Authors: Tara McTiernan
Product
Description
COCKTAIL HOUR
By Tara McTiernan
What if your friend, someone admired, envied, and fervently sought after by everyone who knew her, was really a dangerous sociopath?
Cocktail Hour
answers that question as it takes you on a wild roller coaster ride of thrilling highs and terrifying lows in this novel about friendship gone horribly wrong.
Spring in glamorous uber-rich Fairfield County, Connecticut is a time of beginnings: a new diet for the approaching summer spent out on the yacht, fresh-faced interns being offered up at the office as the seasonal sacrifice to the gods of money, and corporate takeovers galore. Five women in their thirties have a brand-new friendship, too, one that fed and watered regularly at local hotspots over cocktails. With all of their personal struggles - Lucie's new catering business is foundering due to vicious gossip, Kate's marriage is troubled due to an inability to conceive, Chelsea's series of misses in the romance department have led to frantic desperation, and Sharon's career problems are spinning out of control - the women look forward to a break and a drink and a chance to let their guards down with their friends. And letting their guards down is the last thing they should do in the kind of company they unknowingly keep with the fifth member of their cocktail-clique: Bianca Rossi, a woman who will stop at nothing to have it all.
As each woman's life is affected by this she-wolf in sheep's clothing, the truth starts to come out, but will they see it before it's too late? Or will their doubts about their own perceptions and gut feelings stop them from protecting themselves in time? Tara McTiernan's latest novel
Cocktail Hour
serves up the Gold Coast's champagne-and-caviar world of movers and shakers where everything sparkles...especially knives in the back.
Cocktail
Hour
A Novel
TARA MCTIERNAN
Bramblevine Press
Raleigh
Copyright 2013 by Tara McTiernan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights.
Bramblevine Press
Raleigh
, North Carolina
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover design by Mimi Bark
For Ash, my wonderful husband
About the Author & Bonus Material
Mojito
Alone in the old building's camera-free elevator, Bianca's mask lifted, showing her true face momentarily before her false one slid back into place as a bell tinged and the elevator's doors hissed open.
She stepped out of the elevator, strode down the hall, and opened the door to the dermatologist's office in Darien, Connecticut with her head held high and a small smile playing on her lips, resisting the urge to wiggle her shoulders with pleasure at how much fun this was going to be. It had been a fabulous day for her: all of the physicians she had visited that morning and afternoon had been male which meant that, of course, they were putty in her hands, practically panting when they agreed to write prescriptions for her company's products as if she was the one doing
them
the favor. It was probably the tight red skirt, fitted matching scarlet jacket and achingly-high flame-colored pumps she was wearing. Men loved red.
Crossing the tastefully appointed reception area that smelled of new carpeting, she stopped in front of the reception desk. A mousy blond with an overbite and pale eyelashes looked up at her and smiled. "Yes? May I help you?"
"Hello, I'm Bianca Rossi from Mennon Pharmaceuticals," Bianca said and handed the woman her card while quickly glancing at her name tag and mentally storing her first name for when she'd make the push. Bianca noted with surprise that the woman was a relative of Grant's, or at least she had the same last name.
Dr. Grant Palmer: when she had seen that name on her routing schedule for the day her eyes had popped. Could it be
the
Grant Palmer? Her junior high school crush from those long-ago and best-forgotten geek years before she had blossomed into one of the most beautiful and lusted-after women in Fairfield County? And now not only was she beautiful, she was also well-married to a successful stockbroker, had a baby boy of nine months and a nanny to watch over him and do all the yucky boring stuff, a beautiful house on the water in Greenwich, and an exciting new career that was turning out to be the best thing in her life, especially now that she had graduated from all that tiresome studying and ride-alongs with her manager and the other reps.
It was all the attention: she literally had to have it. Without a constant diet of male adulation, she shriveled up quickly. This had been tested and proven during her brief and nearly deadly experience during her junior year in high school when her father had sent her away to an isolated convent after an incident that made him question his daughter's moral character. Bianca learned to be more careful after that.
Bianca continued, "I wanted to stop by and see if Dr. Palmer has a moment between appointments to meet with me to discuss how our products may be a solution for some of his patients. In particular, Revita, the new collagen-builder, is something he might want to know about."
She leaned in conspiratorially and waited for the woman to lean forward, too. The blond hesitated for a moment and then ducked her head and stretched across the desk to listen.
"Revita is really amazing. Look," Bianca said and pointed to the skin under her eyes. "All those little wrinkles we start getting in our thirties, gone! With none of the immobility and lack of expression from Botox or any of redness or peeling of a retinoid. Amazing, huh?" Especially amazing as she had never used the stuff. So what if she told a little fib or ten? All those rules and scripts, when what mattered was that she made the sale - they all knew that. Her colleagues were just a bunch of posturing hypocrites.
The woman's mouth had fallen open. "Really?"
Bianca pounced. "Don’t you think he might have a few minutes for me, Kate? It really would be worth his while."
The woman nodded and glanced at her computer monitor. "I'm sure he can spare a minute. Let me take you to his office." She got up and went around to open the door, beckoning to Bianca with a timid smile and then leading her down the hall past the exam rooms, two with shut doors muffling quiet voices and the other rooms open and unoccupied. Kate stopped outside the last door, which was standing open to reveal the doctor's private office, and gestured at it. "He's with a patient right now, but he'll be with you in a moment."
Bianca felt like a cat about to eat a particularly delicious canary. "Thanks so much,” she said, her voice rolling luxuriantly.
She sat down on one of the leather club chairs facing the desk, putting her briefcase and bag of samples on the floor beside her. Normally, she’d be plotting her sales pitch right now, preparing that special blend of BS she spread during every office visit: one part clinical knowledge, one part affected compassion about the doctor’s problems and pressures, and a touch of implied sex that stayed just next to the line of propriety without crossing it.
Instead, she saw that there was a large framed photo on his desk that faced his chair. She had to see it. Was he still handsome or had he lost his looks or bloated up as so many of her old classmates had? She hadn’t seen him since the second to last year of junior high when he’d transferred to a private school in New Hampshire. She’d been so disappointed, especially when she started seeing changes in the mirror and in how men reacted to her. She’d wished and wished he’d come home for a visit and run into her, see her in her present incarnation. In her fantasies, he immediately fell deeply and desperately in love with her.
Bianca leaned over in her chair and stretched her neck to see if anyone was in the hallway, but it was quiet. That was the benefit of a one-physician practice – lots of privacy. She stood and tiptoed over to the other side of the desk holding her breath.
Then all the air in her lungs poured out at once.
Yes! Grant was gorgeous at thirty-three, even more so than he’d been at thirteen – assuming the photo was recent. It was a wedding photo taken in a lush rose-filled garden and his bride was…the mouse in reception. Seriously? Oh! It didn’t get better than this. This was better than a canary; this was a huge hot-fudge sundae that had no calories!
She started to clap her hands together when she heard his voice in the hallway. She spun and started back toward the guest chair when her pointed heel caught on the new nubby carpet. Bianca fell in what felt like slo-mo, her left hand stretching out to grab at the desk for support and missing and then both her hands and knees hit the rough carpet just as his shadow filled the doorway.