The Lying Season (Seasons #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,1
do to deal with this right now. “I’m going to go to work.”
“Oh, take the limo!”
I shook my head. “I’ll grab a cab.”
“Don’t be absurd. Your father’s Mercedes is only two blocks over. He can pick me up, and you’ll be free with the limo.”
“That’s okay. I’ll take a cab. It’ll be fine,” I said, grabbing my own purse and striding toward the door.
“Will we see you for brunch?”
I rolled my eyes. “Depends on how busy I am after the banquet this weekend! I’ll talk to you later.”
With a sigh, I pushed out of my door and hurried to the elevator. Dear god, I thought somewhere in my brain that it would get easier to deal with my parents. That someday, they would come to accept that I actually enjoyed working on campaigns. That I liked being a campaign manager for the mayor of New York City. It didn’t help that my parents ran St. Vincent’s Resorts, a multibillion-dollar company that had been in my family for generations. Or that my mother had created St. Vincent handbags and cosmetics. Not only did they want me to take over the family business, they also had a long list of suitors they found acceptable for me to marry. They didn’t even seem to care which one I picked as long as I kept the wealth among other old-money families.
Not that I had any intention of dating any of them or taking over the business for that matter. One day, they would get that through their skulls. I hoped.
I just shook my head and hopped into the first cab I saw. I grinned a little as I passed my mother’s limousine.
It took me under thirty minutes to get into the office, even without my parents’ goddamn limo. Which was fortunate because I was there a good hour before everyone else arrived. It was the only way I would get through all the work piling up on my desk. The fundraising banquet was our biggest event thus far, and it would set the tone for the campaign season. And that was on top of everything else that was on my plate.
I’d been under a pile of paperwork for who even knew how long when a text hit my phone.
Are we still on for coffee later?
“Fuck,” I grumbled.
I had completely forgotten that my friend Anna English was coming into town today, and I had promised her coffee. That was before I’d known how swamped I’d be with the banquet. But English lived in Los Angeles, and I never saw her anymore. I couldn’t just bail.
“Ugh,” I groaned again. I’d have to figure it out.
Yes! I might be a few minutes late.
When aren’t you, babe?
I laughed. At least she understood.
“Ready for the fundraising department meeting, boss?” my assistant, Aspen, asked, popping her head into my office. Her long platinum-blonde hair fell like a waterfall over one shoulder, framing her pale skin and sky-blue eyes.
I checked the time. Somehow, two hours had already passed.
“All set,” I lied.
“Okay! Let me know if you need anything else from me.”
Aspen was a godsend. I’d gone through so many assistants before finding her. She was always eager to learn, which I’d found out was not a common trait among campaign assistants.
“Will do,” I told her.
I grabbed everything I would need for the meeting off of my desk and stumbled into the conference room, scattering papers on the giant table. I arranged them into a neat pile, perfectly ready for this meeting. Even if I would have felt more comfortable after another twenty hours of prep.
Not that I had twenty extra hours. Not as the deputy campaign manager, where I had to oversee all six major departments—fundraising, communications, field, legal, tech, and political. I could spend every day on just one of these areas and not get enough done. But since the mayor’s banquet was the most important thing on the agenda, this meeting was at the top of the list. And I was going to be sure that it went off without a hitch.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Demi said as she entered the room.
Demi was the head of the fundraising department and probably my favorite person in the office. She was a short, curvy black woman from Brooklyn, who always seemed perfectly put together. In fact, she carried her own papers in a notebook with each person’s name labeled on the front and a presentation board with every banquet guest’s name on a sticky note.