Wrecked (Crystal Book Billionaires) (2 page)

*

The cool glass against my forehead felt like heaven. I sucked in a deep breath and batted my eyelashes open. I’d brought along the darkest sunglasses I owned, anticipating a hangover, but even they did nothing to shield me from the painful glare of Los Angeles’ midday sun.

The car’s driver hit a pothole, and my stomach lurched. Had I really had that much to drink last night?

It was hard to remember. I knew I’d thrown back a couple of cocktails by the time Eli and I went down below. After that, we’d found the liquor cabinet hidden in the room. There’d been a lock on it, but breaking it open was child’s play. Somehow the entire bottle of Grey Goose Magnum disappeared in no time at all, much like my strapless bra, which I never did manage to locate.

After going back up to the deck, we proceeded to drink more as well as smoke something questionable out of Connor Gentry’s bowl.

But considering that I had successfully hooked up with Eli and had no real physical damage other than a gnarly headache, I’d say it had all in all been a successful night.

Rainy and I had loose plans to meet up later to have drinks and rehash the events of the party. As I debated whether or not a little hair of the dog might do me some good, the car pulled into the circular drive on Sierra Mar. There were no cars in our driveway since my dad always preferred to use the garage, so it was impossible to tell whether or not he was home.

Saturdays could be iffy with him. Half the time he chose to see them as any other day of the week, working straight through the mornings and afternoons at his office downtown. “People need cat food every day,” was something he liked to say, referring to
Pet Hop,
the pet store chain he’d begun expanding across the country years ago.

Fumbling for the handle, I let myself out of the car. My legs shook slightly and I was glad I’d had the foresight to pack a pair of flats. After staying out on the yacht till close to dawn, Rainy and I had drunkenly traveled — thanks to her father’s personal driver, of course — to her house in Venice Beach. After a few hours of sleep, my own journey home began. It was time for a shower and a pair of underwear that didn’t ride up my ass in the name of being sexy.

“Thanks,” I mumbled to Rainy’s driver, remembering at the last second to turn around and grab my Gucci Soho leather shoulder bag. One of my high heels peeked out the top of it, and I jammed the shoe back in.

The driver nodded to me. “Have a good day, Miss Wells.”

I hurried past him and towards the front door. The Hollywood Hills street was quiet enough that most of the traffic was from residents, but I didn’t feel like pushing my luck. Someone I knew driving by and seeing me perform a walk of shame in last night’s dress, even if I was in my own front yard, was not something to be desired.

After rummaging through my purse, I located my keys in the very bottom and let myself in. The whirring of a vacuum cleaner came from somewhere in the right wing of the house, meaning LuLu the housekeeper was there. Too spent to talk to anyone, I headed for the stairs.

The Asian inspired house had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. With a main section plus two wings that wrapped around the swimming pool and a massive loft on the second floor, it overlooked most of the city below. After petitioning my dad for several years, he’d finally taken the exercise equipment down from the loft and let me move into the space. At the top of the landing was a short hallway, one end of it housing a bathroom and the other end opening up to the massive room I called home.

My cell phone rang as I pushed the door to my sanctuary open. Sighing, I dropped my purse on the floor and pulled it out. Unlike my keys, my phone had its own little side pouch it lived in, ensuring I never lost track of it.

“What’s up?” I asked Rainy, walking to the bed and falling flat on my back.

“Hey.” Her voice sounded weird, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the strange tone suggested.

I sat up, suddenly feeling much more awake. “Hey, yourself.”

“Have you seen the news?”

“No.” Did she know who she was talking to? It’s not like I’m a dumbass and didn’t know what was going on in the world, but I had better things to do in the mornings than sit down with a black cup of coffee and study the day’s headlines.

Although the coffee part sounded good…

My temples throbbed, and I reached up with my free hand to rub at them. “Aren’t we meeting later?”

Rainy sucked in a sharp breath. “There’s something on the news about your dad.”

“What?” My heart started pounding, and a dozen visions of my dad dying in various ways flashed through my mind. Heart attack. Car accident. Murder. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean about
Pet Hop.”

I exhaled sharply. “Jesus Christ, Rainy. You scared me.”

“Sorry.”

I fell back down on the bed, thinking about chastising her more but also not having the strength to do it. Unlike me, Rainy still had both her parents. Unlike me, her mother hadn’t died when she was a baby, leaving her to be raised by babysitters and nannies. Unlike me, she didn’t live with the constant painful knowledge that the things she cherished most could be quickly and inexorably taken away from her.

“So what is it?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything.

“God, Rainy.” I was starting to get irritated. “What is it?”

“Everyone is saying
Pet Hop
is closing,” she said in a rush.

I absorbed the information. “Which one?”

“All of them.”

I scoffed. There were hundreds of them. There was a location in every major city in the United States and like half a dozen in L.A. alone.

“I’m not kidding, Grace.” Her voice was quiet. Serious. More serious than I’d ever heard her.

A thick ball formed in my throat. “It’s just a rumor. Why would my dad close them? That’s stupid. Come on, you don’t really believe that, do you?”

“The news says that the company is declaring bankruptcy.”

I stood up, unzipping the back of my dress and shimmying out of it while I talked. “Well, that’s not happening.”

“Okay,” she said, though I couldn’t tell whether she believed me or not.

“It’s not,” I stressed, kicking off my ballet flats. They ricocheted off the wall’s baseboard and landed on the carpet.

“I said okay.”

I stomped over to the closet and yanked the door open, then grabbed a yellow maxi dress off a hanger. “Look, I’ll text you in a little bit. We can go to Eau Claire. Or The Ivy.”

“K. See you.”

“Bye.”

As soon as she hung up, I called my dad. The phone rang and rang and when he didn’t answer, I threw it on the bed. Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the sundress and found my Louis Vuitton slides.

LuLu had killed the vacuum cleaner, and there was the soft talk of the radio coming from the kitchen. I veered away from that part of the house, heading for the side door that led to the garage. My dad’s silver Corvette was missing, but my yellow Hummer sat in its usual spot. I unlocked it, thinking of heading straight for the
Pet Hop
offices downtown.

I knew I probably looked like shit, what with last night’s mascara still on my face — albeit in the wrong location — but I was determined to figure out why such an awful rumor was going around.
Pet Hop
filing for bankruptcy just didn’t make sense. It was the leader in pet supplies. Last I’d heard, my dad was even talking about opening some stores in Canada.

I climbed into the Hummer but then froze as a familiar engine revved up the drive. A few seconds later, the garage door opened up. My dad pulled the Corvette into the spot between my car and his Jaguar convertible, and I climbed back down onto the concrete floor to wait.

His brows furrowed as he climbed out of the car, though the tense expression on his face could have meant any number of things. The man’s not exactly what you could call easy going — even a little thing like the mail man arriving thirty minutes later than usually could set my father off if he’s already in a sour mood.

As he looked at me and pursed his lips, though, I could see something was different. Something big was going on — like, much bigger than having your newest order of paperbacks from Amazon arrive half an hour later than you hoped they would. His forehead glowed with sweat, a couple drops trickling down from underneath his sandy blond hair. He pulled out a handkerchief from the front of his suit and wiped his brow.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

His cutting tone made me draw back. “At Rainy’s Fourth of July party. I told you. Remember?”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t answer your phone. What about a party could be so distracting that you forget about the rest of the world?”

Oh, Dad. You do not want to know the answer to that question.

Immediately, I began to humorously play out exactly what the scene would look like if I
were
to tell my father about the drugs and sex on the yacht. Whatever his reaction might be, it would likely provide my friends and me with a story to laugh over for years.

“Didn’t you see my missed calls?” he pressed.

“Well… yeah.” There had been several missed calls from him when I’d woken up that morning, but no messages.

He stomped past me and pushed open the side door leading out of the garage. “I assume you’ve at least been on Twitter, so you know
something
about what’s going on.”

That one actually hurt. For the most part, my dad and I lived separate lives. And even though he could be distanced and preoccupied, very rarely did his treatment of me ever actually come close to scathing.

“You don’t have to be so mean to me,” I said, trying to quell the shake in my voice. “Just because of some stupid rumor…” I followed him up the little stone walkway to the left wing of the house.

He spun around to face me. “It’s not a rumor, Grace.”

I stared at him, not doing much else but blinking and breathing. Even my mind, completely devoid of thoughts, suddenly became incapable of functioning. From somewhere above us a bird trilled, its song out of place in the dour moment.

“B-but,” I sputtered, not entirely sure where I was going with the conjunction.

He sighed and looked at the ground. “I’ve been trying to hide it from you for over six months. I kept thinking that things would get better, that I would be able to pull the company through.” He continued to gaze at the grass. “But that’s not going to happen.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but only a croak came out. I took a deep breath and tried again. “What are you going to do?”

Finally, he looked up at me. “I’m going to New York to see if I can work something out with some shareholders there.”

“Oh,” I said, relieved. “That doesn’t sound so bad. How long will you be gone?”

All I need is one weekend to throw a kickass house party and make all these worries float away.

He shook his head bitterly. “I don’t know. As long as it takes. I don’t know what will happen, Grace.”

My fingers were twisting together and I forced myself to stop. “It’s okay.”

He studied my face. “Grace, the company isn’t just filing for bankruptcy. I am too.”

“Okay.” I got the sense there was more to what he was saying, so I stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Everything will change. We have to sell this house… and the one in Massachusetts.”

My vision blurred. “Wait. What?”

“We have to sell the houses. And the cars… the boat. Everything.”

A strange noise escaped my throat, making me sound like a cross between a rabid fox and a crazy clown. “Not my car. That’s
mine.”

He pursed his lips. “Yes, the Hummer too. I’m sorry.”

The tears welled up in my eyes, and the anger surged forward, spilling out of my heart and escaping from between my lips. “How could you do this?” I demanded. “How could you let this happen?”

An expression I’d never seen on anyone settled on his face. I didn’t know exactly what he was feeling, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. I tensed, thinking he was about to blow up at me.

Finally, he just ran his hand over his eyes and sighed. “I did wrong by you. I’m sorry… I brought you up, giving you everything you wanted, and now look.” He gestured pathetically at me. “Your mother would be disappointed in me.”

Pain pricked at my chest. I didn’t know what to say. He hardly ever talked about my mom, and to have him finally mention her in such a shitty moment sucked balls.

A quick realization hit me like a truck, and I gasped. “If you’re selling the houses, where will I go?”

I expected him to say Hotel Bel-Air, Rainy’s, or New York.

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” he said. “And you need to get away for a while.”

I guffawed, slapping my thigh. “I hardly think this is the time to plan a vacation, Dad.”

His face became stony, and I shut up. “You stay out late partying. You don’t have a job. You never finished school.”

I crossed my arms. “You make me sound like an awful person. That’s not all I do.”

“You tan and go shopping.” He held his palm up to silence my objection. “Like I said, it’s my fault for letting it get this way. I should have put my foot down when you got kicked out of NYU, but I didn’t. I was too busy working all of the time to be a father, and I’m sorry.”

Some of the tension left my shoulders. The apology was straight out of left field, and I had no clue how to respond to it. How ashamed he seemed of me.

“You won’t want to be in Los Angeles much longer anyway,” he said, his voice ominous.

“What does that mean?”

“North Carolina,” he said, ignoring my question. “I spoke to my brother this morning, and he’s agreed to let you stay with him for a while.”

My head spun, going a thousand miles per hour, a new question popping up with every mile the tornado of my mind gained. North Carolina,
where?
And what made my Uncle Joe — who I hadn’t seen since high school — so gung ho to take me in? And what was I to even
do
in such a hick state?

“I’m not going,” I gasped. “You can’t make me.”