Playing With Fire by Callie Sparks

Author:Callie Sparks [Sparks, Callie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00JQIJ418
Publisher: Callie Sparks
Published: 2014-04-16T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Rhys

I stop at Ed Royce’s office on the way upstate. When he sits behind his desk and looks at me over his bifocals, I know it’s not good news. “How are things? How are the wife and kids?” I ask him. I figure small talk will put off the inevitable, even for a little while.

“Can’t complain,” he says, a hint of disappointment in his voice. I suppose when you’ve been managing a person’s money for ten years and they still have yet to adhere to the budget you’ve set out for them, you might get a little exasperated. He plants his elbows on the desk, over the files that detail my every extravagant purchase. “Your apartment in SoHo is thirty-thousand a month, Rhys. Have you ever thought about scaling back?”

I shake my head. “Not possible.” Hell, I’d downgraded my aspirations when I moved in to my place. After all, I’d wanted what Caden had—a penthouse in a more upscale neighborhood. I’d settled.

“You need three bedrooms? It’s just you.”

I shake my head. “It’s not just me anymore. I have a daughter.”

He raises his eyebrows, then jabs a line in the paper in front of him. “Well, that’s a tax deduction at least. That explains the two-thousand dollar check to Friends Forever Daycare.” He punches some numbers into the calculator.

“Yeah. But she’s not going there again. I’m . . . working on other arrangements.”

“Other arrangements? Like a nanny? Whatever those other arrangements are, they are going to add expense to your already stretched budget, Rhys,” he notes. “I suppose you’re going to want to set up a fund for her college tuition, too?”

I nod.

He drums his fingers on the desk. “How about that Beamer out there?” he asks, pointing through the window. “You need that, living in the city? The payments are one thing, but you’re paying six-thousand dollars a year to park the thing.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know. I mean, what’s the damage, Ed? How bad are things?”

He punches some numbers into his calculator and shakes his head. “At this point, even with your bonus, you’re two-hundred and fifty-thousand in the red. Your expenses outweigh your income by at least ten-thousand dollars a month, sometimes a lot more. I mean, what was this twelve-thousand dollar bill to Kulp and Sons?”

“Shoes,” I mumble.

“And the fifty-thousand check you wrote last week?”

“That’s a . . . personal matter.” I let the numbers sink in. Ten thousand really isn’t all that much, considering I’m making seven-figures. But two-hundred-and-fifty thousand? How the hell could I have let that happen? I have expensive tastes, sure. But I have the fucking job that allows me to have those tastes. Or so I thought. If only I didn’t have that little cunt C. Moss fucking with my life. If only I hadn’t gone to that alumni weekend at Harvard, four years ago. But who knew that what I thought would be a good time of fucking cute co-eds would turn into this? I fiddle with the watch around my wrist.

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