Losing My Balance (Fenbrook Academy #1.5) Read Online Free

millionaire in his basement. And he’s payin’ her, right?”
    I was flustered, now. “Yes….”
    “A lot, right?”
    Five hundred dollars an hour, they’d agreed on the phone. “Yes….”
    “But it’s not like he has a thing for her, or anything, right? I mean, he probably just looked up ‘ballet dancer’ online. He didn’t even know what she looked like, right?”
    “They’ve met,” I said tightly. “They met and then he hired her, but that doesn’t mean—”
    “Uh-huh,” he nodded and smirked until I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream mainly because, when he described it, the idea that this was just an innocent job seemed ludicrous. I’d kind of known that, but I didn’t like having it pointed out to me. “You’re wrong,” I said. “He’s a designer. He needs inspiration. All of the great artists had muses.”
    Neil leaned forward. “Do you even know what it is Darrell makes?”
    “Nope, and I don’t care. I’m just going to sit here and read and wait for my friend.”
    I focused on my Vogue, feeling his eyes on me. After a long moment, I heard him sit back.
    “Fine,” he said. I watched him out of the corner of my eye and saw him focus on something on the table. The folded New York Times. It was closer to me than it was to him.
    I’m not sure what was going through my head. Maybe I wanted to piss him off. Maybe I didn’t want us to lapse into silent reading. But just as he started to say, “Can you pass—” I picked up the newspaper and unfolded it. He gave a tiny grunt of frustration.
    “Oh!” I managed to look surprised. “I’m sorry—were you wanting this? I was just about to start reading it.” I pushed the magazine across the table. “But you can have Vogue, if you want.”
    His eyes burned into me like lasers. I could almost feel myself heating up and luxuriated in his anger. That’ll teach him to presume things about Nat and me. I looked up at him and smiled sweetly. Look at him, with his muscles and his attitude and all that long hair. Probably got stoned once too often behind the gym and dropped out of high school. I found myself wondering what sort of girl he was with. What did they call those biker wives? Old Ladies. Probably some tattooed bimbo.
    Wait, what do I care what his girlfriend’s like?
    We sank into silence and I felt…disappointed, bizarrely. I didn’t understand it, but I had this hot, nervous flutter in my chest, as if we’d started something and I didn’t want to let it die.
    I started to read bits from the New York Times to him. I wasn’t sure why. I told myself it was because I felt bad about stealing the paper.
    I sighed theatrically. “Can you believe this? The senator said, ‘We need more tax breaks for the have-nots, not the have-plenties.”
    No response. No, that’s not true. There was a response, but it was a cold, stony silence. I’d never heard someone be silent before, but Neil did it very well. It wasn’t the mere absence of noise; it was like all the sound in the room got sucked into it. “What?” I asked.
    “You think it’s fair that ten percent of people own ninety percent of the wealth?” he said, his voice low and smoky.
    Oh great. Not only a biker, but a hippy, as well. My dad is the president of one of the largest banks in Boston and, yes, I had a privileged upbringing. That may have colored my thinking on income and taxes and so on just a little bit, I admit. But I was still pretty sure I was right. “I think the people who already pay the most taxes deserve some credit, instead of having all their hard-earned cash stripped from them by—”
    He stood up—actually quite an intimidating move, given his size. “By who? By the poor? What were you going to call them? ‘Parasites’?”
    My mouth opened and closed a few times. I’d actually been going to say locusts. “No! I was going to say, ‘a load of bleeding heart liberals,’” I lied. It was weird: I was red-hot angry with him and yet, at the same