Page 1 of Rope Me, Cowboys

1

Amber

One Week Before

“Make it Irish?” Haley whispered, nudging the table cloth back to reveal a silver flask at the hem of her sinfully short skirt.

“I wish,” I hissed back. “I promised Mom I’d be on my best behavior.”

“Since when does Amber Durant follow her mommy’s orders?” asked Haley’s brother, leaning forward to give me his most charming, douche-baggy smile.

“Since I haven’t seen her all summer?” I said. “I’d like to hang out with her before she jets off to Africa and pretends to save starving children while really pushing a questionable pharmaceutical brand that hasn’t gotten FDA approval.”

Mark leered at me, taking in the scant cleavage allowed by my mother-approved wardrobe—a pink silk blouse that brought out my summer’s end tan and a knee-length brown skirt. “When you give up on that and get schnockered, I’d be happy to give you some attention,” he said. “But make sure it’s after midnight and no one sees you come in. I don’t want my parents lecturing me about the company I keep.”

“I have a boyfriend, remember?”

“Hmm, and yet, I don’t see him offering to help you scratch that itch.”

“He’s sick,” I said in my frostiest voice.

“Mark, seriously, shut up,” Haley said, holding up a hand to block him from my view. Her parents had been lecturing her about the company she kept for years, but since she was no more “respectable” than me, they’d pretty well given up on her. They had decided to put all their eggs in the more promising, Mark-sized basket instead.

Haley turned in her seat, angling her shoulder away from Mark, and gave me her impish smile. “Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve never known you to refuse a drink.” With her short and curvy figure, fair skin and black pixie cut, she looked like a charming fairy god-sister offering up whiskey instead of pumpkins.

“I’m kind of nervous,” I admitted. “Mom’s been acting weird all day. She’s been all…dreamy and smiley.”

“She probably just got a new prescription,” Haley assured me with a roll of her eyes.

“She said she has an announcement.”

“That she’s running for New York Senate again next fall, which everyone already knows?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, trying to relax. I hated these stuffy formal parties, but it was nice to know I wasn’t alone. Haley had been my best friend since elementary school, when we bonded over our mutual love of Circus Peanuts, our respective mothers’ suckiness, and our tendency to misbehave at the private school we’d both attended, along with Mark and nearly every Manhattan politician’s children. Since graduating earlier this year, Haley and I had spent nearly every minute together. We planned to travel the world together before deciding if we could stomach four years of college.

“Maybe,” I muttered, catching my mother’s stern smile. She dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin and tapped at her wine glass with a fork, making a tinkling sound. The fifty or so politicos and schmoozers at the party stopped wheeling and dealing for two seconds and looked up.

“I—we—have an announcement,” Mom said, standing and smoothing her Prada skirt over her trim hips. To keep her figure, she spent more time on the treadmill than she spent lecturing me about decorum. But I’d actually missed her during the summer, and I was determined to make amends now that I was an adult and no longer in high school. After all, one day I wanted to have a career. I couldn’t blame her for putting that before her family.

“As you know, we spent the summer helping children in Africa gain access to much-needed medical supplies,” she said, smiling at her philanthropist senator friend. “But we also fell in love.”

I coughed out water, spewing it across my lobster thermidor.

Mom cast one warning glare at me before turning her attention to her audience. She smiled as far as her Botox would allow, and Senator Westling stood and put an arm around her. The gesture was so stiff it made my own shoulders cringe up towards my ears.

This must be a political move. My mother did not fall in love. She fell into Xanax-and-gin stupors. She fell into every new fad diet that took the talk shows by storm. If she fell in love with anything, it was the season’s latest Armani-for-the-office collection.

“And we got married,” she said.

I swayed slightly in my seat. Not that I expected to be first to know if she wanted to date again after Dad—she’d probably ask her political advisor before making that decision—but married?

“Like I said, if you need to drown your sorrows later tonight…” Mark said.

He was only a year older than us, but he already looked like a smarmy politician. I’d had a crush on him once, but after experiencing his douche-baggery firsthand, I stayed far away from his panty-melting smile. Behind it, his brain was full of sociopathic schemes.

Pretty much the norm for Manhattan private school boys bound for senatorial races. I was the luckiest girl alive to have found Charlie, the rare exception to the rule.

“Always the opportunist,” Mark said with a shrug, turning back to his lobster.