A whistle split my lips, my dirty hand in the air to hail a cab.
Eyes were on me, likely marking the filth on my suit. Or perhaps my height or my red hair, the latter calling regular attention. Not that I minded. I wouldn’t wear so much white if I didn’t want to be seen.
White, I’d found, called more attention than red ever could.
Of course, it also fell prey to every surface it touched, especially when I went to that goddamn dirty greenhouse where that goddamn dirty gardener always found a way to get under my skin. And his stupid cat, too.
A taxi screeched to a quick halt in front of me. With the snap of the handle, I was sliding into the back, digging in my purse for my phone.
“Twenty-Third and Sixth,” I said with more bite than I’d meant. With a sigh, I added, “Please.”
With nothing more than a nod, he took off.
In the fifteen minutes I’d spent at Longbourne, my phone had become a mess of messages and calendar alerts. And while I absently cleared them, Kash Bennet dug his way through my brain with his shovel and that smirk and his idiotic T-shirt.
I could have told you his every flaw. Like his hair, which was thick and lush, black and gleaming and far too long, brushing his ears in waves too perfect for a man that sweaty. Or his nose, which looked like it had been broken once, the perfect line a little bent, flat on top like a Greek statue. Maybe his beard, which was too long to be considered scruff, dark as his hair and thick enough to barely see any skin through it. Or his size, which was far too big. Beastly. Roped and corded with muscles that gleamed with sweat and a peppering of dirt. He was dirty. Filthy and dirty and in desperate need of a manicure.
I could still feel the scrape of his calluses against the unworked flesh of my palm when we shook hands. Mine had disappeared into his, making me feel dainty, delicate, which was a feat of skill. I was no pixie, and my hands were proof—my fingers were slender and longer than my palm. Witch hands, Ivy called them, elegant and with the potential to wreak ruin or riches, depending on my mood. Which, of late, had been less than pleasant.
A pang of guilt niggled at me for giving Kash Bennet such a hard time. It was just the pressure of my job. Now, I loved my job—warts and all, as it was its own form of witch—but until I got a promotion, I worried I’d be impossible to endure.
We’d just landed the wedding of the decade. One of the Felix Femmes had met former-actor-turned-emo-rockstar in Aruba a month ago, and they were getting married. In eight weeks. Which meant I had a lot to do and not enough time to do it.
The Felix sisters were a quartet of socialites starring on a show titled Felix Femmes, a reality show documenting the daily lives of the infamous sisters. Their parents were one of the it couples from the nineties—Romanian supermodel Sorina Felix and her husband Adrien, a French socialite and retired playboy—and as such, the girls had been born with impeccable bone structure and an obscene wealth that afforded them a charmed life. And by charmed, I meant they were spoiled, entitled, and an absolute shitshow.
Alexandra and Sofia, the eldest, had been married and divorced half a dozen times between the two of them. Angelika was the third—and our client. And Natasha, the youngest, was every bit the party girl, gracing every tabloid in America with her beautiful face and-or beautiful vagina, depending on her outfit of choice. They were inhumanly gorgeous, with hard cheekbones and full lips and sweeping blonde hair, none of which were real. They had created fashion and makeup lines, perfumes and designer handbags. In essence, they were a household name of astronomic and notorious status and the clients that would likely test the limits of what I was willing to endure for my job.
For instance, at their engagement party last week, Alexandra had given a tipsy, passive-aggressive speech, halted by a glass of champagne in the face—courtesy of Angelika. Natasha, drunk, pelted them with pistachios while Sofia tried to wrestle them apart, resulting in a broken heel.
When she’d fallen, she’d taken Angelika’s strapless dress with her.
Like I said, I had my work cut out for me, and until this