Cash (Sexy Bastard #2) (2 page)

The crowd parts for her. Her date
immediately goes for the kiss—wrong move, dude. Savannah turns
at the last second and gives him her cheek. She meets my eyes, and I
can read her so well by now that I catch the meaning behind her gaze
right away: it’s going to be a long night.

I head for the pass, ready to step
in—no reason she needs to keep up with the bottom feeder for
the next few hours. But Ryder steps in front of me when I try to get
out.

“Hey,” Ryder says, blocking
my path.

“Finally. Your girlfriend let you
out by yourself?”

Ryder just grins. “Gunner just
let in a bachelorette party, so you can find a new skirt to chase.”

“I need no help in that
department,” I say. There are at least four numbers in my
pocket from tonight’s shift alone.

“Cassie told me to tell you,
hands off Savannah.”

On instinct, I scan the crowd and find
Savannah and Loose Lips. She’s got that cool smile on that says
she’s got it all under control. Something tells me I’ll
be getting one hell of a story when she comes in for the next date.

“Now why would I be looking at
Savannah when there’s a bachelorette party headed my way?”

I head over to the party. These girls
are ready for a good time. They’re a flutter of pastels, flowy
fabric, and pearls, but I’m willing to bet there’s more
than one wild woman under all that polish. I step up to the front and
begin the show.

“Ladies, who’s eloping with
me tomorrow?” A collective cheer goes up from the group. I take
drink orders and am just starting to shake my first drink when a
woman pushes her way to the front.

“Cash? Cash
Gardner?” A salon-made blonde who’s stepped off
the pages of my memories is standing there in front of me. The shaker
freezes mid-air.

Her eyes widen. “Oh my god, it is
you! Don’t you remember? It’s me, Morgan! We went to
school together, back at Landsbury Prep. I can’t believe I’m
running in to you here!”

I stare back, numb. There’s a
weird ringing in my ears, and I fight to focus on Morgan. She’s
going on about how she just talked to my mom last week, and some
charity gala they’re all planning at the country club, but it’s
like she’s talking a foreign language.

I thought I’d left this all
behind.

I grab one of the other bartenders. “I
need to work the front,” I tell him. “You take it from
here.” Then I fight my way out from behind the bar, heading
blindly down the back hallway and out to the alley behind the
building. My building – or at least, part of it is. People take
it for granted that I’m just the hired help here, but I own the
place in partnership with the other guys. I paid my own way through
college too, I never took one dime of my parents’ money, not
after I learned the truth about just how dirty it really was. I left
that life behind me: prep schools, and country clubs, and all the
bullshit that goes along with it. Only Jackson knows a little about
where I came from, but the others are in the dark.

But I guess there’s no escaping
the past. There’s always something, pulling me back. Reminding
me about the debt I owe.

Until I find another girl to distract
me. Yeah, that’s just what I need.

I take another breath, then head back
inside to go find tonight’s distraction.

Cash

Last call. The stragglers hit the
pavement, and the lights come on. I cash the waitresses and other bar
staff out. They all head off with nods to each other and to me.
Barely holding myself upright, I head for the stairs that will take
me to my apartment. Just as I reach door number one, Jackson comes
out of the office, flipping through a stack of mail.

“Wait up,”
he says, as I jam my key in the lock.

“What’s
up?” I mutter, completely exhausted.

Jackson plants the stack of mail on my
chest. “You gotta move out of this crap hole.”

“Let me report your concerns to
the architect,” I shoot back with a grin.

“Very funny.” Jackson
presses a stack of mail to my chest. “Came to the office by
mistake.”

I mumble something, ready to catch some
z’s since, contrary to Ryder’s prediction, I’m
heading home alone. Morgan Dockson is apparently still the worst
cock-block known to man. Glad to know some things never change. She’d
been insufferable at school—the one who always had to follow
all the rules and believed that everyone else should, too. She wasn’t
anyone’s favorite. Least of all mine.

“Going home alone,” Jackson
says with a smirk. “Does it have anything to do with a
particular blonde at the bar?”

“Who?” He couldn’t
possibly have noticed my freak-out over Morgan—or did he?

“Savannah? You were talkin’
to her most of the night. She and her date were looking pretty cozy,
though. Never knew you for the torch-carrying type.”

“Savy? No way. We’re just
commiserating over losing our buddies to the big L word.”

“Me think he doth protesteth too
much.” Jackson smirks.

“Whatever, dude. See you
tomorrow.” He waves me off home – not that I have far to
go. My apartment’s upstairs, above the bar. I should probably
find a new place, but you really can’t beat the commute. I mean
the traffic—even from across the street—would just kill
me in the end. Plus, on those nights when everyone’s a little
too buzzed, it’s nice to be able to sweep my flavor of the
night off her feet and into bed in ten seconds flat.

Kicking my door closed, I flip through
the envelopes. My apartment’s a cobbled-together
comfort. It’s sleek, rugged, and mostly second-hand. Why
get new stuff when there is still perfectly acceptable material just
lying around? A salvaged antique brick and reclaimed wood TV stand,
repurposed steamer trunk for a coffee table, a cut-down, sanded, and
refinished barn door for a headboard. When you grow up with shiny,
marble, brand new and stale, all you want is something that feels
real. And the truth is, I like building this stuff. Working with my
hands makes me feel useful.

I dump my keys in the bowl and check
the mail. Bill. Bill. Useless Ad. Postcard from Knox, living the
pro-ball life in New York...

Gardner
and Sons.

Fate, you fickle bitch, you would have
both land in my lap in the same day. First Morgan, and now my monthly
hush money. Still in my socks, I head to the kitchen. Taped to the
inside of the cabinet just to the right of the sink is a list. It’s
got too many names and not enough of them crossed off. I scan down
the list.

Marissa Stamretz. Congrats.

Ripping open the bank statement, I see
the deposits have too many zeros and none of it makes me feel good. I
could buy a lot of soap with that kind of dough and still never feel
clean enough. So I send it on to the people who deserve it. Who are
owed it, really. Not that the law sees it that way, but I learned a
long time ago, what’s legal and what’s just are two
different things.

I seal up the new check in an envelope
and address it. Marissa Stamretz, I hope it helps. I hope it makes
up—oh hell, I just hope she isn’t already so far gone
that it can’t help. I cross her off my list.

Crawling into bed, I try not to think
about all of the names still left.

Savannah

People always assume that Harvard is
the top law school in America. It’s not. In school we’d
like to say Harvard was for people who couldn’t get into Yale
or Stanford. That’s right, Harvard is not number one, not
number two, but third. It gave us all the need to push ourselves to
bigger and better things. We may not be the top law school in
America, but we sure as hell act like it.

And fuck if I don’t live up to
that standard.

That sort of blind confidence is the
only thing keeping my smile in place and my head firmly attached to
my shoulders. I’ve stuck my head so deep into the sand when it
comes to my personal life I’m about to hit the Earth’s
core.

It’s also been great that I’m
basically holding my department together, so I can fill my empty bed
with contracts and my laptop. I don’t even want to think about
how many times this week I’ve woken up to ink stained PJs
because I fell asleep while working. For once, it would be nice to
wake up to something toned and naked.

The elevator dings, and it’s time
to put thoughts of bare-chested men out of my head.

Pity.

I plaster on a smile and square my
shoulders. I am Savannah Sunday, I kick ass, I am up for a promotion
at work, and I fucked up my love life. If anyone is going to make big
things happen, it’s me.

Briggs, Meyers, and Associates occupies
four floors in a high rise in downtown Atlanta, with sweeping views
of the city. This is our base of operations, and I may as well be a
four star general. The receptionist looks up at me when I enter, and
I give her a small wave.

Our Entertainment Division is a long
corridor. We handle everyone from musicians, to rising film stars, to
DJs—and we’re the best in town.

“Coming in late this morning,
Savannah?” Richard asks. He’s already got his suit jacket
off and his sleeves rolled up. He’s the competition. I’ve
been holding the department together after our boss retired, but
Richard—or The Dick, as I personally prefer to call him—has
been angling for the spot that should be mine.

I’ve been coming in early to get
a head start on work, and I have to admit, it’s amazing how a
lack of sex life makes you more productive. Despite the number of
dates I’ve been through in the last few months, nothing has
been worth taking home, let alone sampling. Good for my clients, bad
for me.

“Good morning to you too,
Richard.” I watch him struggle through another set of boxes.
“Can I help you with something?”

No reason the department should go down
on my watch, regardless of our rivalry.

“Just going over the last few
clauses in a contract and I wanted to look at something Meyers had
written several years ago. He mentioned it yesterday when we were
going over…” He drops off, probably because I wasn’t
supposed to hear that Meyers—a partner—was going over his
work.

Meyers is a misogynistic pig who only
hired me because Briggs interviewed me and did it behind Meyers’s
back. The Dick is Meyers’s favorite. The only reason I wasn’t
given the position after the first month was that Meyers wanted to
give The Dick a chance. Because the five years he’d already
been here weren’t evidence enough of his incompetence.

“Get a paralegal to do it.”
I don’t want to work with him. In
fact I’d like to fire him, but for the good of the team I play
nice and bide my time until I can boot his ass to the curb. I don’t
love being a bitch, but sometimes, in this business, even southern
belles have to show their balls .

“I want to make sure my client’s
receiving the personal touch,” The Dick says, his gaze flicking
up and down my body. Ugh.

“Okay, then you go ahead and do
it. But they’re not billable hours.” I turn on my heel
and sweep down the hall, trying not to think about The Dick’s
eyes glued to my ass.

I’d hook up with Cash before I’d
let The Dick bill a client for time spent looking up an obscure quote
that he wouldn’t let a paralegal touch. At least I’d get
the better end of the deal.

Rob’s outside my office with a
stack of contracts in one hand and a green tea latte in the other.
Rob’s been with me since I started here, and he’s the
type of assistant I would go to the mat for. And it’s not just
because he knows my coffee order. Rob knows how to handle difficult
clients, ferret out information, and he can read contracts so well I
suspect he may have negotiated his own birth.

I take the contracts and the latte and
he follows me into my office, going over messages.

“We haven’t
heard back from Davies, so I—”

“You sent the flowers to him and
the—”

“Bourbon—to
Mathias, yes ma’am.”

I glare at him. Rob’s one flaw in
my opinion is the ‘ma’am.’ The tips of his ears
redden. He grew up in the country, or as he says, just to the left of
the middle of nowhere—and it was the kind of old-fashioned
place where everyone was ma’am or sir if they held a position
over him. He moved to the city to find more open-minded people, and
somehow he found us. I’m glad he did. Wherever he wants to go,
I will move mountains to help him get there.

Flipping open the first contract, I
start scanning it while we run down the laundry list of morning
issues.

“Put Davies on the call list and
we’ll hit him up again. He needs a new lawyer to take on the
studios. We have plenty of experience there.”

Rob makes a face. “I got the
impression from his assistant that he really wants someone in Los
Angeles.”

I stop short. “Why? When he
spends ninety percent of his time shooting in Atlanta? We’re
far more accessible, and we’ve dealt with these studios plenty
of times before.”

“I’ll remind his assistant
of that next time we speak.”

“Great. And Mathias?”

“Possibly has a new client for
you, but I couldn’t get much more out of him than that.”
I look up. Rob can find snow in the Sahara. Whoever Triton
Entertainment thinks they have, they think that person is worth big
bucks. Just what I need to put me above The Dick.

“Thank you.” Rob heads for
the door and I grab a pen, writing in an addendum to a clause. He
backtracks and stands in front of me, head down.

“Also, Meyers wants to know if
you’re still going to the event at the Intercontinental
tomorrow?”

“Does Blake
Shelton sing country music?” I answer, not looking up from my
writing.

“I know that and you know that,
but Meyers—”

“Rob,” I warn. Normally,
I’d enjoy the joke, and probably add a follow up, but with me
angling for this job, I can’t chance it. Meyers isn’t my
biggest fan at this point. No need to poke the bear.