Stone Cold Fox (2)
That’s what I got for trusting a woman. Sloppy work on my part. Deserving of the scathing critique she definitely would have given me. I could just hear her, but I always heard her, even when I didn’t want to. The words floating out of her mouth, in that light and airy tone of hers, nearly always in complete juxtaposition to the dark and deprecatory language launched in my direction. A verbal lashing disguised as care or concern to anyone else’s ear but my own.
Dan Felix was a high-profile litigator who’d had previously court-appointed anger management classes, and he flat out smacked me across the face when I got a text from a male coworker after midnight asking for my dealer’s info. Dan didn’t actually care about the content of the message—he was the one with the coke problem, whereas my own usage was rather infrequent and purely recreational in cases where I thought it could bond me with someone useful—and Dan wrongly assumed I was cheating on him. As if I would waste my time on some junior account executive who shared his place with three roommates in Dumbo. Please.
But I was learning. An angry man simply would not do.
Speaking of cheating, Morris Haley III, a real estate developer, chronically cheated on me, which I knew would happen on occasion, and the act didn’t outright bother me, but there was nothing discreet about his dalliances. I didn’t take kindly to openly looking like a fool in front of others, even though he was outrageously handsome—a rarity—and had one of those Kohler shower rooms with seemingly endless streams of water shooting out from all angles. Pure luxury.
She would have approved of Morris, but my reputation mattered too much to me to carry on with him. Meanwhile, that woman had no concept of a reputation at all. Why would she? Her endgame was not like mine. For her, it was about the count. One after another after another after another, for as long as she could. But I wanted something different. I relished any differences between us; truth be told I craved them. Clung to every last one.
I had rarely dated men my own age, or thereabouts, because I wrongly assumed it would be a fruitless pursuit of true affluence. But when Collin Case asked me out, I decided to give the notion of inherited wealth an earnest whirl.
I had successfully pitched the Case Company, killing it in the room with all of Collin’s underlings, roughly three to five midlevel hires without any real say in the matter but who enthusiastically nodded at me as I performed flawlessly all the while. It was this combination of total self-possession, self-confidence and the wherewithal to weave utter bullshit like a magic wand that got me the job in the first place. It’s not like anyone in HR actually checks a university transcript, and providing faux references isn’t exactly difficult, is it? It’s just advertising, for God’s sake; you simply have to roll in and dominate, that’s all that really matters, and that’s exactly what I did. For example, by the time I wrapped up the pitch for the Case Company, Collin wanted to close the deal in the room. Naturally. Shortly after, he crept into my office exuding almost zero confidence and delivered a small knock accompanied by a nervous laugh. I knew immediately what he was after, so I made it easy on both of us.
“You have my card.” I smiled. “It has my office line. And my cell.”
“Great,” he said. “So I’ll call you?”
“Looks like it.”
“Cool.” He grinned, like an oaf, proud of himself for taking the leap even though I had basically operated the safety harness for him. He wasn’t the first client, current or prospective, to ask me out, but he was the first I actually considered. After perusing some online literature about the Family Case, I correctly estimated that Collin could more than afford me. Everything in the public record all but confirmed it, but so did my foray into more extensive research, which ended up being a hollow quest. I was undeterred. In fact, I was more confident than ever he was the one.
See, most people have plenty of private things out in the open if you know where and how to look, and I do—thanks to her—but a family like the Cases? You only see what they want you to see. Everything else is in the vault. And that was the crux of pursuing a man like Collin Case. The true challenge would likely not be obtaining Collin’s eternal love and devotion but securing my acceptance into his world.
As an added and unexpected perk, I quickly learned that another major difference between Collin and my exes, aside from him being considerably younger than them, was that he was actually nice to me. Her men were nice, too. Easy targets and easy to live with. Easy to gain their trust and their loyalty. Easy to maneuver and manipulate, among other things.
But the types of brash, ambitious men I had been wasting prime husband-hunting years on were angry and dominant and focused purely on their self-made success. I yearned to end the game, and soon, but not at the cost of keeping such brutal company for a life sentence.
With someone like Collin, I realized there was another way.
Collin had had just about everything handed to him, so naturally it made him soft. Some might say malleable. Impressionable. Qualities that were much to the chagrin of the family patriarch, but I didn’t see how that was Collin’s fault. Sure, he bumbled around at work, practically playing dress-up in his father’s clothes, but he saw an opportunity with me where he could actually be himself and I would respond kindly. He wanted to be coddled and praised and adored. In return, he would do the same for me. Boring, sure, but safe, if it went my way. Perfect for me. And he was right there for the taking.