Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  I started to close the door, but my stepmother stopped me. “Open door policy, Ella.”

  The large space that housed the design department was on the other side. Most of the team was out, but a few stragglers had come in to catch up.

  “Sit,” Bianca said, opening her hand toward the empty chair like a hostess at a car show.

  I sat and put my hands in my lap, knowing that—by lunch—she wouldn’t talk to me as if I was a trained puppy. “Yes?”

  Jean-Claude came out of the closet with a black cocktail dress. He closed it and made sure it was locked with a beep. He was my age, with skin as white as a snowfall and big blue eyes that made magazine editors swoon.

  “Pardon,” he said with a French accent.

  “Jean-Claude,” Bianca said, “when we’re sleeping, what are they doing in China?”

  “Making T-shirts.” He shrugged, looking at me.

  Fucker. I didn’t know what this was about, but fuck him for having the code to my father’s closet.

  “Thank you, darling.”

  Dismissed, Jean-Claude left with the black gown trailing behind.

  “Did you know that, Ella?” Bianca asked.

  “I get the spinning of the earth.”

  “While we sleep, our Chinese suppliers are executing our every wish. And when we wake—ah! Done! Poof. Magic. An entire shipment of T-shirts is now ready for packing, right on schedule. As if we dreamed them into existence. But there’s a price for this sorcery, Estella.”

  She sat finally, putting her hands in front of her and smiling like a schoolteacher whose student didn’t know more about the business than she ever would.

  She was going to get on my case for not checking my email from home.

  Did I have to be nice to her?

  “The price?” she continued. “We pay in a language barrier—which can sneak up on us—and we pay in margin for error—of which there is none. Once you approve a pocket and lay your head to rest, it’s sewn on while you dream of pretty things, and when you wake, it’s too late.”

  She slid a printed-out email across the desk. I read it.

  The Raquel tee didn’t have a pocket.

  “You didn’t check the style number.”

  “How did they not check?” I protested.

  “Raquel looks a lot like Rachel, and the Rachel tee has a pocket, but it’s in next month’s delivery. Did I mention the language barrier? The one you’re quite aware of? Hmm?” Her voice went from fake sugarplum fairy to a growl that was at least authentic. “Because I shouldn’t have to.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Macy’s already cancelled. That’s a two hundred thousand dollar order, Estella.”

  “I was busy,” I said, fist pounding my knee. “I was in the middle of something. I—”

  “We’re protecting a name. An idea. A fantasy. Details matter. Basile and I tried to—”

  “Get my father’s name out of your mouth!” I launched up, hands on the desktop, waist bent over the edge as if I wanted to eat her whole and spit the bones.

  She didn’t move a muscle. She knew who she was and how deeply I fell within the boundaries of her power. I couldn’t win, even to fulfill my father’s dying wish, but I wasn’t going down easy. I didn’t avert my gaze from hers. Didn’t submit an inch.

  When a light knock touched the open door, she glanced over my shoulder and broke into a trademark phony smile.

  “Mr. Crowne,” she said with a voice that matched her mask.

  I spun. Logan stood in the doorway, smiling at me in jeans, jacket, and a fine gauge blue sweater that hugged his torso and matched his eyes as if they’d been the color standard.

  “I’m sorry,” Michelle said from behind him with a helpless expression. “He just came in.”

  “It’s fine, dear,” Bianca said with a voice so sweet and bright, a person wouldn’t know she’d just been ripping me a new asshole. “Come in, Mr. Crowne. Can we get you anything? Michelle, get Mr. Crowne some coffee. Hurry now.” Then to Logan, indicating his sweater, “Is that LVM’s fall cerulean?”

  “I have no idea.” He kept his eyes on me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I… you’re early.”

  “We have some business first.” He met Bianca’s gaze. “Would you excuse us?”

  “Of course,” Bianca said. “Let me know if I can get you anything.”

  “I will.”

  Bianca shot me a threatening glance before leaving and bumping into Michelle, who reacted quickly enough to get out of the way.

  “Your face is red,” he said, closing the door.

  The room went quiet. I could finally breathe.

  “Rough morning.” I sat on the couch, rubbing my eyes until I saw stars.

  Logan sat in the chair across from me. He reached inside his jacket for an envelope and put it on the table between us. “In a few hours, you’re not going to need a job.”

  “I told you. This isn’t a job. It’s a promise to my father.”

  “And I told you. He’s d—”

  “Stop. Don’t say it. I know he’s dead. Okay? Just…” I snapped up the envelope. “Just stop before I decide I can’t live with you.”

  He looked out the window and rubbed his chin. The Roman bridge of his nose was visible in profile, and the jut of his jaw was more pronounced. So unfair for such a rich man to be that handsome. He was one hundred eighty pounds of injustice in a size eleven shoe.

  I unfolded the contract and laid it out, scanning past the monthly cash allowance (ten grand), the car (whatever I wanted), the diamond ring (mine to keep), and the term (three years).

  “You said one year,” I said, getting a red pen from a cup on the coffee table.

  “It may take longer.”

  “Nope,” I said. “If you can’t get what we want out of this in a year, you have no business running that company.”

  “And you won’t have one to run.”

  He was right, but so was I.

  “One year,” I said, scratching a line over the term and replacing it with twelve months. I tapped the pen point on a paragraph. “And this? I’m not changing my name.”

  “You and Olivia are the only women in the world who don’t want to be Mrs. Crowne.”

  “That will never be part of the deal.”

  Redline. He could call it off if he didn’t like it. I stopped reading long enough to catch him grinning at me. His smile had an authenticity to it, as if it was involuntary, and he’d be shocked to learn he wasn’t completely stone-faced.

  I went back to the contract without telling him.

  The next paragraph made my skin tingle. My mouth went dry and my core went liquid with possibilities. Recent test results for sexually transmitted diseases were available, and by signing, I agreed to the same. I was about to ask him what made him think that was something either of us should worry about, when I saw the next paragraph.

  “How would there be children?” My voice sounded like a butter knife dragged over cracked asphalt.

  “Just in case,” he said with an infuriating shrug.

  “In case… what?”

  “Things happen.”

  His fingers laced together, hitching the jacket cuff enough to reveal the analog silver watch and brown leather bracelet under it. It made his hands look as if they were the seat of his competence. The leather strap under the timepiece hinted at a side to him outside his dreams on top of Crowne Industries. It insinuated short-term desires that were never fully satisfied. Rich or poor. Handsome or plain. A reminder that Logan was no more or less than a man.

  Things happen.

  Those hands. Between my thighs. Grabbing my ass. In my hair.

  “First of all, I haven’t had sex in four years. None of your business why, but… so you can sleep at night knowing your wife won’t die of syphilis on your watch, I’ll get tested.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Secondly, things happen, but they won’t. And if they do…” I clicked the pen twice as if
that was all I needed to convince myself I didn’t want him. “And my IUD fails which never happens…” I crossed out the offending line. “Resulting children are Papillions. Not Crownes.”

  Dropping the red pen in favor of a black one, I pushed pen and contract to him.

  “Initial the changes before you sign,” I said.

  I challenged him with a wielded black pen, and he flicked his blue eyes from mine to the pen and back again, hesitating long enough to make me think he was changing his mind.

  Worry caught hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

  I didn’t want him to change his mind.

  My reaction told me more about how much I wanted to do this than any assessment of the risks or benefits.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You’re welcome to find someone else to marry this afternoon.”

  He considered, working his jaw like a man trying not to say something. “That IUD. It works?”

  “Haven’t tested it without a condom. But it’s the best birth control out there. Look it up.”

  “Abstinence is better,” he said, grabbing the red pen.

  Next to the clause about the children, he wrote To Be Decided under my red line, initialed in black, then slid the contract and pen back to me.

  “You first,” he said as if asking me to take off my clothes before he did.

  I stood on the edge of the roof with options disappearing behind me and signed my name, articulating every letter so it was clear who I was and what was important to me. When I was done, I handed Logan the pen. Without hesitation, he quickly looped his signature with a huge C at the last name, dated it, and tossed down the pen.

  “We should go,” he said, folding the pages. “You ready?”

  We had hours until lunch, but why postpone the inevitable by living inside a skin you knew you were going to shed?

  The net was too far down to see, but it was time to jump.

  9

  LOGAN

  “I’m ready,” Ella said with a mischievous flick of her eyebrows that didn’t promise a carefully planned scheme to get what was mine, but danger, adventure, and the risk of failure.

  I was drawn to her unknowns, but was she the right woman to convince my parents that I’d turned a corner? Or was she the woman I should have met a decade ago, when the stakes weren’t as high?

  Pushing away my doubts, I took her hand. “Then let’s go.”

  Bianca was right outside, flipping through a notebook.

  “So—” she said, but I didn’t hear the rest.

  Ella turned, leading me to the stairwell, hand in hand down the steps like Bonnie and Clyde, with a threat behind and nothing but possibilities ahead. The speed of the descent knocked caution out of me. The loss of control should have been disconcerting, but we whipped around the third landing so fast, I didn’t have time to worry about anything but keeping my feet under me.

  Ella stopped on the second floor and we collided. My body disengaged from my mind, tapping muscle memory to use our velocity to push her against the wall and crash my mouth onto hers. I held her by the back of the neck so I could leave my mark on every crevice and plane my tongue could reach.

  With a groan, she clutched my shirt, pushing and pulling at the same time.

  What was I doing? Besides getting a hard-on the size of a city block, what was I doing?

  She jerked her mouth away, but I held her firm, close enough to see a tiny dot on the white of her eye, as if the freckles on her face couldn’t bear being constrained to skin.

  “You promised to stop kissing me like that,” she said.

  “Last time was practice.”

  She let go of my shirt, laying her hands flat on my chest to smooth the fabric.

  “You don’t need practice.” She shoved me away.

  “That’s your story,” I said. “When anyone asks why you fell for me, it was the kissing.”

  “I was going to say it was your cock.”

  My dick twitched as if it heard her call. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  She smiled. “He said.”

  “Make a note. I fell for the bad jokes too.”

  “Noted,” she said, opening the stairwell door to a warehouse space filled with racks of clothes. “I’m only getting married twice. I have to dress for it.”

  She spun and ran deep into the racks. I rushed to keep up with her. From what I could see, the racks were filled with cheap T-shirts and denim. Against the opposite wall, she stopped at a locked chain-link cage.

  “There’s something in here I can wear.” She poked the combination into the padlock and clicked it open. As if she knew exactly what she wanted, she reached into the racks and pulled out a plain white dress with a big red tag hanging under the left arm. “What do you think?”

  “It’s fine,” I said, taking the hanger. “We need to go.”

  “Okay.”

  We hustled out of the cage. She locked it behind her and I took the lead, getting her down to my limo without kissing her again.

  “Loranda,” I greeted my driver, who was opening the back door of my Cadillac limo. “This is Ella.”

  They shook hands.

  “Where to?” Loranda asked.

  “Civic Center. Judge Reynard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Once I was in the back, facing Ella, Loranda closed the door.

  Ella closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “It’s Saturday.”

  “Judge Reynard came in for me.” I hung the dress on the hook over the door.

  “The shit money buys.” She started unbuttoning her shirt. “Don’t look.”

  She spun her finger in a circle to make a turning motion before she undid another button, exposing the center of her lace bra. The contour of her breasts was just visible above the cup.

  “Come on,” she insisted. “Turn around, you perv.”

  I twisted to face the window. The tinting dimmed the streets as they blew by.

  “We need to lock down our story,” I said, trying to ignore the rustle of clothes a foot away. “Where we met. How long we’ve been together.”

  “We have to stay close to the truth. We met at Wildwood.”

  “But you left.”

  “And we met again like… what’s reasonable?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, she wiggled out of her jeans. The temptation to see if her panties matched her bra was overwhelming.

  “Four months ago,” I said. “How can I ever forget the moment I saw you again, after all those years? Starbucks on La Cienega. I was waiting for an Americano and you were ordering… what’s your drink?”

  “Vanilla latte.” A long zipper hissed as it was undone. “Sometimes.”

  “I didn’t take you for a vanilla latte person.” Again I wanted to look, and again I kept my eyes on the passing city.

  “And I didn’t take you for a guy who’d wait in line for anything.”

  “When my driver’s parked in the red and my assistant’s doing her job, I get my own coffee. Best decision of my life. Saw you as soon as you walked in, and I paid for your drink. You filled a place in my soul or something. I didn’t recognize you until you came up to me to say thank you.”

  “This is full of holes. You had to recognize me. A guy like you wouldn’t have picked me out of a crowd.” I felt her transfer to the seat next to me.

  “You’re not making this easy.”

  “It’s not my job to make this easy. Can you zip this?”

  Finally, I turned around. She was twisted awkwardly to show me the triangle of skin where the back zipper was open. A line of lace bisected it. I could unhook the bra right there.

  “A guy like me?” Slowly, I zipped up the dress, enclosing her beautiful skin behind white fabric.

  “I’m not spending the next five minutes stroking your ego.”

  She shifted to her original seat across from me. The long-sleeve dress was low and scooped at the neck and short at the skirt. It hiked up her thighs, leaving only the mystery of
a shadow between her legs when she sat across from me. All I had to do was put my hands on her knees and exert a little pressure to spread them apart.

  “You will. You’re marrying me.”

  She crossed her legs, and the shadow shifted to where her thigh met the leather seat. Her little booties were red.

  “I forgot shoes,” she said, leaning back, arms out to each side.

  “It’s fine.”

  “So why do I love you enough to marry you?” She looked out the window. “You’re different than anyone I’ve ever been with. You’re…” She turned back to me. “Well, really hot, obviously. But you make me feel safe. Like everything’s going to be all right. Like it’s all under control.”

  “Is that what you want in a husband?”

  The car entered the Civic Center. Almost there.

  “It’s what you have to offer, so yeah. I’m not marrying you for the wild times.”

  “Obviously.” The car stopped in front of the courthouse.

  “And you’re marrying me for what?” she asked.

  “For the wild times.” I took the small velvet box out of my pocket. “Wear this. We can get it sized if it doesn’t fit.”

  I tossed it to her and she caught it.

  “Jesus, Logan,” she said when she opened the box. She put on the ring and held out her hand.

  The ring had been meant for Mandy Bettencourt. The perfect two-and-a-half-carat square-cut would have suited the socialite just fine, but on Ella, it looked exaggerated and gaudy.

  Would that make my family suspicious?

  “You love it,” I said. “Which is out of character, but you’re surprising and that’s why I love you, remember?”

  “Actually? It’s gorgeous and I do love it.”

  Loranda opened the back door. I got out and helped my fiancée onto the street.

  * * *

  Judge Reynard was semi-retired, an old friend of the family, and was happy to come into his office on a Saturday. His two-room office was carpeted, and the forty-year-old leather chairs matched the drapes. The receptionist had been with him for longer than the chairs, and she rattled through her notary duties without distraction.