Courting Trouble. Kimberly Dean
lacrosse team and drink beer with the right alumni.
It had all been so easy for him, the lowlife slacker.
Sienna tore the headphones out of her ears and lurched off the bed. He’d called her stuck-up and prissy when he’d broken up with her.
The dress caught her eye.
A cold fish.
Excited cries reached a crescendo next door, and her head dropped back. It wasn’t fair. She’d followed all the rules. She’d got excellent grades, she’d volunteered and she’d interned at two prestigious marketing firms.
Where was her job offer?
Where was her significant other?
Shouts of completion next door finally hit their peak. The cries drifted down from their highs to lower murmurs of satisfaction.
The heat Sienna was feeling was quickly followed by a cool chill.
Why was she having to fight for everything while others had things handed to them on a silver platter? It just wasn’t fair.
She began to pace back and forth in the small space between the bed and the dresser. It just … wasn’t … fair.
The headache settled again at the base of her skull. She raised her hand and rubbed at the tension. The Aquamarine fundraiser had turned out to be stressful on more than one level. Seeing all those successful people … Knowing that a hundred-dollar tip to them was pocket change, while for her it meant groceries for a month …
Her bank account was running frighteningly low, and rent was almost due. Something had to pop up soon. Otherwise, she didn’t know what she was going to do. She supposed she could ask Erin for a loan, although with a wedding coming up –
Oh, who was she kidding? The Fosters would be paying for that. Erin’s parents had bought her everything she’d ever wanted.
Sienna clicked her nails as she stared out the window of her apartment at the street. She dreaded the thought of going to her parents for help. Her family was well-off. They travelled in all the right circles, but they wanted her to make her own way. They’d been so insistent on her finding a job and supporting herself.
They’d wanted her to work her way up, but they seemed embarrassed by her job at the Apple Tree. Was it too ground-level? They hadn’t invited her along on their trip to the summer house. Had they not come to the event tonight because they’d known she’d be waitressing?
She ran her finger along the edge of the curtain. She had to admit, she was glad they hadn’t attended. It had been awkward enough with Mr Stahl, although that woman he’d been talking to had tried to smooth things over.
‘Oh!’ Sienna gasped. She touched her forehead in self-rebuke. The business card.
She opened her purse on the dresser and began to search. She found the card she’d tucked away in a pocket. The name Nina Lockwood was spelled in crisp gold gilt. The stiff, heavyweight card was jet black with matching gold edging. There was a number, but no address.
She turned the card over. Luxxor Limited.
Sienna shook her head. She’d never heard of it, and she’d been scouring the DC business scene for months. She ran her thumb over the raised lettering. It was a classy calling card, but it gave little information. There wasn’t a website or even a QR code she could scan.
Frowning, she slid one leg beneath her and sat down on the bed again. She pulled the laptop closer and did a quick search for the company.
Nothing.
She hooked her hair behind her ear. That was strange. She scrolled down and even went through three pages of results. There were no links to a company with the name Luxxor, at least not in the DC area.
She leaned back against the pillows. Were they a defence contractor? It was DC, after all. Many of those companies liked to keep a low profile.
She tried variations on the spelling and even did a search under Nina Lockwood’s name.
She became even more puzzled when that came up null.
Sienna picked up the card from the nightstand. Ms Lockwood had been a very impressive woman. There was something about the way she carried herself. She demanded respect, and everyone at the Smithsonian party had nearly fallen over themselves to give it to her. The woman was beautiful, classy and obviously powerful.
Who was she?
Sienna brushed her thumb over the phone number and an idea occurred to her. She did a reverse-number look-up on the Internet. Her nose scrunched when site after site wanted payment. Finally, she found one that simply said it was an unlisted number.
Did people still do that?
‘Call this number in the morning,’ the woman had instructed. She’d offered an interview, but for what?
I’m impressed by what I’ve seen here tonight.
Sienna blinked, and her throat tightened when she remembered that statement. She’d been told that by teachers and professors her whole life. Friends’ parents had always approved of her. Yet now that she was out in the real world, all it seemed to want to do was slap her in the face.
She let out a ragged breath and toyed with the ends of her hair.
It wasn’t in her to complain outside the privacy of her bedroom, but she’d worked so hard for so long. She’d done everything her mentors had asked of her. To fail so miserably just out of the starting gate had wrecked her confidence. Hearing those kind words meant more to her than the woman could know.
‘Ready for another go around, baby?’
Sienna groaned and threw a glare at the wall when the sexy words seeped through. No, please. Enough, already. She couldn’t take much more of the stereo hijinks.
‘Always, you sexy beast.’
There were giggles, and then the discussion dropped mercifully to the point where Sienna couldn’t hear. She was just relaxing into her pillow again when a thud against the wall nearly sent her off the bed.
‘Want to join us, Si?’ Margo called.
Sienna’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She recoiled inside and out. She was trying frantically to come up with a polite excuse when she heard giggles again.
Giggles directed at her.
It was impulsive and totally out of character, but she swept one of her running shoes off the floor and flung it at the wall.
The splat turned the giggles next door into flat-out laughter.
Margo thought Sienna was frigid, a true ice queen, simply because, in the time they’d lived together, she’d never had a guy spend the night.
Sienna flounced on the mattress and jabbed her ear plugs back into her ears. It had only been five months since she and Kyle had broken up.
Five months. It didn’t seem that long, but that was nearly half a year of celibacy. With no intimacy, no connection, no climaxes …
She wiped a hand over her brow. The heat and discomfort were back.
She yanked the headphones off and tossed them onto the bedside table. They weren’t working any more, at least not for her needs.
Margo and Drummer Boy had caught their second wind and were going at it full-tilt. The soft pop music coming through the earphones couldn’t cover up the noise. Neither could the classical music she liked so much. The only thing that might work was hard, driving rock ’n’ roll, but wouldn’t that be defeating the purpose?
Giving up, Sienna shut down her laptop and put it back on the nightstand shelf.
She let out a long gust of air as the situation became impossible to ignore. Would it be better in the kitchen? Because that was about as far away as she could get and still be in the apartment. The only other