it?

As I approached the sign to Oystar Bay, I saw my best friend Pippa waiting for me, leaning against the glimmering pink 12-foot-tall pearl that was our town’s mascot.

That was something little and silly we had always done together, one of us waiting for the other by the sign. Like a one-woman welcoming committee.

Even though it felt like everything had changed for me, she looked the same. Strikingly beautiful as always, with sleek long brown hair, dark eyes, and of course wearing her usual understated chic fashion because she was so rich she’d never needed to flaunt it.

I wanted to run away, turn this car around and go back to the city, bury my shame in my graduate studies and forget that I’d ever come from this little tourist town on the coast.

But instead I pulled the car over and got out.

After all, she didn’t know⁠—

Pippa was squealing with excitement, and I tried to suppress the guilt as she ran over to wrap her arms around me. My bestie still smelled like jasmine and vanilla, everything so familiar, even the dangly bracelet jangling in my ear.

At one point we’d had matching ones.

But I couldn’t have stood wearing mine now.

Like I wasn’t the worst kind of hypocrite.

Like I hadn’t betrayed her.

“Sosie!” she cried. “I’m so happy to see you! Look how long your hair has gotten! And you look so pretty, bitch. Damn! Feels like it’s been forever. Has it really been since my wedding?”

I shouldn’t have come back at all.

But it had been an offer I couldn’t resist. The chance to be one of wealthy billionaire Chamberlain Hollingsworth’s famous musical Sirens, an all-women troupe who played for his guests every summer. And I’d be the only flute player, able to choose my own songs, with a front row to all of his wealthy friends.

And, of course, he was Pippa’s grandfather so I must have her to thank for this opportunity. . .

Not only was it a very generous salary, but who knew? Maybe I could find a patron among them. Someone who could help sponsor my music. I was in training to be a music teacher, but I also had a secret dream to be a full-time musician.

At this point that seemed like an impossible dream.

As a girl who came from nothing and no one, I had to take the opportunities I got, and this is one everyone in my graduate music course would have been green with envy over.

“So happy to see you,” I fixed my lips to say.

“This all you have?” she asked, sliding into the passenger seat and looking at my one battered suitcase.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s all I brought.”

Hadn’t that always been the way? Ever since we were little. The girl with everything and the girl with nothing.

So sweet, all my teachers had always said. That Pippa Hollingsworth is so sweet looking out for poor little Sosie Leigh.

When she could have been friends with anyone, any of the other rich little girls in Oystar Bay.