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“That’s a no on the menu, Tanya. Thanks for asking,” she replied, glad she wasn’t slurring her words. Yet.
Drinking to forget was the first sign that she wasn’t in control, and despite feeling pummeled by everything since taking over Cavendish, that was the line she refused to cross. She would sip this drink—her second one—slowly if it killed her. Wait. Were these doubles? She looked into the glass, but the answer wasn’t there.
“Actually, it’s Tamara,” said the server with an embarrassed pride. “My name. It’s Tamara.”
“I’m sorry,” Hartley answered, fumbling to find an apologetic tone to match the words. “Tamara.” She looked more closely at the woman, who underneath the name tag, smart suit, and polished French knot, looked barely twenty. “What’s your dream in life, Tamara? Because it can’t be this.” She gestured to the small lounge with her glass. “Although I’m going to give you a huge tip, and if that’s the norm, maybe this gig spits money like a motherfucker.”
Hartley glanced up in time to see the girl’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline. “Excuse the foul language. I’ve had one hell of a…” She was about to sayday, mentally corrected it toweek, realized it had been over a month, and finally said, “Year.”
Fucking hell. That was a truth that hit home.
She didn’t have to look at her watch to know exactly what day it was: December 5. One year since she’d found out the man she’d put on a pedestal should be six feet under it instead.
It was also the anniversary of the day she’d accepted Yuki’s offer and signed the agreement to buy the secret Cavendish Club. She’d been a member of the underground sex club for the wealthy, so how hard could it be to run it?
Turns out…very hard. And now it was in ruins.
“Tell me your dream,” she invited the wary Tamara again.
“To be a lawyer. A divorce lawyer, specifically,” Tamara said in a determined voice. She lowered the round tray, almost like a shield covering her crotch.
“What do you know?I’ma lawyer,” Hartley said with a faux gasp of surprised coincidence. She took a long drink of her cosmo. “Although an admittedly shitty lawyer. What year of law are you?”
“First.”
“And already you’ve chosen family law? Who hurt your mother?” she whispered with a knowing tilt of her head. She smiled at the surprise on Tamara’s face. “You said divorce with a certain bite, and for a first year to know their specialty… Well, it’s easy to guess that it’s personal.”
“Itispersonal,” Tamara agreed, but pressed her lips together and would say no more.
“Well, here’s to following your dreams,” Hartley said, lifting her glass. “May you find satisfaction in eviscerating cheating men and punishing them for their crimes. And…if you bring me another one of these, I’ll double that huge tip I promised you.”
Tamara lifted her chin, as if hearing an insult somewhere in Hartley’s words but unable to pinpoint where. Then she disappeared.
Hartley could have corrected that for the server. There’d been no insult toward Tamara, just a deluge of self-pity. She’d let herself wallow for two more of Tamara’s excellent drinks and maybe a couple more on the flight home, and then…
What, genius?something inside her mocked.
What the fuck was she going to do when she got back to Seattle? What could she do? Everything was shattering into pieces, and she had nobody but herself to blame.
She’d bought a business she only knew as a client. Then she’d talked her most-trusted sorority sisters into becoming non-equity partners with promises of wealth. She’d cajoled them into working in areas where they had no experience, and she’d convinced herself she had a contact list of clients that would have revenue rolling in within weeks. That the list turned out to be filled with friends annoyingly loyal to her ex came as the first blow.
“Fuck,” she groaned quietly, looking deep into the red drink. That wasn’t even the worst of it.
Last week, a dead body had showed up on the club’s property. And yesterday, her financial backer had demanded his investment back by the end of the month. So the countdown to complete and utter failure was well under way.
She took another healthy swig of the cosmo, swishing it between her teeth and gums before downing it in a gulp. Whatever it took to get it into her bloodstream faster. Maybe it would blot out the humiliation of this failure of a trip.
The meeting with Davos, her not-so-silent-anymore angel investor, had been a lesson in indignities. Negotiating had become pleading, which took a left turn to seduction, which ended in humiliation. She stared at her half-empty glass but instead saw the sweating, overweight man letting his robe fall open. His nod at her, showing she should get down on her knees. Throwing her a small pillow, which had hit her in the head before she—
She gulped the last of her drink.
“Here you go, Mrs. Meyer,” Tamara said, halfway to placing a new napkin on the table when Hartley startled her by taking the drink off the tray.
“No worries, Tamara. Can I ask you a favor?” she inquired, her legal last name scraping her nerves as badly as Davos’s pool deck had scraped her knees.
“Certainly,” the girl replied.
“Can you call me Ms. McKay?” She might not be divorced yet, but she could pretend.
