Party Foul (Crow Bar Brute Squad Book 1) Read online

  Girls like her don’t get attached to guys like me. Girls like her go out with frat boys named Cody or trust fund boys named Trent from Shoreline or Castle Hill.

  If she didn’t heed his advice…if she did come back, then she clearly didn’t know what was good for her.

  Chapter Two

  Fiona

  * * *

  Not even her noise-cancelling headphones could muffle the crash of aluminum on ceramic tile.

  This was the third time her roommate Pete had attempted some kind of beer can masterpiece pyramid in the kitchen they shared, just feet away from the desk in her bedroom. Even with the door closed, her housemates were loud.

  She definitely couldn’t study at the university library in peace, nor at the city’s public library. Someone always recognized her. On top of that, she was pretty sure her parents had hired someone to tail her all day, make sure she was going to classes and studying. She had the creepy feeling that she was under surveillance, even apart from the usual security detail that came with being the daughter of a governor with powerful enemies.

  Yesterday, she’d been so fed up that she’d managed to ditch the secret-service style bodyguards, her driver, and that one obvious news photographer with his Members Only jacket and combover. She’d hopped on the subway, not bothering to pay attention to where the train was taking her. When she’d ended up in Dockside, she’d rolled with it rather than calling for her driver right away. She’d hopped from a diner over to a bar that looked quiet during the day, where the only other people were the bartender, wait staff, a few barflies and a bunch of thick bouncers who seemed like they had nothing better to do during the afternoon than hang around and shoot the shit.

  After dark, things had gotten interesting. A strange man had approached her table with a drink, and when Fiona had refused—she’d watched enough true crime documentaries to know she couldn’t accept drinks from the hands of another patron—he’d become agitated.

  The tall, dark bouncer in the leather jacket had spotted the interaction and had warned the guy to leave her alone.

  When the bouncers were caught up in their own drama for a minute—drama that she had been trying to drown out while she studied—the creepy guy had approached her again, asking her all kinds of questions about who she was and what she was doing there.

  He’d actually asked her, “How much?”

  Her blood had boiled, and she’d told him to fuck off and leave her alone. Not that there was anything wrong with sex work, but she was pretty sure this was not a man who held sex work in any esteem, judging from the way he was looking at her.

  Her cursing at him really had ramped up the guy’s attitude, and he had launched into a rant about how if she thought she was too good for him, she shouldn’t even be here.

  And that’s when the guy with the leather jacket had stepped in and dragged the guy’s ass out to the alley. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from following to watch it all play out.

  Fiona loved to watch an ass-whooping.

  After that, so much had happened. Her tiny muscles between her legs clenched with the memory of that man in the leather jacket and all the things she’d let him do to her. All the things her body had begged him to do to her.

  As soon as her driver, Roger, had her safely over the river, she’d kicked herself for not asking the man what his name was.

  And now at her house she shared with three other people on the Castle Hill University campus, she not only couldn’t stop thinking about that man, she still had no peace and quiet.

  She should have taken her parents’ offer of renting her an apartment off-campus. But no, she’d wanted to room with her crew. The gang that had known each other since high school. She’d thought it would help insulate her in college. Help her keep her nose clean, help her stay accountable for her class work.

  Boy, was she wrong.

  If anything, her party girl reputation had only gotten worse as soon as she hit campus freshman year. And now, in year five—yes, five—Fiona’s time of reckoning was upon her. Now at age 24—she’d taken a gap year to travel Europe with her cousins after high school—she was still nowhere near earning her degree and also really having a hard time caring anymore.

  She was only sticking it out for her parents, but try as she might, there was always something more fun to do than study. And when she tried to study, someone always found her. Either her friends, the college students fascinated by the stories they’d heard about the governor’s daughter and wanted to hear more, or the press looking for Page Six material on her.

  She hated Newcastle. She much preferred the country estate where she’d spent her early childhood, before her father had gotten involved in politics. Before he was governor, her family only visited Newcastle to stay at her mother’s Shoreline beach house. Living in this sprawling city these days made her feel like she was under a microscope twenty-four hours a day. The beach house at Shoreline didn’t even feel as carefree as she’d remembered it as a child.

  She should have just gone to community college to study forensics and criminal justice like she’d wanted to. But her mother, the heiress of the canned tuna dynasty, wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Please, could you keep it down, Pete?” Fiona asked from the doorway of her bedroom.

  Pete ignored her and went back to re-stacking the cans like it was serious business.

  Fiona rolled her eyes and went back to her desk.

  She wished she could disappear again without telling anyone and go back to that bar. For the first few hours, anyway, she’d gotten some quality studying done. But now she couldn’t go back there. Big bouncer guy had told her not to come back.

  Today, her only option to study was to stay at home. A Friday night would mean her roommates would all be out and about, and she’d have the house to herself, hopefully. Soon, though, another interruption came in the middle of her medieval literature reading, in the form of a call from her mother.

  “Hi, Momma, que pasa?”

  “What’s happening is your father wants to know who your plus one is for the party at Shoreline tomorrow night.”

  “Plus one? I don’t have one.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I’m not coming?”

  Her mother, Helena, launched into her usual speech about family obligation. Then she brought it home with an extra layer of guilt. “And, after all the extra work the staff put in to clean up your mess after your last party, you owe it to them and to me to be there. How did those red stains happen in the outdoor shower anyway?”

  Fiona replied, “Well, it started with these cherry Jell-o shots. They weren’t all the way set, and…”

  “Never mind, I don’t want to know,” her mother said. “Anyway, you’re coming to the party tomorrow, and you need to bring a date. We need to spin things to the positive for the holidays.”

  “You think me bringing a date to Daddy’s fundraiser will make Daddy look good?”

  “If it looks like you have a boyfriend, the press will think you’ve settled down.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Get one.”

  “Sure. Can one of Daddy’s political friends recommend a sex worker?”

  “Fiona. Please. I mean a real date.”

  “You don’t just conjure those up, Mother. Unless Newcastle Tuna is getting into the business of matchmaking. You know, like, metaphorical fish in the sea.”

  Her mother blurted out a laugh before catching herself, and Fiona counted it a rare victory. “Points for being smart. If only you’d apply yourself and graduate. You’d get your trust fund that much sooner.”

  “Or I could quit and get a job in marketing at Newcastle Tuna. I’d have told them right away those square cans were a bad idea, no wonder the stock has gone down.” Fiona had no desire to remind her flesh and blood that she didn’t give a shit about the trust fund.

  But Helena could not be deterred. “Listen, those cans are more stackable than our competitors’, and
it helps us stand out.”

  “Sure, Mom,” she thought, rolling her eyes. “Because the decrepit old boat you all still use to make deliveries doesn’t keep this brand at top of mind.”

  Helena clucked. “Don’t be snotty about my great-grandfather’s boat. He started this company with that barge. Ugh. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. What about Zach? He likes you. His mother and I are in the same water aerobics class, and she told me. He’s been pining for you for years. It could really help.”

  Fiona sucked her lips inside her mouth and closed her bedroom door.

  “Zach is just a friend, Mom. And might not even be that anymore after what he told the papers about me.”

  “You don’t know it was Zach.”

  Fiona snorted. “Sure it was. He was pissed that I didn’t want to date him, so he exacted his revenge. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him who called the paper about Daddy’s campaign bus leaving early yesterday morning.”

  “You’re a paranoid little thing. Couldn’t possibly be that any of your party guests belonging to one of the crime families have been feeding information about you to the papers to get back at your father for trying to put them out of business.”

  “Now who’s paranoid, Mother? That was a rumor somebody started. Those people in the party photos were not identifiable, so the press ran with it.”

  Helena sighed. “The fact that you don’t even know who is and who isn’t at these parties of yours is worrisome.”

  “Relax, okay? Nothing happened but some bad press.” Even as Fiona said this, she herself felt the sting at knowing the general public’s tendency to jump to conclusions with the merest hint of poor judgment on her behalf. “And nothing else is going to happen. Your security meatheads were on me like mosquitoes all day yesterday. I suppose you told them to do that.”

  “I didn’t, but I’m sure Keith has his reasons. But you still managed to ditch them, so I don’t even know what we’re paying them for. But listen, we just need you to be on your campaign game, Fi. Bring someone suitable, please.”

  Fiona was past done with campaigning. The fact that she had to continue showing up to events for her father to look like the perfect family seemed completely unnecessary at her age. “I’ll be there, but I’m not bringing a date.”

  Her mother’s voice changed to a honeyed tone, and Fiona knew she was the fly her mother was aiming to catch.

  “Sweetheart, it would mean so much to your daddy if you could just pretend to look like you’re settling down, just until the end of the runoff election in January. Your father is scared for the first time in 12 years that he could lose. To someone endorsed by the Dockworkers Union, no less. They used to have his back, and now …I don’t know. Some bad apples got into the mix. I don’t understand all of it, I just want this to be over. After that, I don’t care what you do.”

  This lifted Fiona’s spirits for a moment. Maybe this meant her mother and father would not care so much if she decided to drop out of college.

  “Really? You don’t care at all?” She tried not to sound too excited. She didn’t want her mother to think she was up to something.

  “Fi, you’re an adult, last time I checked. Your father and I understand you’re sowing your wild oats. Just don’t be surprised if they come home to roost.”

  “That’s a mixed metaphor, Mom.”

  “So it is,” her mother said. “Guess all that money spent on college isn’t a complete waste.”

  The full-body cringe was so strong when she hung up the phone with her mother that Fiona had to check her face in the mirror to make sure her makeup hadn’t gotten smudged.

  She marched out to the common room, where her housemate Kaylee was reading the paper.

  “Did you read this?” Kaylee said, holding the Newcastle Dispatch in her direction.

  “I read it all right. Here, I’ll recycle it if you’re done with it.”

  Fiona took the paper and skimmed the article once again. Yep. Still made her blood pressure go up. Why did she insist on reading the paper at all, and then re-reading the horrible things people said about her? Why did she keep doing this to herself?

  “Seriously, fuck Zach.” Fiona threw the newspaper across the room, where it smacked into her housemate’s meticulously constructed beer can pyramid.

  “Dude!” was all her housemate Pete said when it came crashing down on the carpet, startling Brioche, the white bichon that had been sleeping on the end of the sofa.

  “You need to get it together,” said Kaylee. “You don’t know it was Zach who said that to the press.”

  Fiona crossed from the chair over to Brioche, who was cowering under the sofa. She coaxed her little powder puff of a dog and said, “I was the one who said that to Zach when I thought we were friends. I was just joking around, though. And just the other night I turned him down when he asked me out. So I think I can Sherlock who told a reporter all that shit.”

  Kaylee winced. “But you kind of are past your five-year plan.”

  Fiona pouted and held Brioche to her face and let the little dog lick her cheek. “I know. It’s not that I don’t try. I just…I’m starting to think college is not for me.”

  Pete laughed as he began stacking his silly beer cans again. “You couldn’t figure that out about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of student debt ago?”

  Fiona glared at Pete, and Brioche growled.

  “For your information, she doesn’t have any debt,” Kaylee spouted.

  Fiona cringed, because she knew what was coming next. She didn’t want to hear it, so she went to her room to look over her classwork again. This term paper on medieval poetry was killing her.

  She looked over the passage she was supposed to interpret, and it didn’t make sense. She hated medieval literature.

  “Ugh,” she growled, scratching Brioche behind the ears. “Maybe I should just drop out.”

  Brioche looked up at her and whimpered.

  “I know,” she said, looking down at her furry friend. “Mom and Dad are going to freak. I just can’t do this anymore. I thought an English degree would be easy because I liked writing, but it sucks. Big time.”

  Flipping her notebook and her medieval literature anthology closed with a loud thunk, she got up and gently set Brioche down on her bed.

  “Now what should I wear tonight, huh?” She sifted through her dresses. Black was too drab, and she was already depressed. Glitter was too much, as she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She finally settled on a fitted red sweater and designer jeans, boots, and a festive scarf.

  Kaylee could be heard clearing her throat from the doorway to Fiona’s room. “Going with the PTA mom look at the pub crawl tonight?”

  “You know what? Let’s not do the pub crawl.”

  “What? We always do the pub crawl on Fridays.”

  “I mean, I just want to go somewhere else. Somewhere where nobody’s going to snitch on me. Where nobody knows me.”

  Kaylee laughed. “You mean like nowhere in Castle Hill or Shoreline.”

  “Let’s have an adventure. What about some place down by the docks?”

  “Whoa, Nelly. Are you insane? That’s, like, sex trafficker central.”

  Fiona made a dismissive noise as she applied her makeup. “That’s what the newspaper says, but my dad said they exaggerated. He increased police presence down there, like tenfold or something. And he says that developers have been buying up all the abandoned properties and making it really nice.”

  Kaylee clucked. “You do know what that’s called? It’s called gentrification. They buy up property and charge so much rent nobody in the neighborhood can afford it.”

  Fiona made a mental note to look that word up later.

  “Okay. So are you coming or not?” Fiona asked her friend.

  Kaylee bit her lip. “You’re asking for more bad press, I feel like.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Fiona said. “Maybe Pete will come with us.”

  “Pete never goes anywhere
without Zach, and Zach is persona non grata, correct?”

  Fiona nodded. “Yes, he is. If he comes, he comes. Either way, we’ll be fine.”

  Kaylee, finally giving in, blew out a breath. “Fine. Let’s go. I’m getting sick of the bars on College Street anyway. Every guy I hit on already has a boyfriend, and frat parties are just getting grosser by the day. I’m tired of having to send my clothes out with my rich bestie’s dry cleaning.”

  Fiona crossed over to Kaylee and squeezed her friend’s shoulders in a side hug. “Consider it my last outing as a Castle Hill student, officially. I’m dropping out.”

  She thought her best friend would be upset, but she was relieved to see she simply shrugged and sighed. “Probably for the best. Your dad is going to freak, though. You think skinny dipping got you bad press? That’s nothing compared to being a dropout.”

  “Well, I just won’t plan on telling Daddy until after the big Christmas party on Saturday. I’ll let him have a good night.”

  The two of them agreed on the plan, and Kaylee texted their whole crew.

  Fiona flipped on her Bluetooth speaker and blasted her favorite “getting ready to go out” music while she worked on her makeup.

  While she was redoing her eyeliner for the fifth time, Pete popped in the door. “A biker bar in Dockside, huh?”

  “It’s not that bad, I don’t think. Why, is wittle Petey scared?”

  Pete puffed out his chest. “No. I’ll come. I gotta keep an eye on you.”

  She smoothed her gloss onto her lip and puckered in the mirror. “Zach’s not invited.”

  “I heard,” he replied with resignation.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Peeking out from under Zach’s protective wing, are we?”

  Pete rolled his eyes and moseyed out to the main room to continue his architectural aluminum feat.

  Guys were so lucky they didn’t have to do anything to get ready.

  Huh. Maybe Pete would suffice as my date tomorrow to Dad’s party.

  She had no interest in Pete as a potential boyfriend, but he might be suitable enough as a fake date for one night.