by Linde, K. A.
Then my stomach twisted further as realization hit me. No, of course, Michael hadn’t gone to Melanie. I’d put him in his place. Just like Katherine had done with so many people all over the Upper East Side. Like she had done with me. She was the reigning bitch queen, and no one ever stood up to her. No one would dare. And why was that? Because she had the power to make it worse. Far, far worse. And I had shown Michael the same thing. He’d seen that I was serious about wrecking his life if he tried to pull shit on me.
I stood from my seat in a hurry. Oh god. This was how Katherine got away with it. She put the fear of god in them, and then she walked away scot-free. Certain that no one would talk.
No wonder Melanie was oblivious. I had protected her the best way that I knew how. And it was terrifying.
“Are you all right?” Melanie asked.
“Uh, yeah. I’m fine. Go ahead upstairs. I’m going to make some coffee and wait for Penn.”
“Thanks! You’re the best,” Melanie said, standing and pulling me in for a hug. “Hey, Nat, I was going to ask—would you be my maid of honor?”
A knot lodged in my throat. “Really? Not Marina?”
“Definitely you. I know we haven’t always been close, but that’s just normal sibling stuff. I’d really love to have you up there with me.”
“Of course I will. I’d be honored,” I told her truthfully. I might dislike her fiancé, but I loved my sister.
“I’m so excited.” She yawned again. “But I need a few more hours of sleep before I can show my enthusiasm.”
I laughed and watched her climb the stairs. My unease refused to abate as I ventured into my parents’ kitchen, found the coffee grounds, and set the pot to percolate. About ten minutes later, Penn appeared around the corner. His dark hair was wet from the shower, and he was dressed down in khakis and a polo with an Arc’teryx jacket.
“Is that coffee?” he asked me with big puppy-dog eyes.
“I’ll pour you some.”
“I can get it. You go change. I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise, huh?”
He nodded. “I had an idea and talked to your mom last night.”
“Oh dear lord, this can’t be good.”
“On the contrary, it will be excellent.” He reached for the coffeepot as I passed him. But he called out to me before I left, “Dress warmly.”
“Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this?”
He grinned and I nearly sighed at that beautiful face. “You won’t.”
I hurried back upstairs, sneaking into my bedroom to steal clothes while Melanie was fast asleep. I changed into layers for the cold in the bathroom. I pulled my long hair up into a high ponytail, and then I braided the pony and tied off the end. I grabbed my jacket and then came back downstairs to find Penn with a thermos of coffee in his hand, a cooler, and my mother’s car keys.
“You’re all prepared, huh?” I asked. “Did you move in when I wasn’t looking?”
“Just schemed behind your back.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “We talked about that.”
“For the greater good.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He pulled me in for a quick kiss. “Just trust me.”
And there was that word. I could trust him. I was already trusting him with my heart. Scheming with my parents I could probably handle. Maybe.
We took my mom’s car into town. I was worried that Penn would need directions to wherever we were going, but he seemed to have it handled. It was strangely refreshing to have someone else drive me around my own hometown. But the one benefit was, I knew where we were going before he told me.
“We’re going out on a boat? Today?” I asked, pulling up the temperature on my phone. “It’s only sixty.”
“It’s supposed to warm up later. And anyway, we’ve sailed in this weather before.”
“Sailing?” I groaned. “You’re going to make me do physical labor, aren’t you?”
Penn rolled his eyes at me and passed over the cooler. “Come on. You’re the one who grew up in a boating town.”
“I only lived here four years,” I protested.
“Fine. I’ve been on the water since I was born. I’ll do most of the manual labor.”
“That sounds fair,” I said with a smile.
He shook his head at me and then directed me to the docks. This had always been more Melanie’s scene than mine. Especially since Marina’s family owned one of the largest boating companies in the harbor. So I wasn’t surprised when we ended up walking under the Hartage Boating sign and toward the front desk.
Marina’s brother, Daron, stepped outside. He’d been the hottest guy in any of the high schools when I was younger. He had been the star quarterback and dreamboat. He now ran the Hartage Boating with his father.
“Ah, you must be Mr. Kensington,” Daron said, holding his hand out to Penn.
“Yes, Penn. You’re Daron?”
“That’s right.”
Daron tilted his head at me. “Hey, Natalie. How’s Melanie?”
“Engaged.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Distaste perhaps. We’d all hung out some last summer, and I knew he wasn’t particularly fond of Michael either.
“That’s a shame.”
Oh, I liked him. “At least I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“Well, let’s get you all set up.”
Daron walked us down the docks to a medium-sized sailboat. He and Penn went back and forth for a few minutes about the boat, chatting like they had known each other forever. Finally, Daron seemed satisfied that Penn knew what he was doing and left us to our day on the water.
Penn helped me on the deck and then set to work on getting the boat out on the water. He was a professional at this. His strong muscles working the line and steering us into the wind. It was intoxicating, watching him move. It almost made me forget my earlier fears.
A short while later, Penn tied everything off and set us on a smooth path through the water. He dropped down next to me, reaching for a water bottle out of the cooler. A smile touched my features as all those memories of our time together out on the water in the Hamptons hit me fresh. Sometimes, it was easy to forget how real that had all been for the both of us.
“You look hot when you do that.”
He set the water bottle back down. “What?”
“Sail.”
“I can’t believe that you forgot everything I’d taught you.”
“It was so long ago.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Hence why I thought it would be nice to make all new memories out here.”
“I like that,” I said, nuzzling into his embrace.
He kissed my hair, and for a while, we just sat there, enjoying the wind in our hair and the sun kissing our skin. It was peaceful after the go, go, go of New York. Charleston had its own charm.
“So, what happened with Michael?” he finally asked.
I sighed. I had known it was coming, but I’d thought that I would be able to escape it for a little while longer. “He was mad that the party was about me. That all of Mel’s friends were excited by my new socialite status and celebrity boyfriend.”
He arched an eyebrow at that. I shrugged.
“I tried to tell them that we weren’t famous, but I guess, we look famous here.”
“And how did they find out about all of that?”
I explained about Mary Beth and the alumni page that had generated my newfound celebrity status.
“I see. And so, when Michael got mad, that’s when he had all the girls get away from you.”
“Yes, and he was mad and said I was selfish and basically…nothing. And well, I’d had this realization while Mel’s friends went postal on me. I finally realized why you always say that you can’t escape the Upper East Side. Because I couldn’t. Even here in Charleston. Somewhere so far away from that life, and it had followed me here. And I haven’t been a part of it for very long while you were ra
ised there your whole life.” I sheepishly looked up at him. “Before, whenever you said you wanted to escape but couldn’t, I used to think that you were being a bit…dramatic.”
He shrugged. “I really wish that I were.”
“But you actually can’t escape it, can you?”
He shook his head. “No, I can’t.”
“It follows you. The prestige, the name, the ramifications of who you are being more important than you. Even the people who had known me before got swept up in my new persona. And it’s like that for you all the time.”
“Yes. Which is why it was so refreshing when I met you in Paris. You had no idea who I was. And I don’t think that you cared.”
“I didn’t.”
“I was an ass for leading you on through the city and leaving after, but I’ve thought about that night a lot. How I wished my whole life could be that anonymous. But that’s not possible. And it becomes less and less so every time my mother runs for reelection, which happens to be this year. Court and I were talking about it.”
My brows rose in shock. “You and your brother talked?”
“Yes, and it was shockingly cordial.”
“Wow. That’s huge, Penn.”
“Oddly, I think he likes you. Like…as a person, not as a conquest. Which is another shocker for me.”
“I’m so glad that you two talked. That it was productive.”
“Me too, surprisingly.” He blinked as if the thought of him and Court getting along was too foreign. “So, you found out the Upper East Side isn’t so easy to shake after all.”
“Yes. And then I kind of channeled that into Michael.”
“Oh?”
I fully faced him. “I think I went full Katherine Van Pelt on him.”
He cracked a smile and then burst into laughter.
“What?” I gasped.
“You’re so serious right now.”
“I, like, verbally assaulted him.”
“Nat, he probably deserved it.”
“Yeah, well, he did, but I’d promised Melanie. And then he didn’t even tell. I was so confused.”
Penn patted my hand. “We call this using your superpower for good.”
“It felt good at the time but not after. I felt like I’d betrayed Mel’s trust.”
“Look, what you found out about Michael is that he’s all bark and no bite. When he recognized you as an actual challenger, he ran with his tail between his legs. You protected your sister. No one was hurt. And the bad guy was put in his place. What part of that is bad?”
I frowned. I hadn’t really considered it from that perspective. “I guess…none of it.”
Except how it’d made me feel.
But it had been worth it, too.
Maybe doing something bad for the right reason made a difference. More a vigilante than a villain.
“I think this has been very illuminating for me as well,” Penn said. He moved a stray strand of hair off of my face and lopped it behind my ear.
“Oh, I’m sure. You see how small town my life is compared to where you’re from,” I joked. “How cute and Southern it is here.”
“I saw where you got your strength and your beautiful mind and that quick wit. I’ve seen the love your parents have for each other even though they come from completely different places. I see how your sister hero-worships me.”
I nudged him. “She does not.”
“She does. I’d never seen you outside of my element. It’s nice to see the Natalie Bishop who has no expectations on her shoulders. The one who can navigate this world as well as mine.”
“I do not navigate either very well,” I told him honestly.
He pulled my lips to his. “You’re very, very wrong. You move between worlds so seamlessly; sometimes, it scares me.”
“Bad scary?” I asked against his lips.
He shook his head. “Never with you.”
“That’s good. I like seeing you dressed down and just hanging out here. No stuffy suits or Upper East Side lifestyle. No Hamptons. None of your friends. Just us.”
He nodded and then leaned his forehead against mine. “Me too.”
“We should do this more often.” I closed my eyes with a sigh of relief.
“Natalie?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
My heart skipped a beat. Those words. The three tiny words that I’d died to hear him say. And been terrified to hear. That I’d rejected the last time we were in Charleston. Even though I’d ached to hear them.
My breath released, and I threaded our fingers together. “I love you, too.”
Then he kissed me, and I forgot the boat and the waves and the whole universe. Penn Kensington loved me. He was mine.
Chapter 24
Natalie
We said good-bye to Melanie and my parents the next morning. Amy promised to come visit us in the city, which I thought was secretly so that she could see Enzo, but I was okay with that, too. I wanted Amy to be happy.
Even though Penn and I had been together all weekend, I dropped my bag off at my place and then went back to Penn’s to stay the night. It was much easier to celebrate being in love when we had a huge king-size bed to enjoy.
And it was worse, seeing him get up, put on a suit, and head to work. This whole work thing was for the birds. I didn’t even want to think about my work. Caroline couldn’t believe I was turning down seven figures because of my ex-boyfriend, but considering the restraining order I had out, I didn’t think that I even could sign with Warren. Probably a conflict of interest. I’d promised her another manuscript to send out. Possibly another pen name. Though I was sick to my stomach, thinking about sending out my literary novels under any other name than my own. It made it more difficult to work on.
Still, I booted up my computer, which I’d neglected all weekend. And there was my research on the Anselin-Maguire case. I’d forgotten all about it in the bliss of the weekend. But here it was all over again.
I closed out of my manuscript and got to digging. There had to be something here. A reason that Lewis was meeting with people at random house parties and closing business deals after dinner. That wasn’t normal. No matter how I’d pushed it aside in the moment.
I read through the first three pages of information on Anselin, and nothing came up. I added Anselin and Warren and searched to see if there were any matches. Another couple of pages passed by. Apparently, they did a lot of business. Or at least, there was a lot of talk about it. It was the next page that I finally stopped to read through.
It was an article about the acquisition of a large tract of land in a minority neighborhood. The newspaper celebrated the purchase by Warren and highlighted the agreement not to displace the people within the area. Instead, Warren had plans to revitalize the area while keeping the old residents in it.
It was strange how much the newspaper kissed their ass. Purchasing land in a low-income area and revitalizing it was definitely a thing to celebrate. But it also sounded a bit too much like…propaganda to me. No one did anything just for the altruistic good feels. There was a reason that Lewis had purchased the neighborhood.
I had a bad feeling about this.
Lewis had bought my building when he wanted to get me a good deal for the apartment. But it wasn’t normal in New York to keep prices low just for the fun of it. Why would he have bought that land? What did it have that interested him? If he wasn’t going to do something to make more money, then I wagered he needed it for something else.
I searched out the low-income neighborhood that the article said Warren had purchased and found the apartments listed for rent were twice as much as I was paying currently. My eyes bulged. That wasn’t sustainable on the Upper West. How could people afford that outside of Manhattan?
The answer was, they couldn’t.
As I kept scrolling through the listings, I realized that there were hundreds of them. All from this area. All from the buildings Lewis had purchased. All of these people were
now displaced.
There was nothing to prevent him from doing this. I’d taken a class in college that discussed gentrification. It was a common thing in most cities. It was even hailed as a good thing by a lot of people. Gentrification was when efforts were made to revitalize a neighborhood that was predominantly low-income. It brought new tenants, new stores, and a new life to the area. But it hurt communities as much as it helped them. What happened to the people who had to leave the communities and apartments and houses they’d lived in their entire lives? How did they survive now that everything was triple what they’d paid in the past? It wasn’t fair. And it was becoming more and more common to try to force out people that others found “undesirable.”
Not illegal, but shady as fuck. Especially after claiming they had no intention of harming the community.
I frowned. This wasn’t concrete proof. I could get that. I could find out who had lived there, what they had been paid, how many people had left. I could look up city permits to see if new construction was planned or if new businesses were intending to move in. I was pretty sure that I could do enough work to show this. And I had to bet…if he’d done this once, then it wasn’t the first time. Especially considering that Anselin-Maguire hadn’t even wanted to work with Warren. Lewis’s dad had made that pretty clear. They had to know what they were signing away. And the type of business the Warrens ran. Just like Jane had said.
All the threads connected.
It was all there at a glance.
I could do this.
My fingers hesitated on the keys. To what end?
Ruin him to satisfy my own revenge?
It would make me feel better, but then would I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again? And if I went through with this, there was no coming back. It was one thing to try to take over Katherine’s socialite status, but was this worth it?
I closed my laptop.
I needed to think on it. Get my head on straight.
My phone buzzed on the counter. A text from Jane.