Cím: The Heiress
Műfaj: new adult
Megjelenés: 2017.09.26.
Fülszöveg:
Mennyit ér a szerelem?
A huszonkét éves Kristin és egyedülálló anyja mindig küzdott céljainak elérésével. Amikor az anyja állapota romlani kezd, a sok éves házvezetőnői munka miatt, Kristin búcsút mondhat főiskolai álmainak és belekezdhet teljes állásu pincér munkájába. Igazán nem is bánja. Végül is, álmainak feladása lesz a bosszú egy szörnyű éjszakára.
A szerencséje kezd visszatérni, amikor találkozik Daniel Meyers-szel a munkában. Daniel szexi és vicces, de ami ennél is fontosabb, meg akarja ismerni az igazi Kristin-t. Az se gond, hogy rendkívül gazdag és fel tett szándéka, hogy megóvja őt. Kristin biztonságban érzi magát melette. Nyitni akar felé, meg akarja osztani vele, annak a szörnyű éjszakának a részleteit. De nem tud szabadulni az érzéstől, hogy Daniel-nek is sötét titka van…
A huszonkét éves Kristin és egyedülálló anyja mindig küzdott céljainak elérésével. Amikor az anyja állapota romlani kezd, a sok éves házvezetőnői munka miatt, Kristin búcsút mondhat főiskolai álmainak és belekezdhet teljes állásu pincér munkájába. Igazán nem is bánja. Végül is, álmainak feladása lesz a bosszú egy szörnyű éjszakára.
A szerencséje kezd visszatérni, amikor találkozik Daniel Meyers-szel a munkában. Daniel szexi és vicces, de ami ennél is fontosabb, meg akarja ismerni az igazi Kristin-t. Az se gond, hogy rendkívül gazdag és fel tett szándéka, hogy megóvja őt. Kristin biztonságban érzi magát melette. Nyitni akar felé, meg akarja osztani vele, annak a szörnyű éjszakának a részleteit. De nem tud szabadulni az érzéstől, hogy Daniel-nek is sötét titka van…
Csak egy regénye jelent meg hazánkban Cassia Leo Írónőnek, de érdekesnek ígérkező könyvei szoktak megjelenni, nem bánnám, ha még kapnánk belőle itthon. Ma a Hieress kötete jelent meg, ehhez hoztam egy rövid beleolvasót. :)
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1. fejezet Taken Care Of
The dimly lit stairwells in our five-floor
walk-up in the Bronx smelled even more like cat piss than usual.
The August humidity had a lovely way of
extracting the aromas that were usually trapped inside the dingy walls of our building.
I tried to breathe through my mouth as I climbed the final steps to the fifth
floor. But when I stepped into the corridor, a bright yellow notice taped to
the front door of apartment 502 made me gasp, and the sharp smell got sucked
into my nose again.
I gagged, then marched toward my apartment.
“What the actual fuck?”
My curse came out much louder than I’d
anticipated.
Dropping my canvas bag of groceries on the
floor, I quickly snatched the paper off the door, but not quickly enough. Mr.
Williams walked out of his apartment as I bent over to stuff the notice into my
grocery bag.
“Good morning, Mr. Williams,” I said,
breathing far too heavily for a casual walk to the bodega. “How’s your day so
far?”
He tilted his head a bit as his dark eyes
remained focused on my bag. “Is that an eviction notice?”
I unzipped my purse and dug frantically
through the receipts and half-used drugstore makeup, which had probably been
there since I dropped out of college two years ago. “It’s just a mix-up,” I
replied with a chuckle when I found my house key. “Same thing happened a couple
weeks ago. At least this time it happened on a Monday morning instead of a
Friday night. I’m heading straight to the property manager’s office as soon as
I get these groceries in the fridge.”
“Is everything okay with you and your ma?”
he asked through narrowed eyes.
“We’re fine,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Thank you so much for asking, but we’re just fine. This is just a huge
mix-up.”
Mr. Williams scratched his scraggly white
beard, which sparsely covered his chestnut-brown skin. “Okay,” he said, slowly
nodding. “Well, if you need anything, don’t you hesitate to holler at this old
fool.”
My smile widened, and this time it was
genuine. “Thank you, Mr. Williams. I promise I’ll do that.”
He stuck his chin out and beamed with
pride. “That’s a good girl. You take care now,” he said, then ambled back into
the apartment across the hall.
When I was five, I often wondered if I was
invisible—not metaphorically speaking, but actually invisible. I would watch in
complete silence as my mom came home from a fourteen-hour shift, cleaning up
other people’s messes. She’d collapse onto the sofa, turn on the evening news,
and eat her dinner with a tired smile. Then I’d retreat to my bedroom and dream
of a world where I existed.
It wasn’t until a fateful evening in
September two years ago, my fingernails peeling off as I
desperately clawed my
way up a highway embankment, that I finally realized how tangible I was, how
heavily I was anchored to this merciless world.
Now, as I rushed inside the humid apartment
I shared with my mother in the South Bronx, I wished I could be invisible
again.
Closing the door softly behind me—so as not
to attract the attention of any more neighbors—I power-walked into the kitchen
and tossed my canvas grocery bag onto the counter. Yanking out the bright
yellow eviction notice, I contemplated the ten-digit phone number scrawled on
it in black marker.
No. I wasn’t going to give those
incompetent pricks at the property management office the courtesy of calling
before I showed up. No way would I give them time to come up with some
trumped-up violation that my mother or I had supposedly committed.
Despite the fact that our building was more
than a hundred years old and in serious disrepair, the bylaws consisted of a
list of rules—I kid you not—at least sixty pages long. The list was mailed to
us every year with an offer to renew the lease—with another rent increase, of
course. And every year, the list got longer.
One rule actually stipulated we were not
allowed to walk around in high heels after ten p.m. I supposed it was a good
thing I had no social life. I was in no danger of violating that rule.
Of course, whatever bone the management was
picking with us now was probably not due to anything I did or didn’t do. The
eviction notice was almost certainly a response to what I had threatened to do.
Three weeks ago, I threatened to file an ADA—Americans with Disabilities
Act—complaint if they didn’t fix the loose handrails in the stairwells.
When my mom and I moved into this apartment
more than ten years ago, my mom was in excellent physical shape. Despite the
fact that she had spent most of her life working as a housekeeper, she had
managed to take good care of her body. Until she fell off a ladder at home and
shattered her kneecap. Three surgeries later, she was desperate to return to
work so I could return to NYU, but no one would hire her back.
If the eviction notice was left on our
door, that meant my mom wasn’t home when the notice was served, which meant our
neighbor Leslie had come by to take her shopping.
I put the groceries away and stuffed the
eviction notice into my purse before I left the apartment. I thought of leaving
a message with Leslie’s family, but decided against it. I didn’t want to worry
her or my mom.
Leslie was a stay-at-home mother with two
kids in high school and a husband who drove a bus for MTA. She helped my mom up
and down the stairs once a week to go shopping. Having amazing neighbors like
Leslie and Mr. Williams was one of the many reasons I was hesitant to move to
another apartment building with an elevator.
One subway ride and nine blocks of walking
in the glaring summer sun later, I arrived, sweaty and determined, at the front
doors of Golde Property Management. I entered through the glass double doors,
which squeaked on their hinges as I pushed my way inside. The black and gold
confetti design on the linoleum looked like something straight out of a ’70s
discotheque. The faux oak furniture in the waiting room, with the wood-grain
laminate peeling off the corners, confirmed that I had stepped into an office
stuck in another century.
In the decade since we moved into our
apartment, and ever since I began paying the rent a couple of years ago, I’d
never had to visit Golde Property Management. I always paid the rent on time,
and I always agreed to the new lease terms. If I had known that they were
living in the ’70s, I wouldn’t have bothered asking them to bring our apartment
up to modern building standards.
Nonetheless, I needed to clear up this
eviction nonsense. The last thing I needed was for my mother and me to be
thrown out on our asses over a clerical error.
The receptionist sat at a desk behind a
sliding-glass window at the back of the waiting room. She watched me approach
without even attempting to smile.
I slid the yellow eviction notice across
the counter onto her side of the glass. “I want to know what this is about.”
She spun in her chair to face the computer
on her left, positioning her fingers over the keyboard. “What’s the property
address?”
“Twenty-four eighty-three Hughes,” I
replied sharply.
She typed in the address, then her eyes
scanned down to the lower-right part of the computer screen and stopped. “It
says here that the eviction notice was posted today at 10:02 a.m. by the Bronx
County Sheriff’s Department due to violation of the rental agreement. The
violation listed here is nonpayment of rental dues in the amount of $7,050.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you kidding
me? Our monthly rent is $1,175. That means $7,050 is what, like, six months’
rent? We’re not even late one month, let alone six. I want to speak to a
manager.”
She rolled her eyes as she picked up the
beige phone handset and dialed an extension. “Is Jerry in his office?” she
asked the person on the other end. “I’ve got a tenant here who says she’s paid
up, but she just got served.” She sighed as she balanced the handset between
her ear and shoulder. “Well, tell him when he’s done with his meeting that I
got someone waiting for him up here. Okay? Okay.” She hung up the phone and
looked up at me with a bored expression. “He’s in a meeting with an investor.
You’ll have to wait a few minutes.”
I wanted to protest for the simple fact
that if I caused a scene it might ruin their chances with this investor, but I
decided not to press my luck. “I’ll be waiting right over there,” I said,
nodding toward the tweed sofa in the waiting area.
Taking a seat on the sofa that smelled like
desperation, I picked up a copy of the NY Post from the coffee table. The paper
was dated thirteen months ago. This place needed an investor more than my mom
needed a disability-accessible apartment building with an elevator.
Of course, my mom would never admit that
she needed anything.
The eldest of four sisters, my mom left her
small hometown in South Dakota to make her way in New York City when she was
just nineteen. After a brief brush with homelessness, she started cleaning
houses and saving up money to start her own cleaning business. Not long after
that, I was born, and her dreams of being her own boss were tossed out the
window.
I had just finished reading a story about a
feud between the hosts of two popular YouTube channels when a door leading into
the back office opened. The first man who stepped into the waiting area—whom I
assumed was Jerry—looked to be about sixty years old, and wore brown slacks and
a short-sleeved blue button-up shirt, the fabric thin enough to show the
dinginess of the tank top he wore underneath.
The second man who walked through the door
looked more like a mirage than a man.
He was no more than twenty-eight years old,
wearing a sharp navy-blue suit and a swagger in his step that said he didn’t
just own the place, he owned the world. His dark hair was short, but not so
short you couldn’t help but notice it held the perfect amount of wave. Every
inch of him, from his prominent brow to his broad shoulders and beyond looked
sturdy. This man was built to last a thousand lifetimes.
But it was his face that made me wonder if
I was actually staring at a desert mirage.
His strong jaw and brilliant green eyes
looked as if they’d been chiseled by Michelangelo. As a former student of
sculpture at NYU, I could make that type of comparison in the more literal
sense.
If this investor bought out Golde Property
Management, I’d probably sign a hundred-year lease.
I shrugged off this ridiculous thought. It
wasn’t as if this wealthy godlike man was going to send my next lease renewal
along with a handwritten marriage proposal.
Will you be my wife? Check yes or no.
Please send reply in the enclosed envelope with full rent payment by the first
of the month.
“Are you Kristin?”
I snapped out of my absurd fantasy to find
the man I suspected to be Jerry staring at me as he held the door to the back
office open. “Excuse me?”
“Are you Kristin Owens?” he replied. “Here
about the eviction notice?”
His question set my blood on fire with
anger. “Yes. I want to know what this is all about,” I said, getting to my feet
as I held the yellow paper in front of me. “We’ve paid our rent on time every
single month for the past ten years. If this is about me threatening to—”
Jerry held up his hand to interrupt me.
“Okay, okay. Let’s go into my office,” he said, his expression a mixture of
shame and anger, probably because I just made a scene in front of his potential
investor. He looked up at the man. “I look forward to hearing from you again, Mr.
Meyers. Jennie over there can validate your parking.”
Mr. Meyers cocked an eyebrow as he looked
me over. “Maybe I should sit in on this.”
Jerry waved off the suggestion. “Oh, no,
this is just routine admin stuff. It will be over in two minutes. Don’t want to
waste your time.”
I stared at Jerry, making no attempt to
avoid looking directly at the huge hairy mole protruding from his temple. “So
now I’m a waste of time?” I asked. “If you think you can get away with—”
“Excuse me,” Meyers interrupted, taking a step
forward. “Earlier, you said you’ve paid your rent on time every single month
for the past ten years. So, forgive me if I’m wrong, but that allows you to
continue living in the unit until any further disputes are settled in court. Am
I right?”
Jerry shook his head. “But she hasn’t paid
her rent,” he insisted. “I thought it was strange when the computer spat out
the notice, but they only come up when a tenant is coming up on six months past
due. Computers don’t lie. People lie.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted.
“Are you calling me a liar? You piece of trash. I swear to God, I will bury you
in so many legal—”
“Whoa-whoa-whoa…” Meyers interrupted again.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said, casting a calm, confident look in
my direction, holding my gaze for a moment before he turned back to Jerry. “You
said computers don’t lie, but they do sometimes glitch. You even said you
thought it was strange the computer spat out her name.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t randomly spit out
names all day long,” Jerry objected.
Meyers nodded and pressed his lips together
in an expression that said he understood where Jerry was coming from. This guy
was good. He was refereeing this dispute like a seasoned mediator.
“But it’s possible the computer got it
wrong,” Meyers continued as he looked back and forth between Jerry and me,
smiling when I crossed my arms over my chest. “How about this? I’ll pay the
past-due amount until you can figure out the glitch in the system. Does that
sound fair?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Who the hell
are you?”
His veneer of confidence cracked for just a
fraction of a second before he regained his composure. “I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to offend you,” he replied. “You’re right. It’s very presumptuous of me to
think I could settle this with the swipe of a pen. Forgive me.” He turned to
Jerry and gave him a curt nod. “I have some…thinking to do. I’m not sure your
organization is a good fit for us. We’ll be in touch.”
“Wait!” Jerry shrieked. “I think she was
just taken by surprise with your offer. Right, Christina?”
“Kristin,” I corrected him. “And I don’t
need him to pay my rent. I already paid it. I need you to fix this!” I crumpled
the yellow eviction notice and dropped it at his feet.
“I can’t,” Jerry replied as Meyers quietly
made his way to the receptionist’s desk. “My lawyer handles the evictions. He
won’t close the file until the rent’s paid in full. I can’t pay him if I don’t
have your money.”
“You have my money!” I yelled so loudly I
could almost hear my vocal cords snap.
I cursed myself as tears stung the corners
of my eyes. Blinking them away, I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find
Meyers staring aghast at my lack of control. He probably wasn’t accustomed to
that sort of thing in his perfect world of privilege. But he wasn’t there. He
was gone. I didn’t know if I felt more relieved that he hadn’t witnessed my
outburst, or disappointed that the only sure way out of this eviction mess—at
least, temporarily—had just walked out of my life.
God, why didn’t I just let him help me? It
wasn’t as if I knew the guy. I didn’t need to maintain some foolish sense of
pride in front of him.
I was becoming more and more like my mother
every day.
“It’s taken care of.”
I looked up at the sound of the
receptionist’s bored voice.
She waved a piece of paper in the air,
which looked suspiciously like a check. “He took care of your rent,” she said,
looking annoyed.
I turned to Jerry, but all he did was
shrug.
What the fuck just happened?
Az Írónóről
A New York Times bestseller író Cassia Leo imádja a kávét, a csokit és a margaritát sóval. Amikor nem ír, sok időt tölt a Trónok Harca és a Szex és New York sorozatot újranézésével. Ezen kívül szeret Oregon-ban sétálni esős időben, egy forró csésze kávéval és könyvvel.
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