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Her mother passed over the towels and Vivian spent the next few minutes slowly folding them, before stuffing them into the rucksack she had brought with her.
“Your brother offered to go and see Pete, but your dad warned him against it.”
The Holte family was the best. Vivian’s birth father had died in a car accident when she was five. Her mother had eventually remarried, and that union had resulted in Vivian gaining two half-brothers. Fortunately her family was not into half anything. If you were family, you were fully in.
“It’s ok, Mom. I’m serious. Pete is a done deal. Firmly in my past. In fact…” She hesitated for a moment, unsure as to how much to tell her mother. They were both adults, but like all parents, Brenda still viewed Vivian through the lens of a parent.
“In fact what?”
Here goes.“I met a guy while I was on assignment in California. While it was a short lived thing, it helped to draw a line under Pete and me.”
Bryce Royal was just another liar who I will have to get over. Another line to draw.
She hoped that was enough. Grace had been eager for details when Vivian got home, and had insisted nothing was beyond her, but this was different, it was her mom.
Brenda handed her the last of the laundry, and before leaving the room gave Vivian a pat on the shoulder, saying, “Well done, sweetheart. Let me know if you want to talk further.”
Yeah, well done me. I’ve gone from thieves to billionaires. And both turned out to be douchebags. The only difference was that Bryce didn’t need to steal my credit card.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Back at the apartment in the city, Vivian lay on the couch in full sloth-mode. Grace and Marlon had gone out for the evening. That particular romance was still going strong. Marlon who also worked in finance, apparently ticked quite a few of the suitable life partner boxes. Vivian quietly wondered how long it would be before Grace took him to meet her parents.
And how long until she and her friend had a conversation about living arrangements? If Marlon moved in here, or Grace went to take up residence at his swanky Manhattan address, Vivian would likely have to find a new place to live. She certainly couldn’t afford this one on her own, and any new housemate would want her to pay more than her current base level rent.
If she moved back home, the commute to Greenwich Village from Queens would be an hour and a half both ways. She felt ill just thinking about the hours she would waste on catching trains.
Doing her best to forget about possible impending doom, and with Spike curled up at her feet, Vivian was spending her evening quietly scrolling through her phone.
A message from Grace popped up.
If you are sitting on the couch, drinking wine while mindlessly scrolling, then at least log on to the dating app and fix your profile so you can snap up a millionaire.
“I wasn’t just scrolling. I was researching. People need to know the truth about what that famous actor from ten years ago really looks like now,” she whispered at the screen.
There wasn’t any wine in the apartment and she couldn’t be bothered getting dressed and walking down to the grocery store on Second Avenue.
The mention of the dating app sent her mind racing back to California. To the night she had spent with Bryce Royal. He had been so unlike her previous boyfriend—until he’d been almost exactly like him.
“It’s a pity that Bryce Jones wasn’t a real man. I could have been happy with a guy like him. But he wasn’t real, was he Spike?”
The cat moved from her position slowly making her way up to settle on Vivian’s thighs. Vivian idly scratched the spot on the top of Spike’s head between her ears. She earned an appreciative purr for her efforts.
“How about we do what your human mom says and take a look at this millionaire dating app.”
Vivian’s thumb pressed on the app icon. She popped in the login and password her ex had sent. The app instantly opened to her profile, and Vivian’s heart sank. Pete, bless his cheating little heart, had done a real number on it. From the way he had Vivian describing herself, she sounded more like a hungry mountain troll than a person.
He’s lucky I blocked and deleted his number.
Sending death threats via phone was a federal offense, and Pete was just the sort of guy who would probably call the cops.
If the lack of activity on her profile was anything to go by there weren’t any other love seeking mountain trolls in the tri-state area.
Vivian fixed her profile, made it as honest as possible, then hit save. She also changed her password.
Well, I have spent good money on this app, it’s time I tried to get a couple of bucks worth of value out of it.
She clicked the location to New York City and got to swiping. Forty minutes later, Vivian closed the app in disappointment and placed her cell on the floor. Surprise surprise, every single millionaire, male and female alike, had tagged themselves as being powerful alpha highflyers and in the market for a partner who was nothing less than a New York ten.
