Vivienne Cartwright can have anything she wants in life except for the man she loves.
She chases it only to find herself crashing down after the ultimate high.
Oliver Yates doesn't seem to be the man she's loved all these years and his secrets are...
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Las Vegas, Nevada
February 18, 2005
I rarely got nervous.
I was Vivienne Cartwright, after all.
Other people would tell you that I'd have very little cause to be. They'd go on to list a number of compelling reasons why.
From a wealthy and well-connected family, check.
Creative and intelligent, check. Feisty, even.
Pleasing to the eye, check.
So poised and stylish I leave a trail of envious drooling behind me, check.
Seriously.
It might all sound awfully vain but frankly, it was nothing more than a repeat of the same thing I've heard my entire life. I tried modesty once, dismissing the compliments with an embarrassed laugh or a shake of my head. That got me accused of false modesty so I got over myself and left people to their opinions. Why would I waste my time changing them when I didn't give a rat's ass what they thought of me?
Funny thing, the whole not-caring approach.
The less you cared, the more people bothered themselves with trying to make you care. What an absolutely idiotic way to live one's life.
At least, that's what I'd tell myself each time I tried not to care about the one person whose opinion meant, unfortunately, the whole world to me.
Oliver Yates—he was my Achilles's heel. My kryptonite. All the adjectives synonymous to weakness.
He was the only person who could make the unflappable Vivienne Cartwright nervous. Around him, my intestines might as well be pretzels.
If there was anything that could tangle me up in pathetic nervous knots, it was facing Oliver Yates.
Oliver, whom I'd known all my life, was the only person who held such power over me.
For a while, when I was going through my more rebellious years, I hated it. I hated that he influenced many of my decisions without even being aware of it—or even caring one whit that he did.
I'd spent a couple of years trying to rid myself of it through every way possible without giving myself away but like my usual approach in life, I stopped as soon as I realized the inevitable. I resigned myself to it and let it happen.
I let go and flung myself deep in love with a man I never should've fallen for—my older brother's best friend, a determined bachelor, and the white knight who put me high up on a pedestal and treated me like a princess—one he would never think he deserved, and one he would die to protect.
