Page 20 of Eye Candy

Fuck.

CHAPTER 10

CAROLINE

It wasone of those warm New York nights when the air zinged with possibility, and the sounds from the streets fanned the feeling that the world would leave without you if you didn’t hurry up.

When I first moved here, the sounds were the first things I fell in love with.

There was always someone honking, chucking trash, or cussing out slow walkers. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was alive. The only noises in Woodville, my hometown in Aotearoa New Zealand, were birds, or—if you were near the one main street, imaginatively called Main Street—cars.

I stabbed my cocktail pick at my ice, chasing cubes around the glass to distract me from the beautiful woman on the other side of the room who was laughing at something Chase had said.

“Chase, you’re outrageous!” She giggled.

No, he wasn’t. Chase was very, very rageous. Even now he was looking around the room, seemingly worried that his date’steasing was going to draw people’s attention. It hadn’t. Only mine, and I’d been watching them way before that.

Green-eyed monster, thy name is… Teddy.

When I’d swanned in, fashionably late, Chase and his date were already at the bar. (Of course, he arrived exactly at the time specified on the invite.) Chase hadn’t acknowledged me in any way; his attention was on his date, who was telling everyone about a terrarium workshop she wanted Chase to do with her. That was fine. I could get a drink and bide my time until the right moment for a spectacle emerged. I wasn’t bugged by their plans for an intimate and unique little date. I was the spoiled Bircher oil heiress.

“What’s your motivation?” Lyssa had asked before I left the apartment.

I paused at the door. “My career, Lyss. You know, everything I’ve been working for, for the last ten years?”

She started to say something, but I was feeling defensive. “Burlesque isn’t just what I do, Lyssa. It’s who I am. I’ve made so many sacrifices to be here—moving away from my family, working awful jobs. I’m not going back to Woodville to work at the café. I won’t.” I exhaled. “Gerard’s money will mean Dad will be able to pay everything off and hire better baristas than me anyway. I never get the milk right.”

“Care, I know that. You’ve only said it a hundred times. I meant what’s your motivation asTeddy. You should know.”

“Oh. Make a fool out of my ex by flirting with his brother?”

“Tale old as time.” Lyssa nodded approvingly. “Make sure you bring the attitude.”

I adopted a bored, haughty stare. “This caviar doesn’t taste like beluga! Bring me another!”

I’d met plenty of awful rich people at burlesque shows. They ordered Bollinger to impress their table but ‘forgot’ to tip their waitress. That was the kind of human garbage I was modeling Teddy on.

“Perfect.” Lyssa approved. “Happy scamming.”

Lueur, the upscale lounge bar, felt like stepping back in time to a clandestine speakeasy, so it was fitting that the party had a 1920s murder mystery theme.

There were leather armchairs clustered around tables with hazy lamps where people would linger until the small hours, swapping secrets. Behind the marble bar, the wall of liquor was backlit, so beams of light shone through the bottles and cast colorful reflections onto the main floor. The atmosphere was underscored by chatter, popping champagne corks, and the efficient hustle of the waitstaff. Actors milled about the floor, swapping conversation and clues with guests.

I was draped in one of the overstuffed armchairs, not listening as one of the actors monologued about a murder most foul. I probably should have started my scandalmongering (a five-dollar word!) already, but I couldn’t stop watching Chase and the terrarium woman.

As I watched, she started fanning her face the way someone did when they felt a sneeze coming. Chase, ever attentive, immediately procured a napkin.

I wasn’t jealous.

Jealousy was for insecure people, not me. I had confidence coming out my butt! I was just miffed Chase’s date had been invited here on her own merit and didn’t have to answer to people calling her the wrong name all the time, that’s all.

Fine, I was jealous.

When Mike and I were kids, we had an electric flyswatter that we used to zap each other with, as a game. You’d be minding your own business, pulling plums off the tree in the backyard or something, then, bam, you’d get a few volts to the back of the calf and spend the rest of the day limping around looking for revenge.

I needed to imagine Mike swinging that electric swatter at me anytime I did something that was out of character for Teddy. Like getting jealous because men I had no shot with had brought beautiful, funny, and charming dates.Zap.

“Teddy!”

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