Curves & Alphas: A Paranormal Box Set: (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (29 page)

Chapter Two

My mind clicked into not distant memories, finally showing me how I’d gotten to that cliff with the beast. In the beginning, say a little over a week ago, I had heard my friends’ voices…

“Let’s go. Stop staling, Ashlyn,” Ava said, her friendly tone holding a hint of impatience, a selfish need to get where she wanted me to go.

A big-boned, as she jokingly called herself, blonde that I had met in college, her voice had sounded demanding as an excited grin had pulled up the edges of her mouth and sparkled in her eyes. She looked beautiful with her pale skin accented by a basic black dress that hugged each of her curves in just the right places, as if it been cut just for her. Though I knew the silky fashion had come from a rack in a store she couldn’t really afford to shop at but did anyway as an investment in finding the rich husband she desired, the one that would save her from the life she knew of struggling from paycheck to paycheck.

She leaned back against the wall in my tiny bedroom with one pointy heel popped out in front of her. Her foot shook back and forth, a telling sign of her desperation to escape my apartment. Beside her, standing upright, arms tensed straight down to her side, my other former college roommate, Brittany, a slim brunette bombshell, waited just as impatiently on basically the same mission, though she hadn’t come from quite as desperate circumstances as Ava and I had grown up in. She’d had the fortune of being lower middle class rather than just outright poor. Still, she had the same dream of marrying rich as Ava, unlike me who was determined to make it on my own. I’d not the time for the complications of a man. I could make the money myself.

“Both of us know you only have two dresses to pick from, though only one really works, so stop staring into your closet and throw the deep green dress on so we can get out of here,” Brittany added, her voice more teasing, not sounding as anxious as her body looked to get on with the evening. “It’s an after five party, not after six, and it’s getting later and later. You’re going, so just get ready. Stop stalling.”

“I know I’m going. I need to go to make contacts,” I rebutted. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it or be excited about it or even rush. The party may start after five, but you know it’s going to go on all night. What happened to being fashionably late? I thought you guys liked that to make an entrance.”

“Making an entrance is great,” Ava refuted, “but, I don’t want all the good guys picked over by the time we make it there. There will be no one left to notice our arrival. This is the biggest party we have ever managed to get invited to. We offered to take you, so get a move on before we leave you behind.”

“Moving,” I replied. “I said I’d go, not that you gave me much of a choice. And I know I need to pull on my big girl panties and do so if I want to make some business contacts, but still… oh, forget it, I’m putting on the green dress.”

Ava and Brittany were forcing me to go to a huge after five event that would be full of New York’s most elite. To be at one of these events, I knew, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a chance to network and possibly get investors for the video games I created. I wanted to go as much as I wanted to stay home. It was a catch 22 when a person as driven as I was, worked as hard as I did, had to go out after work too. I paid the bills by working long days for a computer firm, slaving away, sweating for the man. Coming from the poor side of town, having the need to escape it, get as far away from it as I could manage, I never stopped working. I wanted success not just for me but for my family. I enjoyed my job as a consultant in the development of new computers, and I honestly worked without so much as a break for lunch, and then I often came home to work on the video games I loved to create at night. Being at a pivotal point in one of my games, right at the end trying to work out a few bugs, I needed to work on getting investors as much as I needed to work on the game.

There were just never enough hours in the day for all I wanted to do. I knew Ava and Brittany felt the same, even if their mission and plan of attack were different. They had spent their time shopping and makeup-ing, seeing tonight as an opportunity to meet sexy, wealthy, eligible bachelors. They wanted to hit the jackpot in the marriage pool. Landing the right guy was big business to them. Me, on the other hand, I found love nothing but a distraction. But I guess I hadn’t been opposed before, when we were in college. I’d wanted both, the big marriage and the big job. Yet, I’d found out thanks to a horrible break up with my cheating ex-boyfriend, that I’d wasted time on him that I could’ve used to finish my game.

So, my friends and I didn’t agree anymore. They were still constantly going on and on about how everything was about marrying the right guy, warning me that I needed to take some time to find the right guy before it was too late, which was the mentality that they lived by still. We’d stayed friends, running in the same circles for different reasons, though any more, we didn’t always understand each other, and I ended up the odd man out. Case in point, tonight. I was sure it had taken them hours to get ready, so my throwing on a dress at the last minute was not going over well.

By the time I’d struggled into that dress, getting it over my own curves in just the right way, Ava had fiddled with my hair and Brittany had touched up my makeup. So, we’d arrived at the party a half hour later. I’d made it to an after five thirty party, but by the time we’d reached the oversized building, excited to just be there, focus had fallen from that issue. They were in find-a-man mode.

Walking into that grand ballroom took my breath away too, though. I was amazed by the beauty and the elegance that surrounded me. It definitely wasn’t what I was used to. All three of us had stopped and gazed around us. Ava and Brittany were going on about sexy men in suits and beautiful women and their dresses while I couldn’t help but take in the architecture. Looking up until I strained my neck muscles, the latticework pattern of the ceiling had very ornate designs carved into the squares. The entire place was painted in a gorgeous beige that lent itself to golden hues, a color I’d be hard pressed to give a name to.

Adding to this color scheme, the walls housed a series of windows curved at the top, standing floor to ceiling. At this time, early evening, they allowed the far-from-fading light of the sun to shine through the lightweight sheers, utilizing the glow of natural lighting. To accent that, in between each window also cloaked in a golden-brown curtain flowing down it’s sides, duel candle sconces held fake flaming candles that gave off a beautiful maize color that glittered against the walls. Each window, twenty of which were down just one side, set the stage for a round table that seated six.

The tables were draped in a silky white clothes with flowers and crystal and elaborate settings on top that I wouldn’t even know how to replicate. Each of them in turn sat in a strip of navy blue and burgundy patterned beige carpet, which framed a wooden dance floor. Some guest sat, at this point, while others stood in the middle of the dance floor, just talking as a live band played quiet music in the background to which their conversations sung over. This wasn’t some noisy nightclub or even a busy restaurant, which these sort of events were usually in. Tonight was an elegant gathering where people seemed to speak differently, softer, more respectfully, and I still couldn’t catch my breath.

A man in a white suit with a light gray shirt and black tie walked by with a tray and offered us from his white gloved hands a flatter, wider version of a crystal wine glass.

“A Winston Martini for you ladies,” he said politely, though rather mechanically, but I figured he’d said it a hundred times already tonight.

Brittany, a gleam of excitement in her eye, practically squealed as she grabbed hers, taking a tiny sip before rattling on, “If purchased, one of these cocktails costs fourteen thousand dollars!”

“How exactly is that possible,” I inquired, taking a sip of my own.

A touch of cinnamon hit my taste buds, which I guessed was what was sprinkled over the top, only to be washed away by a warm sweet taste that offered a slight burn as it went down.

“It’s good,” I said, “but I can’t say that it’s thousands of dollars good. Are you sure you got that dollar amount right?”

“Of course I’m sure. I watched a video on it, the two day process to make it. The expensive alcohol, I think cognac, goes for one hundred and sixty thousand a bottle, and six thousand a shot.”

I should’ve known that such a thing was just a precursor, a warning, if you will, that the rest of the evening would be just as over the top. I loved the place. It was beautiful. The drink was good. Yet, I didn’t fit into such an income bracket by far. My car cost less than the drink in my hand. In fact, the more I thought about the cost of the drink, the more my hands started to tremble. I wanted wealth and success. I wanted to live comfortably. Plus, I wanted to help my family live comfortably for the first time in their lives. But such displays of wealth I could find nothing more than, well, ridiculous.

So as I took another sip, still wondering exactly how you justified making a drink cost so much, I nearly choked seeing my jerk of an ex-boyfriend, Mason, walking through the crowd. We’d dated during college and had broken up a year ago. Still, just the sight of him made my body tense, my stomach threaten to eliminate the two sips that I’d had of the expensive drink that I now clutched to the point of breaking. I didn’t feel like doing the math, but given the size of the cup, I supposed that would create puke that cost over a thousand dollars. I had entered the twilight zone.

Things went downhill after that, as Mason made a beeline toward me with some gorgeous supermodel-type girlfriend on his arm. I supposed it was the bimbo that he left me for, but who knew after all this time.
Let it go
, I warned myself as he got closer.
He’s not worth it.
While his suit was over the top, no surprise at all, so were the size of the chick’s boobs the cheater was with. She had her long fake nails, painted in a glittery gold, clutched tightly around the arm of his royal blue-and-black pinstriped suit. His jacket unbuttoned, his white silk shirt showing too much, he didn’t look the part of a spoiled rich boy as much as he looked the part of a schmuck to me.

“How did you get in here?” he said, his grin showing overly white teeth. “This isn’t your sort of crowd. These people don’t wear dresses off a department store clearance rack. Although, I will admit that for your size you look as nice as you can. The style though, it stands out as so last season. But then again, that is what happens when you can only afford the clearance rack.”

“Thank you for noticing, Mason. I wouldn’t have expected a guy who wears the latest suit designs no matter how ridiculous it looks to have noticed such a thing,” I rebutted, having no problem hitting below the belt, hoping to make him feel less of a man just as he made it his mission to be condescending, trying to make me feel like low-class crap.

I could tell by the shock on his face that I’d proven that I was no longer the sweet and quiet girl I used to be when he’d dated me. I’d become bold and feisty, a lesson from working in a big business. I’d become very smooth and shrewd thanks to the board room and lunch meetings. Eva and Brittany weren’t quite acting their age any longer, making noises behind me to show that I’d burned him.

At least I was able to walk away from Mason with a smile of satisfaction on my face as I made it my mission to network along with Ava and Brittany, determined to build connections and gain investors. By the time I had five business cards in my hand from some impressive business executives, I began scanning the crowd for my friends. I spotted them at a table, sipping drinks with a few other men. Although I’d had a rocky start, with the business cards in my clutch purse, I couldn’t help but hope that this night would change my life beyond my wildest dreams.

As I sat down, as if on cue, the waiter came by offering me another drink. This time a simple champagne that I didn’t want to know the cost of. As the bubbly mixture slid down my throat, having already offended my taste buds, the entire sound of the room changed. I looked up to see what all the buzz was about. The higher-pitched the voices, the noise level rose, and I watched the crowd practically part ways as a man walked through the middle of the dance floor. While all eyes were on him, he scanned the room, seeming like he was looking for someone in particular, intent on his discovery, like a dog sniffing out a bone, or maybe a cat in heat. Both analogies made me giggle inside.

When he stepped closer to our table and looked our way, I expected him to look at one of my two gorgeous friends but found his eyes looking straight into mine instead. For some unknown reason, I smiled as I felt my cheeks go crimson. Instinctively, I looked down at the floor, inspecting one black heel that had a scuff on the toe. By the time I looked up, he’d moved on, exchanging smiles and words with each person who rushed to do so with him.