52 Reasons to Hate My Father (11 page)

He shakes his head and keeps walking.

“Aren’t you glad you made me watch all those Spanish soap operas with you when I was growing up?” I call after him, but he doesn’t respond.

After another neighborhood-shaking honk from Luke, I sigh, grab my bag, and head for the stairs.

“Good morning, Luke,” I say politely as I strut down the front walkway of the house. “How are you today?”

“Thanks for getting out here so quickly,” he mumbles.

I smile cheerfully as I slide into the passenger seat. “You’re welcome.”

His eyes glide over my outfit, lingering at my new hair for a moment before continuing to my feet. He shakes his head. “You might want to put on some more comfortable shoes for this week’s assignment.”

I glance down at my toes and can’t help but smile at the cute little daisies my manicurist painted on my nails. “What are you talking about? These are Pucci
espadrilles.
”

He gives me a blank look.

“Espadrilles are
known
for their comfort.”

“Whatever,” Luke mutters. “They’re your feet.”

I buckle my seat belt and continue admiring my pedicure. He’s right. These
are
my feet. And thanks to my brilliant new strategy, I don’t plan on being on them much today.

I can feel Luke’s eyes boring into the side of my head and I turn to see him staring at me with a suspicious expression.

“What?”

His eyes narrow. “What’s with you?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. What’s with
you
?”

“You’re…” He searches for the right word. “Pleasant.”

I chuckle at his baffled expression. “I’m always pleasant.”

I can see an internal battle raging inside him. He’s fighting back some kind of offensive remark—deliberating between taking advantage of this prime opportunity to insult me and holding his tongue in order to sustain my unexpected demeanor.

I could honestly care less what he does. He’s not going to affect my mood. Not today. There’s nothing he can do to spoil the good day that I have in store.

Not even when he starts that agonizingly long predeparture procedure that he does before he can go anywhere. Normally it drives me insane. The way he has to check every mirror three times, fiddle with air-conditioning dials to get the absolute perfect temperature, and verify that his windshield wipers are in proper working order—
twice
—before he can even put the car in drive. But today I sit patiently in my seat, humming quietly to myself until it’s time to leave.

I don’t even have to fight the urge to tell him that the chances his windshield wipers have stopped working or his mirrors have been mysteriously realigned between his house and mine are about five billion to one. Like I have to every other day.

Nope. Today, it’s
all
good.

“So, what’s with the good mood?” Luke asks once we’re on the freeway, heading into the valley. “Did Louis Vuitton release a new overpriced, sweatshop-manufactured handbag?”

I smirk. “Not that I’ve heard. But if they do, I’ll be sure to pick one up for you.”

“A new club opening this weekend?” He ventures another guess.

“Nope.”

“So, are you going to tell me, or do I have to keep guessing?”

I turn and face him. “Can’t I just be in a good mood?”

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “No.
You
can’t. Anyone else, sure. But not you.”

I cross my arms over my chest in mock offense. “And why not me?”

“Because you’re Lexington Larrabee. Lexington Larrabee doesn’t simply wake up in a good mood. She has to have just cause. There have to be outside forces at work.”

My mock offense quickly slips into real offense. “That’s not true!”

“Of course it’s true,” he begins knowingly, like he’s a college professor about to start his daily lecture to a hall full of eagerly awaiting students. “You’re all about external motivators. Needing something on the outside to make you feel good on the inside. It’s like some kind of modified codependency.”

I scrunch my nose at him. “Well, thank you, Dr. Carver. I didn’t realize you were also a shrink.”

“I’m double majoring in psychology,” he informs me. “I thought it would be a nice supplement to my business degree. If you’re going to run large corporations one day, you need to be able to get inside your employees’ heads.”

I snort. “And where is this?
Harvard
?”

He suddenly looks forlorn and the arrogance in his voice drops out. “No. Harvard wouldn’t give me a scholarship. USC offered me a full ride. Plus a chance to do a work-study program at your father’s company this year. So I enrolled there. Harvard was my first choice, though.”

“Of course it was,” I mumble. “But regardless, you’re wrong about me. I don’t
need
external whatevers to feel good about myself. I feel good about myself all the time.”

He shoots me a skeptical look. “Sure.”

“I do!” I screech back. “And why wouldn’t I? I’m Lexington Larrabee! In case you haven’t heard, I’m worth twenty-five million dollars!”

“Well, not yet, anyway,” Luke points out, his irritating smugness instantly returning.

“Fine. But I
will
be.”

“And what if you weren’t?” he inquires.

“What if I weren’t what?”

“What if you weren’t Lexington Larrabee? What if you weren’t going to be worth twenty-five million dollars? Would you still feel good about yourself?”

“Yes,” I say hastily, my chest burning with a familiar rage. “Not that it’s any of your business what makes me feel good.”

An awkward silence falls over the car as I quietly seethe in the passenger seat. Then Luke glances over at me and a sneaky smile appears on his lips. “Uh-oh.”

“What?” I growl, my face flushing.

“Looks like I ruined your mood.”

LEXI CAPONE

Luke Carver is the devil. No. Wait. He’s the devil’s
apprentice
. Which is way worse. Because the devil’s apprentice
knows
how evil the devil is—he’s heard the rumors about his immorality and heartlessness and cruelty—and yet he signs on to work for him just the same. He
chooses
to be like him. To dress like him. To talk like him. To follow in his callous footsteps. And that makes him even more wicked, even more abominable than the devil himself.

As we continue to drive, I tell myself to take deep breaths. I remind myself about the brilliant plan I’ve concocted and slowly my anger starts to subside. Just the thought of outmaneuvering Bruce, my father, and his annoying psychology-double-majoring protégé is enough to make the fire blazing in my chest simmer down and restore a blithe smile to my face.

Twenty minutes later we arrive in the remote suburb of Santa Clarita.

“What are we doing way out here?” I ask with a scowl.

“When appropriate your father has specifically chosen remote locations to minimize your risk of being recognized. He doesn’t want the press involved in this.”

I instinctively touch my wig. “Well, that’s
one
thing we have in common,” I remark with a snort.

“Studies have shown that people don’t often recognize things when they’re out of context,” Luke explains, sliding right back into that annoyingly pretentious tone of his.

I think about that bratty little girl at the house last week with her dirty shoes and the
Tattle
magazine with my picture on the cover. I was right in front of her face and I might as well have been invisible. “So I’ve noticed,” I murmur.

Luke navigates through the wide tree-lined streets until finally pulling into a giant parking lot housing a supermarket, an all-you-can eat Italian restaurant chain, a salon offering haircuts for twelve dollars, and one of those bargain clothing stores that has the nerve to call Liz Claiborne a designer label.

“So,” I say breezily, “at which one of these fine establishments will I be spending my week?”

Luke nods at the anchor store in the center—an enormous Albertsons supermarket.

“Let me guess. Grocery bagger?”

Luke reaches into the backseat and pulls the file labeled
Job #2
from his briefcase and flips it open. “Actually you’ll be doing a little of everything.”

I smile enthusiastically and give him a thumbs-up. “Even better.”

“Your assignment this week,” he continues, “is to successfully complete a rotation through every department within the store. That includes bakery, deli, meat, seafood, produce,
and
dry foods.”

“Sounds practical,” I say, nodding with approval. “A very well-rounded schedule. Nicely done.”

Luke flashes me a cut-the-crap look. “Okay. What gives?”

I open my eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

“Last week you moaned and groaned every single day and now suddenly you’re little Miss Sunshine?”

“What can I say,” I respond, with a shrug and a sweet smile. “I’ve decided to change my approach to things.”

He’s clearly not buying it but I don’t really care. I click off my seat belt, grab my bag, and step out of the car. “What time will you be picking me up?” I ask.

“Six,” Luke replies.

“Perfect.”

“Ask for Neil when you get inside. He’s the one who’s supervising you this week.”

I give him a quick salute and toss the bag over my shoulder. “Neil. Got it.”

Luke shoots me one last distrustful look, which I respond to with a sugary smile before turning on the toes of my espadrilles and striding into the store.

Normally when I walk into a supermarket—or any other store for that matter—the world tends to stop spinning. People halt what they’re doing, carts are absentmindedly released and left to run into giant displays of canned goods, and cash registers stop chiming. All eyes look up. Then the whispering starts, followed quickly by the requests for autographs. Cell phone cameras are whipped out and a frenzy of furious texting and Twittering begins.

Not today though. Today I get to experience what it’s like for a normal person to walk into a supermarket. And I’ll tell you, it’s pretty anticlimactic.

Absolutely nothing happens. The world just keeps on turning.

I stand there for a few minutes, taking it in, before a tall, skinny, forty-something man in a black vest comes up to me and says, “You must be Lexi.”

“Nuh-uh,” I correct him, holding up one finger. “This week I’ll be going by the name
Cassandra
.” Then I give him a sly wink. “Aliases are important for protecting one’s true identity.”

He looks highly uninterested. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”

I squint at his name tag. “Neil?”

He nods. “Welcome to Albertsons. C’mon. We’ll get you set up.”

I follow him through the store to a small office in the back. He opens a metal locker behind his desk and starts flipping through a stack of white collared shirts and black vests like the one he’s wearing. He stops long enough to peer around the locker door at me. “What size shirt do you wear? Small?”

“Actually,” I say, taking command of the situation, “a uniform won’t be necessary today.”

“No?” he asks, genuinely confused.

I shake my head and reach into my bag, producing a large bundle of hundred-dollar bills (a generous loan from Jia) and setting it down on the desk between us. “No.”

Neil jumps back slightly at the sight of it. As if I’ve just dropped a dead rat in front of him, as opposed to a giant wad of cash.

“What’s that?” he asks in a wavering voice.

“Ten thousand dollars,” I reply matter-of-factly.

Neil slowly sets down the black vest and reaches out to touch the tightly wrapped bundle with the tip of his index finger. As if checking to make sure it is real.

“What’s it for?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. To feed your children. Buy something nice for your wife. Whatever you want it to be for.”

He looks anxiously at the open door behind me. “But Luke already paid me.”

I turn and close the office door. “This isn’t between you and Luke. It’s between you and
me
.” I look at him purposefully, holding his eye. “
Only
you and me.”

Wow, I’m really good at this. I sound like I’m in a mob movie or something. I guess there’s at least one upside to having Richard Larrabee’s DNA running through my bloodstream.

Neil’s face is still a giant question mark. I kind of feel bad for him. He looks so lost and out of his element.

“You see, I think there’s a way we can help each other,” I explain.

He nods, taking it all in.

I continue. “I need a report at the end of the week saying that I completed five days of working here. And you”—I glance around the small, cluttered office—“seeing that you work at a supermarket, I’m guessing need money.”

I wait for the comprehension to register in his eyes. When he continues to hesitate, I push further. “Do you have kids?” I ask.

“Four.”

I nod, trying to look contemplative. “Hmm. Sounds rough.”

He blinks. No response.

“And expensive.”

More silence.

“So, do we have a deal?”

I can see the gears in his brain clicking away but still he doesn’t utter a single word. That’s okay though. He doesn’t have to say anything. As soon as I watch him slide the money off the desk and deposit it into his pants pocket, I know what the answer is.

It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

With a smug smile, I stroll out of the office, back through the store, and out the front doors. I slide my sunglasses over my eyes, whip out my cell phone, and call the number I programmed in last night.

“Yes, hello,” I say cheerfully. “I need a car service from Santa Clarita to Malibu.”

“Certainly,” comes a friendly, accommodating voice. “Do you have an account with us?”

“No. I’ll be paying cash.”

“Of course. We can have a car out to you in fifteen minutes.”

“Perfect.” I give her the address of the store, click off the phone, and slide it into my pocket.

I pull a large straw sun hat out of my bag and place it on my head with a purposeful tap. I gaze up at the sky and squint gleefully into the beautiful southern California sun.