Which was why I wore a corset dress with a deep purple bustier underneath it that was on the shorter side in front, reaching above my knees, and on the longer side in back.
I was wearing four-inch sky-high black heels that were also the same shade of purple at the bottom.
I had on heavy makeup with the same glittery shade of purple eyeshadow, deep purple lipstick to match, and my purple contacts.
I wore the contacts because it pissed my father off.
He liked it when I wore normal colors, so I made sure to put on stuff that would drive him insane.
At least I was wearing the normal eyes today. The last dinner party he forced me to come to I wore the cat-eyed pupil contacts, causing him to turn red in the face and ask me to leave.
But with this dinner party being on the heels of the last one, I decided to be nice and not make his blood pressure rise twice in one week.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen.” I heard over the loudspeakers. “It’s time to get this party started.”
I rolled my eyes and moved toward the table I knew Dad had gotten for us.
But on the way, I did stop for another beer.
Actually, I got two.
Double-fisting them, I walked to my table, took a seat where my name ‘Six Broussard’ was on my spot, and plopped down.
Then I started to drink.
I was so focused on my task of drinking, too, that I didn’t notice when someone sat at the table with me until a low, deep chuckle had me glancing up.
When I saw the David Gandy looking older gentleman, this time with his whiskey about halfway gone, laughing across the table from me, I took notice.
The man truly was hot.
Too bad he looked too uptight. Too stuck up. Too like my father.
Speaking of my father, he finally took a seat next to me and growled.
“What?” I snapped.
“Do you have to embarrass me?” he asked. “Two beers, Six? Really?”
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s wrong with beer?”
“There’s nothing wrong with beer,” he grumbled under his breath so nobody would see. “If you allow them to serve it to you, one at a time, in a glass. You, on the other hand, are drinking it like an uncouth child straight out of the bottle.”
I took a sip of my bottle. “It tastes better in the bottle.”
At least, it did to me.
“It tastes no different and you know it,” he countered.
I ignored him as the dinner courses started to be served.
I ignored the plate of what-the-fuck-ever and instead pulled a bag of Classic Lay’s out of my purse.
My dad stiffened beside me when I ripped open the bag, but otherwise didn’t say anything as I happily ate my chips and stared around the room in curiosity.
CHAPTER 2
In a world full of roses, be a thorn.
-Coffee Cup
LYNN
“Who’s that?” my assistant, Bruno, asked.
He had this really weird look in his eyes, though. As if he knew exactly who it was but he was trying to act all nonchalant.
He should’ve known better than to act that way with me. I knew all of his tells. But I’d give him that play. For now.
I looked over at him and shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”
“You were looking at her like you knew her,” he mused.
I had been. But not because I knew her, but because she was utterly captivating.
She was of average height and build, but that was where the average part ended.
She was dressed in head-to-toe black and purple. Her eyeshadow was purple. Her hair was a light whitish lavender with dark purple roots. Hair that was put up into two bun-like pigtails.
Her dress was black, and showing off a lot of leg, but the shit underneath the dress was purple lace. Oh, and so was the silk and lace around her breasts.
I’d never been around someone that liked purple before, but the little punk-rock looking chick wearing it so well across the table from me was capturing and holding my attention.
“I just witnessed Brighton Peet break up with her.” He paused. “He called her Linda, as if he knew her. But the girl said her name wasn’t Linda, it was Six Broussard.”
“Shit,” Bruno said upon hearing the last name, again acting as if he didn’t know her at all. “The mayor of Dallas’s kid? Really?”
The mayor of Dallas was a piece of shit.
He was also at my table where his ‘station’ said he should be. Yet I couldn’t fuckin’ stand him.
“Apparently,” I said. “Not that she looks like she really wants to be here.”
Bruno looked at her, too, as he took a sip of his beer.
He was drinking it out of a mug, unlike the woman across the table who was drinking it straight out of the bottle.
“Sure doesn’t, does she?” Bruno chuckled underneath of his breath. “What the fuck is she wearing?”
“No idea,” I admitted. But some part of me wanted to strip it right off before I fucked her.
“Is that a bag of potato chips?” he asked.
Sure enough, when the first course of our meal was set down in front of us, Six waved the woman away and pulled out a bag of Lay’s potato chips, my absolute favorite, from her purse.
“Looks like it,” I answered with amusement lacing my voice.
I looked down at the first-course meal in front of me and played the part, making myself seem more knowledgeable than I actually was.
See, I grew up in a family that was wealthy, but not wealthy in the sense that we attended frivolous dinner parties and ate five-course meals.
After the death of my sister, Lacy, I started to immerse myself into a world that I didn’t quite fit into. Yet I played a damn good game, which happened to be how and why I was now the mayor of Kilgore, Texas.
“Why are you doing this again?” Bruno mumbled as he trailed his finger through the broth on the plate in front of him.
He, like me, was more of a burger and fries guy. This bullshit that we were dealing with today was hopefully a ‘one and done’ thing.
Hopefully.
“Because we didn’t like how this city is turning out after the last mayor had his claws in it,” I explained.
Bruno knew this, though.
I was a lot of things, had played a lot of parts in my life from king pin to bookie to FBI consultant. What I had not done before was dabble in government politics.
But after witnessing the old mayor take advantage of a few decent men, one of those being a good friend, and trying to kill his career by using his power to force him into compliance or else, I’d had enough.
Upon researching the old mayor, Dave Jackson, I’d not only found out that he was dirty, but I’d found out that he was a sick bastard, too. The sick bastard liked to force women to do things that they didn’t want to do—like marry him. Have his children. Fuck him on the side to keep a job here. Give him head to grease some palms for a house loan there.
But that’d only been the tip of the iceberg with Jackson.
The first step of digging out his corruption had commenced—beat him at a race for mayor.
Today I was officially the new mayor and I would start fixing the things that Jackson had broken.
But first I had to find a way out of jail for those broken things.
The second course was brought out, and our broth was taken away, neither Bruno nor I having done much more than play with it.