There were four- and five-letter words for women like Cat Winthorpe. I stood in our bathroom and stared into the mirror as I plucked a bottle of moisturizer out of the cardboard box beside our sink. My crow’s-feet were deepening, despite the reassurances of my surgeon. I turned my head to one side and examined the lines in my neck, grateful when the skin rolled smoothly and naturally against my throat. No paunching. No pulling. I thought of Cat Winthorpe’s throat, the delicate bob of her chin, the perfect complexion. She had to be thirty-five, tops. Thirty-five and probably still got carded at the grocery store. Not that Cat Winthorpe went to the grocery store.
“What a night.” Matt stood behind me and fumbled with the bow on his tuxedo. His jacket and vest had been abandoned at the door, the items already hung back in their rental bags. “Some place, right?” He wheezed out a breath that smelled of alcohol, and I flinched at the visceral reminder it brought of my father. Matt’s clammy hands pawed at my waist, and I stepped aside.
“Careful with that bow tie,” I said sharply. “You already spilled something on the shirt.” They’d fine us for that stain, probably keep the rental deposit. Unlike him, I’d been careful. My designer dress still had its tags on. I’d be able to return it tomorrow morning for a full refund. I had seen the way Cat Winthorpe’s eyes had swept over the dress, critiquing and comparing it to the others. I had planned ahead to ensure that the brand was appropriate, the price range exorbitant enough. This evening had needed to go smoothly, and it had.
“I can’t get this damn ...” He tried to look down at the knot, then swayed a little from the effort.
“Here,” I said, softening. “I’ll get it.” I turned to him, not missing the pull of his eyes to my cleavage, the push-up bra offering up my perky and perfect breasts, a recent enhancement courtesy of my last boss. I had been surprised by Cat’s small breasts—a lazy oversight in the maintenance category. In a few years, she’d probably ignore the slight bags that would appear under her eyes. The deepened wrinkles along her forehead. The sag of her skin beneath those underworked arms.
Her husband had certainly noticed my breasts. His gaze had lingered, even as his hand had curled around her waist.
Matt’s eyes glazed over, and he fumbled a limp hand across the top of my cleavage, his thick sausage finger dipping between my breasts as if he were checking the oil on a car. I quickly unknotted his tie and pulled the material apart, working open his shirt buttons with quick efficiency.
I reached back and undid the strap of my bra, letting my new breasts tumble free before him. Turning my head away from his bourbon-heavy scent, I twisted his cummerbund around and undid the cheap buckle. His breath grew shorter as he cupped and massaged the generous D cups, his touch rudimentary but acceptable.
“Tonight?” he gasped hopefully.
I considered the request. It had been weeks since we’d last had sex, the quick event occurring after Matt had, from out of nowhere, put an offer on the Atherton house. Granted, it was a horrible home. Ugly and with a choppy floor plan that was badly out of style, butstill. For my cheap husband, it was a huge and unexpected step in the right direction for our social standing and my happiness.
“Yes.” I moved closer, as if in enjoyment of his touch. Matt had been a sexual disappointment early on, one that required me to take care of my own needs. Most recently, I had done so with the explosive but short-lived Ned Plymouth dalliance. I’d had high hopes for that pairing, and I frowned as I placed the cummerbund on the counter, thinking of the lost potential with my former boss.
Matt grunted, his mouth now sucking at my nipples with loud and frantic wet smacks of his lips. I undid his pants and pulled down on the zipper. “Let’s go to the bed.” I injected some husk into my voice, as if I were eager, and not just to get it over with.
On my back, with him above me, I thought of William Winthorpe. There was something dark and delicious about him, a temptation that had existed as soon as he’d introduced himself at my interview.William.There had been a tug in his tone, a tightening of the cord between us.It’s a pleasure to meet you.Gruff and sexual. He was a walking chunk of masculinity and instantly more alluring than any of my prior affairs.
William was, among the rich and successful men of Silicon Valley, the best. Top tier. The sort of man I should have gone after, had I not tied myself down to Matt right out of high school. Back then I had been so desperate to escape my father that I hadn’t understood my true potential. I’d thought I was winning the jackpot. A life with Matt had seemed so decadent at first. A new Mustang convertible. Our own home, gifted by his parents as our wedding present. A credit card with my name on the front and a three-thousand-dollar limit, the balance paid off each month, no questions asked.
I had needed security and attention, and he had given both to me. But as we’d moved up in the world, I’d slowly realized everything I didn’t have. Frankly put, the dream my husband had delivered wasn’t good enough. My needs had increased, and I was starting to become desperate for the life I didn’t have.
“Right there?” Matt panted, and I moaned appropriately, wrapping my legs around his waist and thinking of the heat of William Winthorpe’s stare.
CHAPTER 3
CAT
Eight days after the party, our new neighbors closed on the Baker house. I stood on our front balcony with a glass of chardonnay and watched as a single cleaning van traveled down their long drive, bumping over the cracks. In any other neighborhood, there would be knee-high grass covering the large yard, weeds clawing over the abandoned flower beds, vines inching up the brick. But we hadn’t paid fourteen million dollars to live next to an eyesore. I’d spent the last six years paying for weekly lawn maintenance on the abandoned home. I’d had Ted replace the front gate lamps when they had burned out. I’d wandered the property at the end of my morning walks and kept an eye out for rodent holes and standing water where mosquitoes would breed.
I’d also, unbeknownst to my husband, spent a great deal of time inside the home. It used to be interesting. Four years ago, before the IRS’s liquidation team swooped in and took everything, it had been a house full of memories and secrets. A life suddenly abandoned. Dresser drawers still open, a negligee set hanging half-out. The safe door open, the combination stuck to a Post-it on the inside wall, its shelves almost empty, a photo album cockeyed in the back corner. The Bakers had fled in the middle of the night, their Mercedes still sitting in the garage, their cell phones left on the kitchen counter. Tax evasion was the rumor in the neighborhood, though I found the more likely culprit behind neatly folded pillowcases in Claudia Baker’s linen closet.
Cocaine.Five wrapped bundles that weighed in at two pounds each, according to their bathroom scale. I found another ten in an upper cabinet in their kitchen, behind boxes of Frosted Flakes and Honey Nut Cheerios. I found another bundle ripped open in their office, two lines tapped out on the cover of aRolling Stonemagazine.
For months after the Bakers disappeared, I would duck between the line of bushes that separated our lots and roam their house. I pocketed a ring of keys that I found in their junk drawer and skipped over the window I had initially used, coming and going as I wished. I spent afternoons in the big leather chair behind John Baker’s desk, flipping through their files. I combed bank and credit card statements, fascinated by the personal glimpse into their life. I stood in Claudia’s bathroom, before her big, wide mirror, and carefully applied her lipstick and shadows.
She’d been an interesting housewife. In the drawers of their master closet, I’d found ball gags and blindfolds, furry handcuffs and phallic-shaped toys. I spent an afternoon sifting through her lingerie and naughty costumes. I claimed a mink stole and Vuitton clutch, along with several pieces of abandoned jewelry. I spent one morning stretched out on their bed, dressed in her clothes, listening to their playlist crackling through the overhead speakers. And one day, just a few weeks before the IRS came and took everything—I found the second safe.
This one didn’t have a lock. It was a fireproof box in a hidden floor compartment, underneath the faux Persian rug in their master bedroom. I’d been on my stomach, reaching underneath their bed, when my knee dug against a bump in the rug. I’d shimmied back from the bed and peeled back the rug, thrilled to discover the trapdoor. Excitement had hummed through me, my fingers slipping on the inset pull, and it had taken three tugs to get the door open. Inside, the iron cavity held a variety of empty money wrappers and a collection of crude porn. I had examined the construction of the secret compartment and considered installing a similar feature in our house. It might be a good place to put the thirty pounds of cocaine that I now had tucked in our attic, the parcels high and dry behind three rows of Christmas decorations, in a box labeledDollhouse. There were, after all, things you never knew you might need. My mother had taught me that. Granted, she’d been referring to a heating pad that had been marked down at a yard sale two blocks from our home, but I had taken the advice to heart in more ways than one, and it had come in handy in a number of moments.
Now, I sipped a chilled glass of juice and wondered how one cleaning van could possibly tackle the layers of dust and grime inside that house. It would take them weeks. Not that I minded a delay before Matt and Neena Ryder moved in. I hadn’t quite warmed to the idea of a new woman moving into both Winthorpe Tech and our street. Especiallythiswoman.
I settled into one of the balcony’s chaise lounges, trying to pinpoint the cause of my trepidation. She wouldn’t be the first attractive woman inside WT’s sleek corridors. William had hired more than a dozen female doctors and engineers, seeking the best of the best, regardless of their gender or appearance. Typically, the brighter the mind, the more unattractive the appearance, but every once in a while, there was a unicorn like Allyson Cho, our stunningly beautiful lead researcher. Or Nicole Finnegan, our public relations powerhouse. Both Nicole and Allyson were arguably more attractive than this blonde director of motivation—and what a stupid title that was. So, why were my hackles raised?
There was more movement at the front gate, and I sat up, surprised to see a moving semi attempt the tight turn through the Bakers’ front gate. Unless the moving truck contained a pile of cleaners, it was wasting its time. The truck stopped and reversed, and a beep echoed over the barren lawn. From the pocket of my cardigan sweater, my phone rang.
“Are you watching this?” Kelly’s voice hissed through the receiver, and I smiled, certain she was up on her widow’s walk, in earshot of the Bakers’ gate.
“I don’t think it’s going to make the turn,” I remarked.
“I thought you said the place was in ruins. How could they be bringing in furniture already?” There was a crackle of wind against her mouthpiece. “Oh my God, Cat. There’s a U-Haul coming down Greenoaks. We should call security. Tell them not to let any more in. They’re going to clog up the entire street.”