Mo-No got up and wiped a crumb of gluten-free vegan rice cracker from her designer skirt and coddled her dog.
“Auntie Dreena’s so right, isn’t she, Chachi. She’s always right.”
I smiled at Sylvie for this mini-triumph. We played pat-a-cake as her swing came toward me and then again when it returned. She had the cutest giggle. Could Monique-Noelle herself ever have been a darling child like this? Pure and innocent? It was hard to imagine what kind of mile-long moral slide she’d been on to arrive in the ghastly lump as now existed.
“I’m always right.” Dreena sounded as if she’d won the state debate club championship.
“Fine. I’ll at least wait until I find a perfect replacement before I ditch MacDowell. It’s risky and stupid to dump him before I have somewhere else to go, someone with a better title at work, a bigger yacht, more hair.”
“Definitely more hair. Okay, I’m down for that.”
My stomach filled with hot lead as the two blood-suckers gurgled with laughter at their terrible plan.
Were they actually being serious? I’d heard them talk this way before plenty of times, but I’d always assumed they were joking. Today didn’t seem like a joke. Were people on this earth really that shallow and materialistic? Another swing of little Sylvie and my heart wrenched, like water being wrung from a rag. I had to protect her from this somehow.
“Oh, Eliza,” Mo-No screeched in my general direction, and I winced. “You’re not going to have next week off after all.”
“Oh?” I asked through gritted teeth. I’d made plans, fool that I was.
“I know you’ve been eavesdropping, so I’ll just be clear. You’ll be watching Sylvie all weekend while Dreena and I do a little shopping on the mainland.”
“Make that hunting.” Dreena cackled at her joke, and I envisioned her with the head of a hyena.
“The whole weekend, Monique-Noelle?” She preferred not to be called by any last name, and now I could see why. She wasn’t planning on keeping Sylvie’s last name of Bainbridge for much longer. No such ties made it easier to flit from flower to flower—or cow pie to cow pie, as the case may be. I’d seen plenty of cabbage moths flapping their little wings around a cow patty here and there on my dad’s ranch out in inland California.
There were plenty of days I’d rather be watching that view than this one, even if this was the prettiest island off the coast of California. If it wasn’t for Sylvie, I would’ve bolted away from Monique-Noelle faster than my horse Black Jack could have raced at this moment.
“Nannies are the best.” Dreena sighed dreamily. “I wish I had one now.”
“But you don’t have any kids yet.”
“I mean a nanny for me. I hate having to do things for myself. I need a nanny. Can I borrow yours?”
No. Absolutely not. But I wouldn’t have put it past Mo-No to say yes and farm me out.
“She could make my lunch. I really like those little baggies of fruit snacks. As long as they’re organic fruit. I’m not ashamed to admit that.”
Or anything else, apparently.
“Sure. You can borrow Eliza.”
I smothered a primal groan and turned away.
“But wait until I don’t have Sylvie for a weekend. Her dad sometimes will take her to a toy store. You can have Eliza then.” Mo-No shook out her enormous blond mane. “Don’t worry, Eliza. You’d still get paid for being Dreena’s nanny. Same rate. No discount for Dreena’s age.”
They cackled. Like the witches they were.
Somebody had to protect Sylvie. And to do that, somebody really ought to put Mo-No in her place.
ACT II: Scene 2
Lots of Chocolate [Cheese Puffs] for Me to Eat
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA
In which our heroine confers with a confidante, the daughter of Admiral Pickering, and stumbles upon a noble plan.
“Somebody ought to put that harpy in her place.” Polly took another round, orange cheese puff from the barrel-sized plastic tub on her coffee table and popped it in her mouth.
“That’s exactly what I said.”
Mo-No’s edict hadn’t come true. Dreena’s sugar-daddy husband had whisked her off to Fiji, and Mo-No, pouting, had sent Sylvie to her grandparents’ house in San Jose.
The second Sylvie boarded the chopper, I’d made my own beeline out of San Nouveau—to make myself invisible before Mo-No could assign me to nanny any of her other vapid friends. I was not interested in being sublet to make carb-free sandwiches or fetch and carry different shades of nail polish for spoiled rich wives.
Polly wiped the orange dust from her fingers and said, “She is leapfrogging into First-Worst Person place, if you ask me. Dumping her husband because of his hair? That’s unreal.”
I took a cheese ball of my own. Ew. They weren’t as good as they looked, and that was saying something. Cheese puffs were kind of like guys: you could tell by just looking at them they probably weren’t worth the calories, or the time, or the extra swipe of mascara, but after a while, because they were the only thing around and someone else seemed to be getting a measure of enjoyment out of them, you just eventually bit—and then went ew.
“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, believe me.” I pounded my head against the back of her couch. “Mo-No is looking not just to trade up money-wise—because, considering MacDowell Bainbridge’s untold fortune, how could she?—but now she wants someone with notoriety. She wants to be a Kardashian.” Talking about it made me kind of sick. I needed to change the subject. “How’s the waiting for Lieutenant Geordie going?” She hated when I called him by his rank, but sometimes I couldn’t help myself.
“Deathly dull. Now that school’s out and I don’t have a million eighth-graders to instill a love of theater in, I’m bored out of my skull. It leaves me itching for some kind of project.”
“What about wedding plans? Aren’t you in The Zone now? It’s just three months off, right?”
“Oh, whatever. Geordie’s gone. I told you, his naval unit’s waiting to get shipped out and he’s in Coronado, so planning is no fun. Nothing’s fun, not without him.”
I feigned offense, but it was kind of sweet, too, the way she was so devoted to him.
“Present company excepted.” Polly ate three more bright orange cheese puffs and then slapped the lid back on the barrel. “Besides, my mom took all that over. Silk tents on the beach, orchestra playlist selections, crab puffs versus artichoke dip as the crudités, no thanks. Making those kinds of decisions is not my idea of a good time.”
Polly was the rare bride who didn’t care about the party, only wanted the marriage. And that was why we’d been best friends ever since we met at UCLA our freshman year seven years ago. I never really thought much about how different our backgrounds were anymore: she the daughter of one of the highest ranking admirals in the U.S. Navy, and me the lowly daughter of a cattle rancher from inland California. Our upbringings and outlooks on life were so different—with her as the princess of all the things, and me just scraping by—but we’d never even fought.
“Maybe you should try out for a play. Be in the local production of A Christmas Carol, or something. Ooh, I know: be the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.” I fake-rattled some chains at her.
“I’d be good at that. I can do a mean future-ghost screech.” She demonstrated, and I heard all the birds in the trees outside the open window take immediate flight.
That was a skill set.
“Speaking of jobs, why don’t you quit yours? Just up and leave that—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. “She’s Sylvie’s mom. And Sylvie needs at least one stable adult in her world.”
“Sylvie’s going to grow up and be just like her, you know.”
“That’s what I’m trying to prevent.”
“There’s nurture and nature at play here. You’ve got too much to work against.”
Maybe, but I was still going to work—like crazy. I wasn’t going to let a life go to waste. I ground my
fist into my palm.
“I’d just like to stick it to her. Just once.”
Polly cracked a laugh. “Stick it to her? You’re sounding like me, not like Eliza Galatea. She must really have gotten your goat.”
“You should have heard her last week, Polly. It was plain offensive.”
“And you think you could undo a lifetime of selfishness by sticking it to her?”
Probably not. But if I didn’t try, I would regret it forever.
“Look, if Mo-No got put in her place one time, maybe she’d wake up and realize what a terrible, horrible, no good person—and mother—she is, and try to change. Do better. For Sylvie’s sake, if not for her own.”
“It won’t work.”
“I know.” It would be like trying to hold back an avalanche with a solitary snow shovel. I sat back in dejection and flicked a cheese crumb off my sweater. “We should get some real food.”
“We totally should, but…wait.”
“Wait, what? Until we’ve eaten all the cheese puffs? Because this tub is the size of a Volkswagen.”
“No. I mean, I want to help you.” Polly’s eyes took on that glint of mischief I’d seen before—like the time we refilled her ex-boyfriend’s toothpaste tube with another substance.
“Help me what?”
“Exact revenge.” Polly drummed her fingers on the table as if she were cooking up a plan. Or a project. “You know, on Madame Evil, and possibly on her like-minded friends.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t getting sucked into something like that again. I had too much to lose; case in point: Sylvie.
“No way. I won’t do anything that would hurt the little girl I watch.”
“Oh, of course you’re right.”
“Besides,” I sighed. “Revenge isn’t what I have in mind.”
“No, no.” Polly sat back, brushing off my firm rejection. “Still, you have to do something. If you do nothing you’re just as guilty as if you facilitated her new-man hunting.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe Polly was right. My stomach growled as my mind spun. But, when I considered all the ways any kind of plan could go wrong, I decided against doing anything rash to Mo-No.
“That woman definitely needs to be taken down a notch, but usually I’d say let’s leave that kind of thing up to God. He’s better at planning those things.”
“Naturally,” she said; however, in actuality Polly hadn’t stopped scheming, even when I invoked the Name of Heaven. “But what if it was more of a harmless prank, like a bait and switch, and then a Big Reveal? Just a slice of humble pie more than any actual pain inflicted on anyone—and definitely Sylvie would be unaffected.”
There were no guarantees no one would get hurt. “Humiliation is pain.”
“Humiliation doesn’t cause any real harm. In fact, in your own words, it might help her wake up. For your little Sylvie, it’d be totally harmless.” Polly drummed her fingers together and then touched the tips of her index fingers to her lip, as if in thought. Then she sat forward suddenly. “In fact, ultimately, I’m sure she could think of it as a joke.”
Doubtful. No woman on earth had less of a sense of humor about herself than Monique-Noelle.
“It sounds like you already have something in mind.” I would never dream of acting on Polly’s scheme, but I’d at least give it a listen, if only to humor my bestie. “Okay, fine. Tell me.”
Her eyes lit up with the Toothpaste Prank glint.
“You know I’m into theater.”
“And?”
“And, there was a revival of My Fair Lady at the Pantages Theater a couple of years ago, over in Hollywood.”
“So?”
“So, you’ve seen it.”
I hadn’t, actually. “I do know the song ‘I Feel Pretty.’”
“Uh, that’s from West Side Story, another classic, but not the same. Maybe you know the song ‘Wouldn’t it Be Loverly?’”
Nope.
“‘The Rain in Spain’?”
“Stays mainly in the plain. I know that one. Fine. Anyway, what about it?” Could we just get on with it without a rehearsal of all the soundtrack? Or was it called the score when it was a stage play? Whatever. Let’s move on.
“So, the plot is from a Greek myth, turned into a George Bernard Shaw play, turned into a musical.”
“Turned into life? Is that where you’re leading?” I could feel the rumblings of what she had in mind, even if I didn’t have any details yet, and I knew it would never work. “Because if so, this would be the most egregious example of life imitating art imitating art imitating art imitating art, et cetera.”
Polly threw a cheese puff at my head. “Hear me out.”
Fine. I listened. And the more she explained, the more I leaned forward on the couch and realized she might just be right. It unfolded in loverly detail, and I started to really see her vision.
It could work. It would be on the mean side, but it could totally work. I sort of hated myself for even considering it, but this was Mo-No we were talking about—as well as Sylvie’s future.
“So you’re saying we find our very own Eliza Doolittle, but a guy, deliciously dirty, as you say—”
“He has to be deliciously dirty.”
“Right. We do a quick ritzy makeover on him and try to pass him off as one of the type of guys Monique-Noelle and her army of vacuous gold-diggers are looking for.”
“Even better, we set things up so Mo-No could actually totally fall for him. And when she does, we whisk him away and then let her find out the truth.” Polly wasn’t the type to get giddy, but she did have a light in her eye.
And maybe, with that, Mo-No realizes she should appreciate the man who was the father of her beautiful daughter and quit trying to trade up. Or down. Or sideways.
Or for more hair.
“And where do we get someone deliciously dirty who also isn’t a drug dealer or user or, you know, dangerous?”
“I didn’t say this plan was without risks. But we’ll be careful.” Polly’s eyes danced. “I’m a good judge of character.”
Yeah. Everyone thought that about themselves. Skepticism crept up in me. There was no way we could pull off something of this magnitude. We shouldn’t even be considering it.
Polly knew that, too, but she was still letting her mind spin around in the fantasy.
“I’ll come with you to find our mark.” Mark! Suddenly we were con artists—with marks. “I’ve got tons of time on Christmas break, and no Geordie to take it up. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
Sure, I’d be doing Polly a favor while we did Mo-No a disfavor, one which might ultimately turn into a favor for Mo-No—if it helped her pull her head out of the money-clouds and become a better person.
Talk about a long shot. Like a bow’s arrow from New York City aimed at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
We should not do this. Then again, how wrong could it go wrong, assuming we planned it just right?
“I like it,” I said. “As long as it’s not someone sketchy. I don’t want Sylvie to be in danger. That’s paramount. Don’t you know any actors leftover from your drama school days?”
“None that aren’t sketchy.”
That made sense, sadly.
“If it’s a stranger, how will we know he’s safe, though?” I was hung up on this point, but it was important.
“My dad has access to criminal background check information at work. You know that.” I did know that. Admiral Pickering’s Navy always did FBI-level background checks when anyone applied to be part of the military. It was just what they did. “We can ask him to help us out. For Sylvie’s sake, anyone with a record is a no-go.”
That sentiment was a good start.
“Will the U.S. Navy allow your dad to use that for a project as…I don’t know, frivolous as this?” Frivolous was putting it nicely.
“Uh, hola. He’s an admiral. There isn’t someone higher up to ask permission from, except the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
and he probably has a lot bigger things to worry about.”
Little by little, I was coming around to Polly’s idea, especially when I envisioned the so-called Big Reveal to Mo-No: that she’d been duped into throwing herself at somebody who was the opposite of the type of person she and Dreena were supposedly on the prowl for, after which she would dissolve in a perfect mix of horror and humility.
It might have been mean of me to think this, but it almost seemed better if she ended up getting her heart mixed up in it, really falling for whomever we foisted on her. Unless I was mistaken, that would be the key to helping her change.
“I’ll think about it.” My stomach growled again, this time with ferocity. We needed real food soon.
Polly clapped her hands in glee. I was getting the flutters inside, as well.
“We can’t work on it today. I have to go back to San Nouveau tomorrow morning. Sylvie’s coming back from her grand-mamma’s house. I have to meet her on the helipad at eight and get her ready for school.”
In reality, Sylvie didn’t go to school yet. She was only eighteen months old. However, Monique-Noelle had been talked into an early education program, and while Sylvie did that, I was in charge of housework at the Bainbridge mansion, as well as shopping and cooking.
“I wish you could just quit that job.” Polly put her feet on the coffee table with a little slam for emphasis. “You’re almost done with your Ph.D., aren’t you? Just write that last paper and get out of that hole already.”
Yeah, I was nearly done. All but my dissertation, and I would have been finished with that by now—except for some reason I could never get a research project approved. A scowl tweaked my mouth whenever I thought about that. It turned out my academic committee was a group of real sticklers who wanted a totally original project for a linguistics study, or so they said. Despite my wildest, most creative efforts, nothing I’d presented so far had been acceptable to Their Majesties who held my fate in their hands.
“Still waiting for inspiration to hit.”
My Fair Aussie: A Standalone Clean Romance (Millionaire Makeover Romance Book 3) Page 2
