Stone Cold Fox - Softcover

Koller Croft, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593547519 ISBN 13: 9780593547519

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A perfectly wicked debut thriller about an ambitious woman who, after a lifetime of conning alongside her mother, wants to leave her dark past behind and marry the heir to one of the country's wealthiest families.

Like any enterprising woman, Bea knows what she’s worth and is determined to get all she deserves—it just so happens that what she deserves is to marry rich. Filthy rich. After years of forced instruction by her mother in the art of swindling men, a now-solo Bea wants nothing more than to close and lock the door on their sordid partnership so she can disappear safely into old-money domesticity, sealing the final phase of her escape.

When Bea chooses her ultimate target in the fully loaded, thoroughly dull, and blue-blooded Collin Case, she’s ready to deploy all of her tricks one last time. The challenge isn’t getting the ring, but rather the approval of Collin’s family and everyone else in their 1 percent tax bracket, particularly his childhood best friend, Gale Wallace-Leicester.

Going toe-to-toe with Gale isn’t a threat to an expert like Bea, but what begins as an amusing cat-and-mouse game quickly develops into a dangerous pursuit of the grisly truth. Finding herself at a literal life-and-death crossroads with everything on the line, Bea must finally decide who she really wants to be.

Like mother, like daughter?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rachel Koller Croft is an author and screenwriter in Los Angeles, where she has scripted projects for Blumhouse, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Comedy Central, among others. She lives by the beach with her husband, Charles, and their rescue pitbull, Juniper. Stone Cold Fox is her first novel.

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1

I decided that I would marry Collin Case after the fifth time we fucked. His performance had been consistently adequate, both in the bedroom and while we were out socially. We had been on seven dates, each more lavish than the one before it, raising the stakes suitably during our early courtship. Collin always selected an upscale bar or restaurant in a desirable neighborhood where people made no mistake about who he was, and therefore we were treated appropriately. He didn't tip like a Rockefeller, but I'd wager Rockefeller didn't even tip like a Rockefeller. Old money is old money for a reason and it's not to brighten some downtrodden server's day. So I didn't really care about Collin's standard 20 percent, since it was neither overtly cheap nor blatantly embarrassing. There was nothing blatantly embarrassing about Collin. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing terribly exciting about him either, but I knew that taking up with a man like Collin Case wouldn't exactly lead me down a path of intrigue and excitement and hot sex, which was precisely the point.

I didn't come this far only to get swept away by some narcissistic playboy in a McLaren who made his fortune via white-collar crime, an indictment forever looming, assets ultimately seized in the night, leaving me with nothing. Absolutely not. There would be room for only one criminal in my partnerships, ahem, and I was sincerely looking for the right man so I could finally leave that life behind for good.

That was probably not the intended takeaway from her lesson plan, but a good teacher inspires the student to discover their own meaning from any given lecture or text. And she was admittedly one of my best teachers, especially at her worst.

Despite the low to medium levels of charisma he exuded, Collin Case obviously had plenty going for him or I wouldn't have even considered our first date. He was attractive in a standard sort of way, admittedly more so when his mouth was closed due to his aggressively white and enormous teeth that would probably look wonderful if his head were slightly larger to accommodate their immense size. Alas, his head was on the narrow side and his short, albeit very expensive, haircuts didn't help matters. I wasn't worried about it in the long term, as he did nearly everything I asked him to do, so surely he would agree to grow out those chestnut locks at my behest, particularly since it would be to his physical benefit. As for the unfortunate dental situation, I always suspected veneers, since they were a luxury item, but my goodness, the dentist very much overshot it. Perhaps we could get those amended as well in due time.

Collin performed well enough in his career and had quickly risen through the ranks to Chief Marketing Officer at a huge consumer packaged goods company. Sure, it was the Case Company and his family had owned it for a hundred years or so, but I found it moderately impressive, since he was only in his early thirties and didn't really have to work. He was a homeowner. Bequeathed, but still. His town house in Chelsea was clean and upmarket. Real estate's always a turn-on. Neutral tones with tasteful splashes of color, modern lines, plush pillows and inoffensive yet thought-provoking art on the walls. The designer he hired possessed forward-thinking taste and made him look cooler than he actually was. A testament to Collin's talent at outsourcing whatever he happened to lack, which wasn't much, at least materially. Collin Case came from supreme wealth, which was the initial attraction for me. Priority number one. Sorry not sorry.

Truthfully, I thought I would ultimately snag myself a divorced and upwardly mobile hedge fund manager with a well-done hair transplant, about ten to fifteen years my senior, in want of a younger trophy wife who could actually hold a conversation and acquiesce to anal on anniversaries, but that whole plan turned out to be much more of a slog for me than I imagined.

By the time I happened upon Collin Case, I had already dated more than my fair share of New York "somebodies" with middling personalities and big-enough bank accounts. They were relatively easy to find when you looked like me. I spent hundreds of my hard-earned dollars on fresh highlights every four to six weeks. I mastered an authentic feminine titter for jokes that weren't remotely amusing as I grazed nearly nonexistent biceps with my perfectly manicured hands, an almond shape on each nail. And I choked down liquid meals with organic ingredients on the regular to stave off a bloated belly and thighs that touch. I did everything I had observed as a child because ultimately it works. I watched her do it for years. But what I learned rather quickly is that dating men in that particular orbit is no picnic at all.

They truly believe the entire universe revolves around them and their underwhelming penises and that everything they do all the time is just so fucking great. It's exhausting having to exalt those types of men, day in and day out, just to secure a Harry Winston diamond; a generous allowance for fillers, Botox and other miscellaneous body maintenance; and most importantly, a life of true leisure without a care in the world. The ultimate safety net. Impenetrable. Though many of my attempts were ill-fated, I stayed the course because I believed wholeheartedly that it would be well worth it, due to a past I never wanted to relive, and I had to make my future different from hers. But none of those relationships with the so-called alphas of New York City panned out in the way I had hoped.

Philip Hartley, an Ed Harris dupe with a Cialis prescription, dumped me after I deigned to ask his sister-in-law about the family trust when we were blitzed on rosŽ at their vacation home in Palm Beach. Like we were competitors on The Bachelor, that "recovering" bulimic with a benzo problem told him I was there for "the wrong reasons." Busted.

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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593547519
• ISBN 13: 9780593547519
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland