Greatest Distraction (Distracted #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Elle: Not like it matters if they fire you.*
    * Me: Don’t start woman. *
    * Elle: Okay okay! #justsaying*
    I could almost see my friend holding her hands up, as if to keep me from going back down that road. It was another thing that we talked about often. Truth be told, I really didn’t need my job. The thing was that I wanted it. Remember when I said that Chris had a trust fund and was loaded? Yeah, well, when my father passed away, he left his estate entirely to me. He’d been successful in the farming industry (yes, farming) and had stocks in just about everything. I didn’t touch the money often, much to Elle’s dismay. She could never understand why I worked instead of living off his money. My reason?
    My father always worked. He was the one who was up before the sun, doing all that needed to be done. Even later in life, when he’d long since traded his work gloves and coveralls for slacks and a button down. He was the first in the office in the mornings and the last to leave at night. He’d always tell me, “ Ry, to live fully, you must work wholly. Money doesn’t grow on trees and success isn’t a random shrub that blooms.”
    He’ d been gone almost ten years, and still I followed his example. Of course, when he passed and I was younger, I didn’t really understand what he’d meant. At nineteen, all I’d known was that his words had been important to him, and he had been important to me. So, I’d kept the job I’d worked part time in college, even deciding to stay afterward.
    Now, at twenty-eight, I knew what his words meant. In order to do what you want, when you want, you have to work hard. Money is earned, rarely given, never grown, and everything takes it. Elle’s one of the few who still doesn’t get it. She was already set before she got married, moneywise – her family was independently wealthy … well, wealthy for being wealthy anyway. Nick was military, not that it mattered; money between them was never a problem. Luckily though, she rarely ever truly pushed me on the issue.
    Elle and I had agreed to disagree a long time ago. She understood that I wanted to work, even if not why. I knew she thought I was being foolish about it, not living off money that was mine. Actually, the real argument about my money and working usually came from Chris. Apparently, any princess of his should never work, and live his life. Not. Happening. Buddy. I actually like working, if I’m honest. Talking to people, using my brain … It works for me.
    Luckily most of the other men I’d ever dated never had any idea about the money I had waiting for me in the bank. It wasn’t any of their business what my bottom dollar was … Besides, half the time I didn’t know. I hadn’t touched it since it’d been transferred to me after my father’s funeral. They’d tried to set it up where some would automatically transfer to my account monthly like an allowance, but I’d kiboshed that. No. I would work and it would be kept as a safety net. So it sat pretty for times like now, when I wanted – no, needed – to get away.
    The chime of my phone shook me out of my musings.
    * Elle: You can stay at Central Park, if you want. No one is there now*
    ‘Central Park’ meant her flat right off of Central Park in New York City. Her parents bought it for her when she turned eighteen and we went to college at NYU. Sure, it was a bit away, walking distance, about six miles from campus, but Elle had wanted the view. What Elle wanted, Elle got. We’d stayed there for the entire four years before moving to Atlanta. I wish I could say we had a good reason for picking Georgia, but, well, we didn’t. We’d simply closed our eyes and pointed on a map, and that’s what we got.
    Elle usually rented it out to other college students during the year, so I was surprised to hear that no one was there. I hadn’t even thought about New York. Ah, how I missed the Big Apple. When we’d arrived, two girls fresh from the country of