Page 1 of Filthy Rich

CHAPTER ONE

TAMSYN

Mrs. Hooper sips her Starbucks and surveys the scene here at the curb outside the departures gate at LaGuardia with her usual avid curiosity. She’s got her Yorkie in the dog’s little Chanel carrier settled on her free arm. She immediately spots something over my shoulder and whistles with unmistakable excitement.

“Don’t look now,” she says, dropping her foghorn of a Texas twang to what passes for her stage whisper and tipping her beehived silver fox head at whatever it is. “But that looks like Miffy Rivers over there. Between you and me, I think the plastic surgeon pulled her face way too tight this time.”

She gestures her bejeweled hand for emphasis, sending a flying slosh of her half-caff mocha concoction in my direction. I dart out of the way in the nick of time, sparing my white linen dress from a terrible fate.

I’m two weeks into my full-time summer position as Mrs. Hooper’s personal nurse after working for her part time for several months while finishing up my degree. I know I should be grateful for this job instead of working fast food…and I am. Just not when I’m dodging soymilk foam.

Mrs. Hooper is a generous enough boss and entertaining company, even if she is occasionally snooty. Sadly, her kids and grandkids, most of whom live nearby, rarely spend time with her. They pop by for five-minute visits to say hi and, I assume, safeguard their position as heirs to her late husband’s oil millions. Her niece, Penny, is involved and lovely, but she lives in Florida. So they’re not much help. Worse, the second I started working, her personal assistant developed some unspecified “family emergency,” vacated Mrs. Hooper’s Upper East Side townhouse and took off for parts unknown with her return date to be determined. I’m pretty sure I heard her snicker at me as she left.

Now I’m all alone on the front line with Mrs. Hooper. Besides managing things like her blood pressure and medications for her heart condition, I find myself running errands, facilitating her frequent bridge games with her gaggle of friends, eating meals with her, watching Real Housewives marathons with her every evening, listening to her nonstop gossip, managing her yappy dog and my own personal nemesis, Juniper, finalizing the details of our upcoming trip and, right now, overseeing the unloading of her Elizabeth Taylor-worthy collection of Louis Vuitton luggage from our town car here at the curb at LaGuardia.

Yeah, it’s been busy. Luckily, I thrive on busy. And I’m happy to help when help is needed, even when it’s not in my job description. I don’t mind.

Especially when I’ve been living in said townhouse and am now on my way to Europe with her for the rest of the summer. The pay is decent, and the signing bonus was enough to pay off some of my student loans. As a twenty-two-year-old newly graduated and licensed RN whose real job at a local oncology center doesn’t start until September, I need the work. As a former student drowning in college loan debt, God knows I need the money. As a girl whose father died last year (he left me a small life insurance policy) and whose friend group split up upon graduation, with some moving away for jobs and some getting married soon, I need the company. And as a would-be homeless person who cleared out the apartment where she grew up when she handled her father’s estate and also cleared out her college apartment when she got her degree and the lease ended, I need the housing.

Bottom line? I have nothing (other than my positive attitude and my nursing license) and need everything. I have temporary lodging but no real home these days, and I won’t until I locate an apartment that’ll rent to me with my beginner’s salary and oh-so-brief employment history.

But I will have a home soon enough. The summer will fly by before I know it.

Meanwhile, here I am. Pretending to be interested in Mrs. Hooper’s running commentary on New York’s high society.

“Who?” I say, my attention divided between our driver, the baggage handler with his cart and my own purse as I fumble for tips for everyone. Madame doesn’t believe in handling her own cash.

“Never mind Miffy. Look who’s behind her. Lucien Winter. The billionaire. He was just on the cover of Forbes a couple of months ago. Don’t tell me you don’t know who that is,” she says, pursing her pink-slicked lips at me.

I shrug, still counting bills.

“You are the most ignorant little child, honey, aren’t you?” she says. Nothing aggrieves her more than my lack of knowledge and sophistication on one of her society issues. “How you stumble through life without knowing who’s who and what’s what is a mystery to me. Not that you’d have a chance to learn anything about billionaires at City Tech.”

She glares at my weathered purse—not a Chanel but a cute little vintage Coach I found at a resale shop in the West Village for cheap—for emphasis.

“Guess not,” I say, determined not to feel like a serf despite her best efforts. I may not be dripping in couture, but I look cute enough. Generally. When I’m not, you know, sporting my college uniform of sweatpants and a hoodie. I like my little purse. I like my white linen dress. I really like my brand-new sky-blue Chuck Taylors, which I gave myself as a graduation gift. I worked hard and earned them myself. That counts for something in my book, if not hers.

Mrs. Hooper’s attention reverts to the billionaire when she fails to get a rise out of me.

“He’s not hard to look at, is he? I’ll give him that,” she says. “I’m not sure about that Porsche, though. It’s a bit much.”

A Porsche? That’s all I need to hear.

My head comes up and around. My gaze connects with the car in question, the one idling at the curb behind us. And I gasp.

“That’s not a Porsche,” I cry with a sweeping gesture at the sporty masterpiece on four wheels. I totally forget myself, which is something that happens whenever I see one of my dream cars. But there are dream cars and then there’s this car. And my disbelief only mushrooms when I see Mrs. Hooper’s blank incomprehension at this $1.2 million beauty. “Look at the curves! Look at the drive height! The wheels and the custom leather run seventy thousand each.” Evidently, I can be just as petty about cars as she is about New York society. “Don’t you know a Bugatti Veyron in Italian red when you see it?”

“I guess I don’t,” Mrs. Hooper says, brows up.

“I’m surprised none of your friends has one of these,” I say, enjoying both the way the sun hits the red-and-white oval emblem and the opportunity to show her I’m not an idiot for once. “It’s not a Chiron or a Mistral, though. Those would be truly insane.”

“The Chiron and the Mistral are home in the garage,” comes a male voice behind me.

Startled, I turn and find myself confronted with the final approach of a tall, imposing and unsmiling man wearing exactly the sort of expensive dark suit and tie you’d expect from someone driving a Bugatti. He’s older than me. Early to mid-thirties, I’m guessing. He’s got severely cut sable hair that’s a little longer at the top. A neatly trimmed beard and mustache framing lush lips. Aviator sunglasses that leave him shadowed and mysterious. A briefcase slung over his shoulder.

I feel my eyes widening and my jaw dropping as I shrink inside my skin, but I can’t help it. Nor can I fight the feeling that I’d better not piss him off. He’s got that kind of presence. Corporate Titan willing to grant a mere human like me one chance—one—to prove amusing or useful before he loses patience, withdraws a lightning bolt from that briefcase and uses it to strike me dead on the spot.

“This is a, ah…” I point vaguely at the car. “Great car.”

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