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Five years ago
1
Aria
The wind stings my eyes when I step out of my sedan, but I am undeterred. It has been far too long since I saw my friends last, and an icy breeze isn’t going to stop me. I throw open the door to Vin’s, and the hostess greets me in a flash. It’s a decent place downtown with a pleasant atmosphere. Dark enough to feel cozy, but bright enough to see the menu.
“Aria!” Jeanette says as she flags me over to our table.
I smile to disguise my immediate reaction. It’s not that I don’t like Jeanette—she’s fine. It’s just that she can be a bit much, and I’d hoped she wasn’t coming tonight. Doesn’t matter now. Taking a seat across from her, I smile deeply at Olive and Isla. “Hey, everybody, what are we drinking?”
“I thought we’d hit Craft next door after dinner,” Olive says. “That way, we can drink cheaper. Is Lily coming?”
“No, she has to work.” When the server comes, I order a white wine spritzer and fries to soak up whatever I get at Craft. “I am so glad you suggested this, Isla. I needed a night out.”
She nods and smiles. “It has been too long since I got all of you out on the same night! Since when did we become the too-busy, boring adults we used to pity?”
Jeanette laughs. “I’m still not. It’s you three who can’t catch a break.”
Easy to say when Daddy pays your bills. Or your bail. But I keep that to myself. “Since graduation, Isla. I spent ten hours with fifteen five-year-olds today, then two more hours in professional development hell workshop afterwards—"
“The trains meet at seven-thirty,” Jeanette says.
“What?”
“I don’t, hon, everything you just said had numbers and math, and I didn’t know there would be a test.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “Olive, what about you?”
“College makes clerking for a federal judge sound glamorous and exciting, when really, it’s a lot of paperwork and fetching coffee.”
“But you’re learning something, right?”
The brunette cuts me with a glare. “I’m learning judges shouldn’t sleep with their bailiffs because it causes a hell of a lot of drama.”
“Oh!”
She laughs and shrugs. “At least it’s not boring, right, Jeanette?”
Our blonde debutante’s cropped hair nearly cascades into her perfect red lipstick. “Why did you have to bring up work? I’m trying to have a good time.”
“Work? You got a job?” I’m astounded she’d even admit such a thing.
She gives a gracefully dismissive hand wave. “A small one. It’s not a big deal. Only that I’ve never been so bored in my life.”
“What is it?”
“Daddy has decided I need work experience, so to punish him, I have taken up with a temp agency, and now I am working at the front desk of the law office of Bering and White, answering phones and telling people to sit in the lobby.”
I blink at her. “Bering and White? As in Corbin Bering? The man your father hates?”
She grins. “Oh? Does he hate him? Well, I certainly wouldn’t have requested that assignment, but far be it from me to tell the temp agency what to do.”
“Didn’t they stomp him in his divorce from his third wife?”
“They certainly tried. But Daddy is too good at keeping his fortune hidden for them to do much damage, and when he found that harlot in bed with Corbin, the judge saw things his way.”
I laugh and roll my eyes. Somerset Harbor has two echelons. The one with normal people like me, and the one with people like Jeanette Webb. There are few reasons we intermingle, but the three of us met Jeanette in college. Entertaining to the point of being detrimental, she is brilliant at getting what she wants. “So, a boring job at his enemy’s office is your revenge for your father telling you to get some work experience?”
