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“You too! Keep your pants on tonight, Uncle Gabe!” she called out after him as he walked away. It made him laugh and shake his head at her ridiculousness. Her Uncle Gabe was practically a monk, though she had no idea why he hadn’t had a girlfriend in forever because he was a total silver fox, but she sure did love to tease him about it.
She took the elevator down to the car that Cassiel had waiting for her. The driver was definitely going to be keeping tabs on her all night. She didn’t recognize him, but she smiled and gave him directions to the Ronson’s (like he didn’t already know where they were going) and they kept playing the game that they were a normal family that didn’t do shit like have each other followed.
The Ronson family was very much like the Loring family in several respects. They were an extremely wealthy family of Bostonians who could trace their line back several generations. In the last two generations, they had even managed to reproduce at almost exactly the same rate without intermarrying as of yet, which meant that between the Lorings and the Ronsons, there was a parental generation who had been contemporaries, and also a new generation of fully grown children who were of the same age.
It had not escaped anyone’s attention that the elder sibling, and Eden’s only big brother, Maxwell, was a handy four years older than Bianca. He was also quite good-looking and not an insufferable jackass like his father, Rick. Maxwell even appreciated, or at least tolerated, Bianca’s sense of humor. And he thought she was beautiful. He’d even told her as much.
He was not, however, seriously interested in Bianca as he was too busy catching the staggering number of women who threw themselves at him. In turn, Bianca had always thought he was extremely handsome, even when they were kids, but—and she’d told him this to his face once after they’d both had too many negronis and kissed—the fact that he was a giant slut turned her off.
Since that ill-fated kiss and comment, they’d been respectful acquaintances. Everyone expected more to happen between them eventually. The two of them had already agreed more wasn’t happening.
“Hey, Bumble Bee,” Maxwell said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. He was vaguely dressed as an old-school Lugosi-style vampire, but he didn’t have the teeth, opting to just go for the tux and some pale face powder.
“What’s up House?” she replied. He grinned at the nickname.
She was the one who’d come up with it when they were little kids. Most people didn’t even get the coffee reference, but all of his high school friends had called him that because she did. In the stuffy world of international finance that he inhabited now, he probably didn’t hear it much anymore.
“Little bit of this, a hell of a lot of bullshit,” he replied, looking away somberly. He’d gotten much more serious in the past year, she’d noticed. It was like something was weighing on him.
She gave him a concerned smile. “You okay?” she asked.
He pursed his lips and nodded. Then he brightened up suddenly. “Where are you two off to tonight? Because I know you’re not staying here.”
Herewas the Ronson brownstone on Beacon Hill. It was a stone’s throw from where Bianca lived, but it couldn’t have been more different on the inside. Bianca had styled her brownstone like an eclectic and elegant yet relaxed farmhouse in Provence, and the Ronsons went right for that glaring, gaudy, we-have-more-money-than-you look. There was even a gold toilet somewhere in the house. Right now, that gold-toileted brownstone was decorated with carved jack-o-lanterns, lots of glittery fall-colored leaves, and it was filled to the brim with a bunch of dusty old farts and their way-too-young dates, most of whom were ironically dressed as sexy nurses. Handy, in case one of their dates had a heart attack.
“Yeah, no, we’re heading out,” Bianca said, cringing when she met eyes with a girl who couldn’t have been older than she was, looking bored out of her mind while some paunchy fifty-year-old with a red nose put his arm around her. Bianca shivered with revulsion.
“Tell me I’m not that bad,” Maxwell said, seeing what she was seeing.
“Oh, hell, no. The women you paw love it. You’re a babe,” Bianca assured him. She caught sight of Eden in the corner, dressed as Harley Quinn, and arguing with her father. “In thirty years, though? Might want to bump up the ‘minimum age to enter’ requirement on your fly.”
He shook his head at her, a little smile on his face. “You get funnier every year, you know that?”
“Nah. You just get smarter,” she replied, leaving Maxwell to make her way across the room toward his sister, who was in the midst of a tense argument with her father, Rick Ronson.
Everything that Eden knew about Rick could be summed up in the next words she heard coming out of his mouth. “Seriously Eden, if you’re going to sleep with half of Boston, it’d be great if you did it with people who could benefit me?”
Yup. That was Rick. Talking to his twenty-three-year-old daughter. And people looked at Eden and thought she was the problem. Bianca rushed in before he said something else that would scar her best friend for life.
“Hey, Mr. R! Nice party. Could you excuse us for a second? I have a feminine product that needs adjusting, and I just can’t reach it on my own. Thanks so much!” she said in a rush as she grabbed Eden by the arm and started pushing her away from the lump of toxic masculinity that had, unfortunately, spawned her. “It’s okay,” she whispered in her friend’s ear. “We’re leaving.”
“My bag,” Eden said in a dazed way. She was still spinning from the disgusting thing her father had said to her, and she probably would be for the rest of the night. Bianca wanted to get her out of there as fast as possible.
Eden insisted on going upstairs and getting her giant Khaite lotus bag that was filled with enough stuff to get her through a couple of days. Then they went down the narrow, hilly street to where Eden had parked her car.
“Wait, can you drive?” Bianca asked, eyeing her driver who was already shadowing them.
“I haven’t had a thing to drink all night,” Eden said.
“I have a car here,” Bianca said, even though her friend did sound sober. Not a slur to any of her syllables. “Wouldn’t it be better—”
Eden spun away from her and started marching toward a souped-up sports car, one that Bianca had never seen before. The whole situation had tragedy written all over it.
“Wait!” Bianca said, chasing after her and running to the passenger side. “There’s no way I’m letting you go wherever you’re going alone.” She paused, standing by the door. “Where are we going?”
Eden cracked a smile. “Weston,” she said.
“Weston?” Bianca parroted back, surprised. “That’s, like, twenty minutes away.”
