Magda felt the flush from the alcohol as she swayed to the music of the party.
When she’d accepted her scholarship to MIT, she had never envisioned she’d be at a huge party for Halloween with three new friends and being drunk underage. In school she’d never even had one best friend because she’d been the class nerd. She’d been valedictorian but the title hadn’t come with buddies. Now she had three best friends and a social life.
She’d had a crush on a boy all through high school and he’d finally told her he reciprocated her feelings and they’d planned on sleeping together for the first time on prom night. But her overbearing mother and her overprotective daddy had ruined it with a cheque two hours before prom.
But she was away from them. Her overzealous parents who thought her virtue was able to be preserved at a cost. She had been very shy but something about having your parents pay your boyfriend to go away had been the height of humiliation. Every one in her graduating class had known about it. He’d taken the cheque and had laughed all the way to the bank at her expense.
Now as she gyrated on the floor in her costume with her friends who had not only accepted her costume of choice but had all gone with her as creatures from Lord of The Rings she was feeling accepted and appreciated by her peers.
Her parents might have picked out her college, her major and had insisted she take on a courseload which would bar her from having even the slightest of a social life but what they hadn’t counted on was her need to have even just one friend who understood her. She now had three and they were bumping and grinding with glee. Her mother would have had a conniption.
“Magda Onassis!”
She blinked as the sound of her mother’s voice penetrated her ear drum and she looked into the bottom of the empty solo cup. She was hallucinating. She stopped moving and lifted the cup to her ear and then looked back into it. “Mom?”
She looked to her friends and was strangely curious when it appeared they heard her too. “Um, I think there were drugs in my drink because I’m hearing my mom’s voice.” She whispered at Dimitra. The pretty brunette was making not-so-subtle slices across her neck as if warning her to stop speaking and then as the effects of the alcohol suddenly vanished, she felt her stomach drop to her feet. She turned slowly to see her mother standing not six feet away from her.
Lois Onassis was every bit the upper crust of the social echelon and as she stood furiously eyeballing her daughter with the same green eyes her daughter possessed, Magda considered for a brief moment she was being punked.
“Did someone come dressed as my mom?” she leaned sideways to Darya and whispered. Her sound echoed in the weird silence surrounding them and she cringed as the woman charged at her.
Darya’s whispered “oh shit” did not reassure her.
Her mother’s tight grip on her forearm dragging her from the party and through the house out into the parking lot was horrifying. She looked over her shoulder to see her three friends following at a respectable distance. Her mother couldn’t murder her with witnesses.
The woman was dragging her across campus by her arm, scolding her the entire time as if she were a toddler who had taken a cookie from the jar without permission.
“I gave you strict orders not to engage in this sort of partying with the riffraff, and where do I find you? Dressed like the village waif, drunk and rubbing your genitalia all over another girl’s bottom.”
She peered back at the girls who had snickered at her mother’s comment. As they approached the dorm, her mother held up her hand. “Where do you think you three are going?”
“I’m going to my room,” Sienna, her roommate whispered. “My feet hurt after dancing like a dwarf?” She pulled her beard off and gave Lois a wide smile, lifting her feet ensconced in work boots up for view. “They really ache.”
Lois huffed, “fine, you can come in but you two,” she pointed, glaring at Dimi and Darya as if they were poison, “should return to your own rooms before I call the Dean and let him know you were all underaged drinking. I’m sure he would make the call to your parents.”
“I’m sure he would,” Dimi nodded and backed up. As the woman marched forward keeping her hand tight on Magda’s arm, she mouthed to Magda, “call us!”
In their room Sienna immediately began taking her costume off and Lois shrieked. “Child! Do you have no sense of decorum? You do not strip in front of strangers!”
“It’s only Magda! We’ve been sharing a room for three full months. At this point, I’ve heard all of her bodily functions more than once, especially after the chicken catastrophe three weeks ago. She had to poo in that can right over there.”
Magda glared at her over her mother’s shoulder. Clearly the quietest of the bunch of them turned into a raging maniac when liquor was poured into her body in vast quantities. “Sienna!”
“You were sick? You didn’t call home to let me know?”
“Mom, the entire student body was sick. It was bad processed chicken.”
“Magda, you have a delicate constitution. Why were you eating processed chicken? Fish and rice and green leafy vegetables.” Her mother clutched the pearls hanging around her neck as if horrified Magda would put anything other than pre-approved sustenance into her body.
“Mom. I’m fine.” She frowned, “why are you here. Is daddy with you?”
“No. Your father had an important meeting to attend this weekend. I knew you were up to no good when I called you this morning so I boarded the first flight. There will be no more of this Magda!” she pointed at her wagging her finger frantically. “No drinking. No boys. No sex. You are here to get your education so you can work at your father’s company with him and then you will return home.”
“No boys?” Sienna asked as she pulled a big hairy wig off her head and tossed it on the floor. “What about girls? Can she date girls?” As Lois rounded on her she held her hands up, “not me, Mrs. Onassis. I like boys. Well from a distance. Usually, they scare the shit out of me. Frightening creatures with their penises and testosterone.” She made wide wild eyes and shook her hands out. “No thank you. Girls are worse though. They’ll steal your soul for a nickel and a tickle.”
“Oh my god, Sienna, would you shut up!” Magda hissed at her as her friend and roommate fell backwards onto the bed groaning and kicking her legs in the air trying to remove the oversized pants she had on.
“We should order pizza. I bet Dimi would pay for it.” She looked to Lois, “her family is loaded. They send her so much money each month it’s sinful. If I had that kind of money, I’d be evil. I know I wouldn’t use it for good purposes. I’d have male hookers and blow every single day of my life.”
“Sienna!” Magda grabbed a pillow and threw it at her. “You are not helping.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” she whispered back. “I’m deflecting her anger off you onto me. Go with it. She can’t pull me out of college.”
“Magda, get into your pyjamas. We are going to bed.”
“We?” Magda blinked at her mother. The woman’s perfect complexion with nary a freckle was smooth and even despite the rage oozing off her. Magda considered the vast quantity of martinis were keeping her mother preserved like one of those fetal pigs in the bio lab.
“Yes, we. I will be staying here tonight to ensure you do not attempt any more foolish endeavors to sneak out to a party and engage in further underage drinking, dancing like whores,” her mother pronounced the ‘wh’ in whores like it was a whistle, “or whatever other debauchery your so-called friends are pulling you into. I raised you better. You are an Onassis and you forget the world is watching.”
“Can I just say –” Sienna interrupted.
“No!” both Magda and her mother spoke unanimously.
Lois continued, “Magda. I saw a copy of your test scores and one of them was quite low. A ninety-four!”
“That was the test you took while trying not to shit yourself from bad chicken!” Sienna giggled as she wriggled up into her bed and slipped under the sheets. She pulled out a chocolate bar wrapper and examined, “oh phooey. I was hoping there was still some in here.”
Lois ripped the foil away from the girl and tossed it in the bin. “This room is a pigsty. In the morning, you two are going to go through this room and clean it to my satisfaction. Is this understood?”
“Yes ma’am,” Magda nodded once as Sienna made a loud snoring sound. She quickly pulled a clean t-shirt and shorts on and turned back to face her mother who was watching Sienna like a deer in the headlights.
Her mother turned away from the young woman, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Magda, you need to choose your friends more discerningly. I checked and she’s not as bright as you. Her GPA is a three-point-seven. Hardly enough to compete with the brain power you have.”
“Mom, she’s brilliant in her own field. It’s just hard when you have to take prerequisites which aren’t your favorites because its program dictated.”
“You make excuses for her.”
“It’s not an excuse if it’s factual,” she sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Why did you come here? Everyone is going to be making fun of me. I wanted to fit in and make friends and instead my mother just pulled me from a party. It’s humiliating.”
“Magda,” her mother shook her head, reaching an elegant finger out to tilt her head upwards. “I am here for you. You are so important and special and I never want anyone to take advantage of the kindness and gentle nature of your heart. You also don’t make great decisions. You once spent an entire summer dressed in purple thinking with your eye color and hair it would be attractive. The bathing suit made you appear like an eggplant.”
“Mother!” she frowned at her. “I was eight.”
“You were wrong and still too proud to admit it,” her mother corrected with a sneer before smiling softly. “I love you too much to let you devalue yourself or lower yourself to the levels of these girls who would trade their lives away on their looks. We,” she waved her fingers between them, “we will never be the most beautiful women in the room but we can be the smartest. The women in our family are handsome women who rely on their brains. If you start messing up now, you will end up like your cousin Jasper.”
“What’s wrong with Jasper?” Magda blinked at her mother.
“Can you believe she’s going to be a kindergarten teacher?”
This was news to her and while she saw no issue herself with the girl pursuing her own dreams of working with snotty nosed kids, her family would be horrified. “All it took was one little photograph to circulate and she was no longer class president, her grades slipped and she is the laughingstock of our family. Do not be a Jasper Magda.”
“Mom, going to a Halloween party dressed as a hobbit isn’t going to send me on the wicked path of kindergarten teaching.” She tried not to roll her eyes. Her family full of scientists and engineers were snobby at best.
Her mother tapped her cheek warningly, “Magda. I am here to protect you and to warn you. If you fail to maintain the standards of our family and abide by the rules your father and I set for you, then you will come home. We will pull all your funding. You will lose your trust fund. You will not be permitted to stay here in Boston in the program you preferred over the others we selected for you. You are just barely eighteen. Hardly old enough to make decisions which will impact the rest of your life. Do not make me take you home and have you finish your entire program online under my constant supervision. Am I clear?”
“Yes ma’am,” she looked to the floor fighting the angriness she was feeling.
“Good. I missed an entire day of work in the lab today to come make sure you were safe. Scoot over. I want to cuddle my little darling and know you are okay.”
“Don’t you want something to change into?” Magda looked at her mother’s pencil skirt, tweed coat and white blouse.
“No. If I have to get up in the night to chase you down the hall, I won’t be doing it in shorts with the letters MIT emblazoned on my buttocks.”
In spite of herself she giggled as she nestled up in her mom’s open arms, resting her head on her shoulder. “Mom, at some point, you need to stop being so overprotective.”
“We can talk about it on your thirtieth birthday.” Her mom kissed her forehead. “You and your father are all I have in this world and I will do everything in my power to make sure you are safe and ready to take over the family business when it’s time.”
She wanted to rage at her mother and ask why she had to take over her father’s business when it was not what she wanted but instead, with the alcohol still buzzing low in her system, she closed her eyes and let her mother’s stroking of her hair, put her to sleep.
“So, you see, Mr. Winter,” Dimitra continued, “the app will allow you to take electronic transferring of funds one step further. The beta testing confirmed it’s reliability. We’ve worked out all the bugs and kinks. Since your local bank was kind enough to let us beta test, we thought we would give you first kick at the can in terms of an offer.”Magda stared at the computer screen in front of her, as Dimi finished the presentation. The minute she had walked in and met Ares Winter in person, she had felt like a bug on a microscope. He had been staring at her hard and his questions, while directed at the group of them, felt as if he were speaking to her and her alone.Magda wasn’t the strong confident type. Having parents who had sheltered her most of her life and a childhood of engaging in activities which c
Magda put the paddle board into the sand and looked up at the man standing beside her. The sun was low in the sky, the beach long deserted and the last two surfers on the shore standing side by side after riding in their last wave of the day.“Hi.”“Hello.”Without further ado, he pulled her into his arms and dug his fingers into the thick knotted mess of wet hair draping over her shoulders. His mouth descended on hers and she inched as close to him as she could, her arms draping around his neck as his lips stole her breath. Soft and plush his lips slid across hers, tasting of the salt and sweat of the day in the water. He smelled of sunshine and his body cool to the touch.Dropping to their knees, Ares continued kissing her, his lips locked to hers. Magda wondered how she could breathe as he licked, su
Sunday morning, Magda was at the line waiting her turn to catch the next wave when a warm voice beside her sent a shiver down her spine.“Ms. Onassis, what a surprise.”She had left the house at the crack of dawn because she’d known the waves at this particular beach were going to be incredible this morning. Word had gotten out and when she’d gotten here as the sun came up there had easily been twenty people on the beach. She desperately had needed the distraction and the reason for it was now standing beside her. Curse her luck.She cast a sideways glance to the man beside her. “Mr. Winter, I’ve never seen you here before.”“Nor I you,” he shrugged at the coincidence. “I come here fairly frequently.”“I don’t come as often but one of the
Ares sat at his desk in his home office and groaned. He was distracted and it wasn’t like him in the least. He was entirely focused on the sweetest, prettiest girl he’d ever met in his life and his lust for her was out of control.The file he had his security pull on her beckoned him again and he forced himself to leave the icon on his screen closed.He’d already committed it to memory anyway.Magda Onassis. Recently turned twenty-six. Masters from MIT. Only a handful of dates and no real number of boyfriends. He counted a high school boy and a married man in the months before she went to the UK. She had three close friends but he glossed over their details. He didn’t give a shit about any of them. Just her.His VP of operations had arranged the meeting with the developers of the app they had been beta testing. Feedback had been more than remarkable and he was ready to give the group an easy payday so he could take their product, imp
Magda left the beach house annoyed with her friends. They were the best friends any girl could have but occasionally they got so caught up in shenanigans they forgot how amazing they were as independent women. Dimi was so hellbent on making her ex crazy, she was dragging them with her and while she would do whatever Dimi wanted because it is what best friends do, some of her plans were often extreme. Darya on the other hand was a punch first ask questions second kind of person and this morning she had told Dimi the best way to get Miklos Laskaris to sign divorce papers was to kidnap him, hold him at gunpoint and force him to put his signature on themThe entire conversation had escalated into a horrible plotting surrounding how they would do such a thing. Magda was quaking in her shoes they would actually try to accomplish Darya’s suggestion. Finally, she had said she needed to go to the grocery store to get a few things but really she needed a breath. She would go alon
She entered the coffee shop and noted it was pretty quiet and reminded herself it was a Wednesday afternoon. She walked to the counter and waited behind the man in line ahead of her, keeping her eyes on the menu board instead of darting around anxiously for any glimpse of Ares Winter. A warm voice in her ear behind her made her shiver and her eyes automatically close. “Get the dark roast special of the day. I promise you won’t regret it.” She turned her head a fraction and was enveloped in the smell of sunshine and salt air which accompanied the handsome man leaning over her shoulder. “Hello.” The desire to lean backwards into his heat made her propel herself a half inch forward. “Hello. I’m glad you came.” “I had to know what kind of coffee could get you to leave the office.” He pouted, “really? Nothing to do with seeing me here?” Her eyes danced at his frown, seeing the reciprocated laughter in his, “not in the least. It’s ab
Magda’s phone was on speaker and Sienna was squealing like a pig stuck with a poker.“Would you stop?”“I can’t,” Sienna gushed. “It’s so exciting and sexy. He took one look at you in the boardroom and set his sights on you.”“You’ve been spending too much time in the fiction section of the library,” Magda was putting dishes away from the dishwasher in the kitchen while she talked to her third best friend. “Quite possibly the section of the type of romance novels they sell in drugstores and airport bookstores.”“Who has time,” Sienna complained. “I’m trying to work on my thesis, visit mom, work in the library, and then work more on my thesis.”“And have you done any flirting with Mr. Private Security Detail?”“We’re talking about you and the billionaire banker who wants to bang you, not my crush on a man w
Magda walked up the beach back towards the house and saw both Dimi and Darya waiting for her.“Feel better?” Dimi asked.“Depends,” she shot a look at Darya.“Mags, I’m sorry. I’m worried about you and it’s coming out all wrong.”“You think?”“Ares Winter isn’t like anyone else you’ve dated. You are such a good person. You have a good heart and a beautiful soul and he’s a playboy. He has a different woman on his arm every other week. He goes through women like he does dollar bills. I don’t want you to get hurt.”“Do you think I don’t know he’s out of my league and superior to me?”“No!” Darya shook her head. “Nobody is saying he’s superior to you. Inferior yes. You’re too good for him. I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of. He’s using you.”“