A hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For one main event and three smaller ones. I’d be a moron to turn this down. A selfish, ungrateful jerk. I exhale heavily.
“What other locations are you considering?” I ask begrudgingly.
Paisley claps and hugs me. “Oh my gosh this is going to be so much fun!”
I hope she’s right, but somehow I doubt it.
2
Trig
I haven’t seen Luke in months, so I figured my old college pal would be happy to see me. I certainly waited in the lobby for him long enough to deserve an effusive greeting.
“Trig! You made it.” He smiles, but then his eyes lift upward, focusing above my face. He bobs his head toward the top of mine. “I know you’re a little more couth than I am, being a trust baby and all, but there’s this thing I’m going to tell you about that will revolutionize your life. It’s called a comb. You can pick one up at most any pharmacy or grocery store.”
He waves me into the conference room. He looks impeccable as always, in a hardworking electrician kind of way. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, he might look better than usual. He’s sporting a nice button down shirt instead of his typical t-shirt, and his shoes are shiny leather instead of scuffed work boots.
I try to run my fingers through my hair, but it’s too tangled for me to succeed. “Early morning skydive, but I still look better than you do, old man.”
I punch him on the arm, pulling back a little so it won’t bruise. Luke used to block against that stuff when we were sparring partners, but he doesn’t even flex this time. “You’re slowing down grandpa. You been slacking?”
Luke shakes his head. “Haven’t had time for Krav Maga in years. Just wait until you have munchkins of your own. You’ll get old and flabby, too.”
Luke may be a few years older than me, but he’s definitely not flabby. “I think I could pull off a gut.” I stick out my stomach.
“Even if you don’t get a pot belly, maybe once you have kids you’ll stop doing idiotic things so often.”
“I like trying new things,” I say. “And I don’t plan to stop. But I don’t think you can blame your kids for being boring. You’ve been like this for more than a decade.”
Luke frowns. “But you haven’t. You never hurled yourself from planes or base jumped in college. Come to think of it, you didn’t do it when we worked on our start up either. When did all this start? Are you having an early mid-life crisis? Should I be scheduling an intervention?”
“I like living life on the edge,” I say. “What do you care?”
“Duh, I’m worried about you,” Luke says. “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s freezing outside. I have no idea why you’d want to go a mile up to begin with, much less fling yourself into the arctic air. You’re certifiable.”
“This feels cold to you, but Atlanta’s way warmer than Colorado right now.”
“Level with me. What’s the underlying compulsion?” Luke looks genuinely curious.
“As you already pointed out, I don’t have kids to worry about.”
“My kids don’t factor into this.” Luke sits down next to me. “Even before I had the rugrats, I never would have voluntarily jumped out of a plane.”
“Have you seen my jet?” I ask. “I doubt it’s been inspected since the Clinton administration. By the time we reach altitude, I feel safer with that parachute on my back than hanging on for dear life in that airborne clunker.”
Luke snorts. “When I saw him last, your dad was bragging about buying you a new Cessna for your birthday.”
My dad only gives absurdly lavish gifts. If it’s not something he can brag about, he won’t buy it. “He says he got them ‘buy two, get one free.’”
“He’s practically a bargain shopper,” Luke says.
“Right? But having a new jet ruins my joke. Actually, speaking of jokes, I heard a rumor I need to confirm. James told me something the other day. Something hilarious.”
“What’s that?” Luke asks. “I always appreciate a good laugh.”
“I heard you joined that new timeshare for jets. JumpJet or some dumb thing. Say it isn’t so.”
Luke nods slowly. “It’s worse than that. I’m living in a trailer, actually. It’s parked in an honest-to-goodness RV park.”
My jaw drops and I sink down onto a boardroom chair. “Seriously?”
He drops into the chair next to me and leans on the table. “Times are tight, and as you know, if a few things go wrong, the money disappears. Quickly.”
“Geez, is that why you asked me to come out?” I lean toward him. “Because Nometry’s doing great. Let’s talk. I can get you and Paul back on your feet. I could even give you both jobs if you need them. You’d be great at scouting for promising electrical and mechanical startups. Or if you’d rather not work for me, tell me what you’re working on. Maybe there’s something we can finance to keep you afloat through this rough patch.”
Luke covers his mouth with one hand, and my heart goes out to him. How bad are things? His office looks fine, at least from the outside. A terrible thought occurs to me and I drop my voice. “Can you make payroll next month? Do you need a loan, like imminently?”
“What if I do?” Luke leans back in his chair. “Do you have enough liquidity to help me?”
“I just wrapped three projects.” I run some numbers in my head. I could push a deal forward and I’d be fine. “What do you need? Two million? More?”
Luke stares at me blankly.
“Five million? I don’t think I could go much higher than that in the next few days. How soon do you need it?”
Luke’s face splits into a grin. “You’re a better friend than I give you credit for Trig. Seriously, things are fine.”
I cough out a laugh. “You’re a punk, Luke. Always have been. I should’ve punched you harder.”
“Maybe you should’ve.” Luke pats the solid wood conference room table. “I do have some news though, and it’s the good kind.”
“Finally we get to the reason you wanted to meet.” I exhale. “Oh, tell me it’s a project. Is it a project? I’ve been wanting to work with you guys again for years. What have you got?”
“We do have something new, actually. If you can keep your big mouth shut, I’ll tell you about it.”
My eyes widen. “Yeah?”
“We’re fine-tuning now, but we’ve finally perfected a car battery that’s under five pounds. Four point three pounds to be precise. And it’s got thirty percent more power than a typical battery, with a year longer life.”
I swear under my breath. I cannot wait to get my hands on this. We’ve talked about it for years.
“But we aren’t looking for capital.” He tilts his head sideways sheepishly. “Paul would never agree to pay your cut again. Sorry.”
That’s just mean. He tells me about the idea of the year, and then yanks it away? I can’t quite prevent my scowl. “Why am I here then?”
Luke sucks on his teeth and it reminds me of how nervous he looked pitching me that very first deal, almost fifteen years ago. I had been out of college for less than a year, and I needed to do something big or I’d never get out from under my mom’s thumb. I was desperate enough to consider an idea from a tooth sucking electrician and his little brother. It helped that Luke had been my best friend and study partner for years, so I knew the electrician façade disguised a vast intellect.
Clearly the exterior and interior have remained the same. Which is one of the things I like best about Luke. Money didn’t change him at all.
“I’m engaged,” Luke says. “And I wanted to ask you to be my best man.”
That explains the upgrade to the shirt and shoes. This girl must be special, because Beth never managed to change a single thing.
“Engaged?” I whistle. “I did not see that one coming.”
Luke’s smile this time is tinged with sadness. I know he still misses Beth, which must mean he found someone truly amazing. He’d settle for nothing less. Be
th was the coolest girl I’d ever met, and she was a perfect fit for Luke. And now he’s found someone? A twinge of jealousy shoots through me, but I stomp it down. He’s asking me to be his best man. What kind of best man is jealous? A lousy one, that’s who.
Besides. I don’t even want a wife. I’ve seen where that goes for Thornton men, and I’m not interested.
“I could never have predicted Mary.” Luke’s eyes light up. “Amy absolutely adores her. Mary won’t ever replace Beth, but she’s gluing our family back together. I didn’t even realize how many sharp places and cracks we were ignoring until Mary started fixing them without being asked. Amy took to her right away, maybe before I did, but Chase has been slower. A few days ago he started calling her ‘Mom’ too.” Luke inhales deeply and I wonder whether he was tearing up.
“Congratulations,” I say. “That’s the best news ever. Seriously I am so happy for you. But won’t Paul be upset if you make me your best man?”
Luke bobs his head. “He’s my brother and he knows he’s my top choice.”
“That hurts a little,” I say. “I’m not going to lie.”
Luke rolls his eyes. “With this battery launching, Paul has even less time than me. We’re pushing for an early May release, and Mary and I are shooting for a mid-April wedding.”
“What’s the rush?” I ask.
“She runs a tax office, for one, so they all get a week off after tax season, which makes it an ideal time to honeymoon.”
“She’s still working?”
“Uh, yes, Trig, it’s not 1953.”
“But it’s not like you need the money.”
“She loves her job.”
“She loves taxes?” I raise my eyebrows because it makes no sense.
Luke shrugs. “But also, we don’t want to wait. We can’t cohabitate.” Luke’s eyebrows lift. “Kids.”
A huge belly laugh escapes before I can stop it. “Got it.”
“Plus, life is short. You wait too long for something and you’re likely to miss out. If Beth taught me anything, it’s to be grateful for every single second I have. I’d love to call Mary my wife tomorrow. But she wants a ceremony with friends and family, and I can’t fault her for that. She deserves the big white dress, the flowers, the oohing and aahing from friends. She deserves all of it, and I’m going to make sure she gets it. But since Paul’s stuck handling the lion’s share of the details on our new launch, he has zero time to plan a bachelor party and whatnot.”
“So you’re using me . . . for my planning skills?”
Luke sighs. “For a guy, you can be a real diva. We’ve hired an amazing wedding planner, and she’s on tap to set up the entire Bachelor party. You can do as much or as little as you want, but if you have time to meet her for lunch today, you can point her in the right direction. I told her you’d be in town and she carved out some time. You can tell her what you have in mind and she’ll make it happen so you don’t need to feel used.”
“She’ll make it happen? You have a lot of confidence in this woman.”
“Mary adores her already and she’s only been working for us a week. Anyone who lightens Mary’s load and makes her smile gets rave reviews from me.” Luke stands up. “You want to come see the operation?”
“Uh, heck yes.” I follow Luke from the office complex to the R&D labs. Paul’s hunched over a table examining something under a microscope.
“Hey nerd,” I say. “I hear you’ve been busy.”
Paul turns around to face me, and I’m a little annoyed to see that he’s still as much of a pretty boy as ever. Age never seems to touch him much. He’s even sporting the trendy beard everyone has right now and somehow making it work. All through college, girls flocked to Paul, and I’m sure they still do. He was too focused on school to really appreciate how little he had to work. What I could have done with his face, though. I swear.
“Bernie, good to see you.”
I cringe when he calls me that. “You do not give up.”
Paul crosses the room to give me a side hug. “Your name’s Bernard, dude. You can thank your parents for that. If you’ve convinced everyone to call you Trig, well, I never bought into the rebranding.”
I slap his back. Hard. “I hear you’ve followed your brother’s lead to another huge success.”
Paul backs up a step and his nostrils flare like they always do. “We can’t all be innovators, you know. Some of us have to simply take the ideas from others and implement them well.”
“I’m kidding, Paul. Luke wouldn’t ever have made his lightbulbs work without you. Plenty of people have ideas. You make them reality.”
“Well, this battery probably won’t hit as big as your last venture. I mean, we can’t all make the newest sugar substitute that also blocks the reuptake of fat cells, but we’re happy with it.”
“I didn’t create anything. I just bankrolled it,” I say. “And Brekka found that one, not me.”
“You’ve always owed your success to her,” Luke says. “How’s she doing?”
“My sister never stops swinging,” I say. “She’s the strongest person I know, and probably the smartest.”
“Tell her I said hello,” Paul says. “I need to get out to Colorado soon. Maybe I can take her to dinner when I do, but it probably won’t be until June.”
“Launching in May, Luke tells me. I hope it goes smoothly for you.”
Paul shakes his head. “Never goes smoothly, but I’ve gotten pretty good at flattening out issues over the years. Mostly because I have a good legal team, strong contract negotiators, and a marketing budget that would make you cry.”
“Good call,” I say.
Luke glances at his watch. “I’ve got a few minutes to show you the prototypes, but if you want to meet our planner for lunch, you’ll need to leave pretty soon. She said noon, and she’s never late.”
“I think she can wait for me a few minutes if she has to,” I say. “She does work for you, and I assume you’re paying her top dollar.”
Luke nods his head slowly. “Sure, if you want to keep her waiting, that’s your call. But you are going, then?”
“I don’t plan to buy the cups and napkins for your party myself,” I say. “So yeah, I think a lunch to point her in the right direction sounds like a good idea.”
“Nothing crazy, okay?” Luke says.
“Could you clarify? Do you mean no strippers on poles? Or, like no trips to Paris? And does it make a difference if we use my jet? Because I am not taking your timeshare air bus anywhere. I might actually need to parachute out and that takes the fun out of it.”
Luke shakes his head. “I have kids, Trig. I didn’t think I’d need to tell you no strippers.”
“Ease up,” I say. “It’s like literally the bachelor party joke. But I do want some parameters as to what crazy means. No skydiving, I assume?”
Luke smiles. “Absolutely no skydiving.”
“How do you feel about cliff jumping?”
Luke groans. “No cliff jumping, or base jumping, no extreme skiing, and no paragliding.”
“Parasailing?” I ask, just to annoy him.
Paul clears his throat. “Don’t make me step in and take over as best man. Because I will totally do it if I have to.”
“I’m kidding, geez. I’ll come up with something decent that takes no more than two days and isn’t too terrifying for the little old grannies I’m friends with.”
“Have fun at your brunch.” Paul smirks.
“It’s a lunch,” I protest.
Luke and Paul exchange a smile I don’t understand before I follow Luke down to the applied science and testing unit on the ground floor. “What was that weird grin thing about?”
“What are you talking about?” Luke lifts one eyebrow like I’m crazy.
“Oh come on, I saw you and Paul share some kind of look. What’s going on?”
Luke narrows his eyes at me. “Let’s just say that Mary likes to play matchmaker. It’s become a kind of weird hobby for her sin
ce we got engaged.”
“How much matchmaking could she have done in the last twenty-six minutes?”
“I proposed at Christmas, thank you very much.”
“Of course you did,” I say. “Because you’re completely unswayed by the emotions of the season.” The elevator bings and we step out on the first floor, heading out of the office complex and over toward applied science.
“It wasn’t an emotional decision,” Luke says.
I choke back a laugh.
“It was, but I mean, I never regretted it. I didn’t do it because of Christmas.”
“Right, because everyone falls in love in a few weeks and proposes at Christmas.”
He scowls. “The point is, Mary has a sister and—“
“Wait, tell me this wedding planner isn’t Mary’s ugly little sister.”
Luke frowns. “Trudy’s not ugly, and no, Geo’s not Mary’s younger sister. And it’s Paul who Mary’s eyeing for her sister, not you. He’s been evading Mary’s multitudinous attempts at introducing them like a stray avoids the dogcatcher. It’s gotten almost ridiculous.”
“She’s that bad, huh?”
“Trudy’s very attractive, just like Mary. Paul’s just a little leery of trusting anyone right now.” We’ve reached the large warehouse building by the Lit Up Applied Science office park. Luke opens the door and gestures me inside. “Mary did note that Geo’s single and that if my best man was single, it might be nice if you met.”
I pull up short. I’m sick of being set up with women who can’t wait to meet the most eligible billionaire under forty. I liked it in college. Not so much now.
“Relax. This girl has some kind of rule. She doesn’t date at all, from what I’ve heard, so she’s definitely not going to be chasing you.”
“So she’s gay?”
“Something like that,” Luke says.
We spend so long looking at the functionality and ease of the new battery that it’s already noon when Luke walks me to my car.
Finding Cupid (Almost a Billionaire Book 2) Page 2
