The Rake_Billionaire Seeking a Bride

by Melanie Marchande

  The messages get pretty flirty, to the point where I almost think about ignoring him and letting it wither on the vine. He’s even joked about me taking him for a “test drive.” I know it’s all in good fun, but sometimes I feel guilty.

  I mean, he doesn’t even know what I look like.

  Not that it matters. But if he found out that I’m not a glamorous size six, would he be embarrassed about some of the things he said to me? I don’t want to think so, but I’m trying to be realistic.

  Of course, it’s annoying when I use up my international minutes to get a stupid email, but if I’m being honest with myself, I guess it’s a small price to pay. For once, I’m flirting for me. I’m just having a little fun that’s not directly related to my work.

  Once I get to the free wifi in the airport, I pull up the email from Wakefield again.

  Too much of a challenge? There’s no such thing. Don’t flatter yourself. And I’m not your darling, sweet cheeks.

  Snickering to myself as I board my flight home, I wonder how long he’s going to keep this up.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, you. How’d it go?”

  My sister Becca greets me with a hug, before I’ve even dropped my luggage.

  “Not great,” I admit, disentangling myself from her and the straps of my bag. “No good prospects.”

  “Did you have fun, at least?” She frowns at me a little. “You’ve got dark circles under your eyes, Cass.”

  “I’m not going home,” I reply, anticipating her question. “It’s Monday morning. You need me here. I’ll sleep tonight, I promise.”

  I didn’t dare stop at home to get rid of my bags, because I know I’d crawl into my bed “for just a little nap” and never get up until tomorrow morning. I’d rather be tired in the office, even if it means Becca still has to do most of the work.

  “Well, I’ve got some news. Guess who’s coming to town in January?” Becca grins, rocking up on the balls of her feet. “Go on, guess.”

  “I don’t know. The President? Aliens?” I roll my neck, wincing as my shoulder twinges in protest.

  “Broken Machine!” she squeals, grabbing my hands. “And, get this, there are VIP passes. You can get a chance to meet the band. The tickets go on sale tomorrow night.”

  I stare at her. “If you’re fucking with me, I’m going to kill you.”

  She shakes her head, practically vibrating with excitement. “Can you believe it?”

  “I just said I can’t,” I remind her. “Which one of us has jet lag, again?”

  “Tomorrow night. Mark your calendar.” She squeezes my hands tightly.

  “You don’t even like Broken Machine that much.”

  “Yeah, but you do. And I can’t pass up the opportunity to watch you fangirl over Matt Riley. Grab those tickets. We’ve got months to make sure you’ll be able to take the night off without this place falling down around your ears.”

  “Fine, okay. I’ll look into it.”

  There is one thing - exactly one thing in this entire world - that can still make me giddy like a teenage girl. And that thing’s name is Broken Machine.

  A band, yes. A pop rock band - also yes. But not just any pop rock band. To a fourteen-year-old Cassie, they were everything. The alpha and the omega. They understood me. And as hard as I try to be cynical about the whole thing now that I’m old enough to know better, I just can’t.

  The guys are all grown up now, no longer the eyeliner-wearing idols that owned the stage in leather pants. They’ve got families, kids, mortgages. I get that. And even if they were still the single sex symbols they once were, they wouldn’t be interested in me. That’s not the point.

  The point is, I just want a chance to breathe the same air, order from the same bar, rub elbows with them a little. I want a chance to smile and shake their hands and tell them how much their songs meant to me. Because I can. Because it’s high time I reaped the rewards of my success, and this is what I want, damn it.

  There was a time when VIP passes to a Broken Machine show couldn’t be had for love or money. Maybe you’d win one in a radio contest, sure, if you were one of the lucky few. But these days, they’re just looking to make a few extra bucks from the people who still care about them. And I am supremely grateful.

  The price is steep, but I don’t care. I never spend money on myself. I deserve this.

  ***

  “What credit card did you want me to use for the tickets?” Becca asks me the next day, before I’ve even set my purse down.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I tell her. I’ve already booked a scotch tasting uptown in hopes of meeting a decent prospect there, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t do both.

  “I thought you had that thing tonight.” She frowns. “If you can’t trust me to order concert tickets, how are you going to trust me to run the company?”

  “These aren’t just concert tickets,” I remind her. “This is Broken Machine we’re talking about. It’s not a big deal. I’ll just buy them on my phone real quick. Everybody will think I’m making an important business deal. It’s not like I’ll be the only one fiddling with my phone.”

  Becca sighs and shakes her head, but she’s smiling a little. “Cassandra Kirkland, actually being distracted from work for something frivolous. I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “I won’t be distracted,” I insist. “I can multi-task. It’ll only take a minute at most. I’ve got the app right here.” I gesture with my phone in my hand, for emphasis.

  “Yeah, but what if you can’t get them right away? Or at all?” She lifts her eyebrows a little. “You’ll just be miserably hunched over your phone all night and you won’t get any work done.”

  “Please,” I scoff. “How many people are actually going to be willing to pay that much money just to hang with some middle-aged ex-heartthrobs?”

  “Every woman our age with disposable income,” Becca points out. “There’s more than you think. Just…don’t think of it as a sure thing.”

  “Okay, okay.” I tuck my phone away in my purse. “I promise I won’t get my hopes up.”

  Maybe she’s right. Have I gotten too used to throwing money at a problem and watching it disappear? I hate to think I’m becoming like one of my clients.

  I guess it’s easy to lose perspective. Growing up, scraping together enough money to get even one VIP pass would’ve felt even less attainable than winning a radio contest. Sure, maybe we could’ve tried, over many months, but the money would always get spent somehow. Just like every family trip fund, every tax refund, every bonus check from my dad’s job. The family car would fail inspection again, or start making a funny noise, or the washing machine would stop turning.

  From when I was pretty young, my parents always got me involved in the family finances. I sat in on serious budgeting meetings with my parents, crunched numbers, and made suggestions. At first they thought it’d be too much for me, but I loved it. I liked knowing where the money went. It was hard to get upset about Disney World being delayed another year when I was looking right at the bill from the mechanic. If we didn’t have the car, how would Dad get to work and make the money we needed to keep food on the table?

  I was always a practical child, and I often fought with my sisters because I took my parents’ “side” in the difficult discussions. Now that we’re all grown, of course, they understand. There were never any “sides.” We were all on the same side, they just weren’t capable or willing to see it like I did. All the same, sometimes it feels like there’s still a rift between us. Becca and Dani still have their secret girl’s club - they’d probably deny it, but I know it’s true. The fact that I’m essentially their boss now certainly doesn’t help matters.

  It’s lonely, being the oldest. I don’t mind admitting it. That’s always been the tradeoff for responsibility - nobody wants to be BFFs with the one in charge, or at least, the one closest to authority. Nobody really trusts you. It’s only five years that separates me and Becca, but sometimes
it feels like decades.

  Broken Machine will be a chance for us to just cut loose and have some fun together. As excited as I am to meet the guys, I’m also looking forward to sending some quality time with my sister. Being in this office certainly doesn’t count.

  “Hey,” Becca cuts in, interrupting my train of thought. “Don’t forget you have a meeting with that new client at eleven. The lawyer.”

  “Oh, God,” I mutter. Normally I’d be irritated at Becca for implying that I might forget about a meeting, but this particular client is so…special that he’s pushed all other thoughts out of my mind.

  ***

  “So, Mr. Pizelle, what brings you to our agency?” I smile at him benignly, not letting on that I’m silently evaluating him as he sits there. About forty, probably. Slightly balding. Not enough to go full-on Vin Diesel, not yet, but he should seriously think about it. As a successful attorney, he’s got a lot going for him, but I don’t get the feeling that the time-crunch is what’s holding him back in dating. He’s fidgety, with that haunted, desperate look in his eyes.

  “I’ve tried everything,” he huffs, shifting in his seat. “I mean, everything. Believe me, I didn’t want to do this. It’s such a cop-out, you know?” He lets out a little laugh, then seems to realize what he’s said. “I mean…no offense.”

  “Of course not.” I dismiss his faux pas with a wave of my hand. “Most people don’t want to turn over such an intimate part of their lives to a third party, but I’m sure an educated man like yourself understands how common this was at one time - and still is, in many cultures.”

  He nods a little too eagerly. “Yes, yes, yes. Of course. You read over my profile, right? You understand what I’m looking for.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Pizelle.” I don’t let my irritation show. He’s nervous - they’re usually nervous. But if this is how he comes across on first dates, I might have already honed in on a problem. “Naturally, I made sure I can fulfill your requirements before I agreed to meet with you. My time is very valuable, as is yours. I wouldn’t waste it.”

  “It’s just been so hard to find anyone,” he sighs. “I’m sorry for being a little skeptical. I really have tried everything, and I don’t just mean all the big dating sites. I even tried getting creative. I made up this little flyer, you know? Just a fun little thing to post in some local networking groups online. And I set up a website. I even tried posting an eBay auction for a date with me, you know? Like, to create a sense of value to it.”

  I can feel my jaw twitch as my smile freezes. “I’m sorry, an…eBay auction?”

  He nods again, in that odd, too-quick way of his. “I mean, it didn’t go anywhere, of course. The first time, I put it up with a really low minimum and some guy ended up winning the bid. He said he wasn’t even homosexual, he just wanted to see what would happen.” His nose wrinkles. “After that, I set up a minimum bid of fifty dollars just to make sure people are serious.”

  I have to take a few deep breaths. “And have you gotten any legitimate bids?”

  He shakes his head. “I mean, it was worth a shot, right?”

  Lacing my fingers together, I rest my hands on my desk. “Mr. Pizelle, I’m going to have to ask you to put this effort entirely in my hands. That means you’ll need to delete all of those posts, and auctions, et cetera.” I can already see his face start to darken at this, so I quickly continue. “I need to get an accurate assessment of my metrics, and I can’t do that if there’s other things muddying the waters. You understand, I’m sure.”

  His expression clears a little, but he’s still hesitant. “I know what you mean, but…I put a lot of time into them…”

  “And I appreciate that,” I assure him. “But you’re here because you’re ready to take a break from all of that, right?”

  He nods, slowly. This one’s going to be a tough nut to crack. I can already tell I’ll need to have Becca watch carefully to see if he’s following my directions.

  Mr. Pizelle is one of those clients whose instincts are perfectly, exactly, astoundingly wrong. In every possible way, his inherent beliefs and ideas about dating, women, and human relations in general are completely skewed. I knew I was in for a difficult case the moment I searched his name online. He’s got no less than four personal websites, three of which are “humorous” takes on his failures in dating. Every single one of them looks like it was designed and built in 1994, complete with ugly rotating animated GIFs and terrible Dad jokes.

  And an online auction. For crying out loud.

  “Let me get to work,” I tell him. “We’ll talk again in a few weeks, and I’m sure I’ll have some prospects for you by then.” I smile encouragingly.

  His expression darkens again. “I certainly hope so.”

  Chapter Three

  The scotch tasting is a bust.

  I realize it almost as soon as I walk into the room, seeing it packed to the gills with businessmen who are outside of my client’s preferred age range by approximately one hundred and fifty years.

  I should just give up and go home, but I paid to get in, so I figure I might as well drink some scotch while I wait for the Broken Machine tickets to go on sale.

  I’ve just taken my place at the bar, phone in hand, when I sense somebody sidling up a little too close to me. I’m praying it’s not the guy I accidentally locked eyes with when I walked in, who looks like he spent his golden years guarding the Holy Grail - and then, the mystery man speaks.

  “Cassandra Kirkland.” It’s a voice like velvet, the kind that’ll make you quiver deep down inside. I don’t recognize it, but at the same time, I do. “You come here often?”

  I turn around slowly, and I recognize him. Of course. He looks even better in person, and that nagging sense of familiarity is even stronger now. But how did he recognize me?

  He sticks his hand out for me to shake, and I take it, trying to ignore the way my heartbeat quickens at his touch. No wonder this guy makes panties drop all over town. He just exudes fuck-me pheromones, and I don’t even think he’s trying.

  “Devon Wakefield,” he says, tilting his head slightly at my confused expression. “We’ve exchanged words. Also, one time you threw your shoe at me.”

  Oh, fuck.

  The memories come flooding back. I yank my hand away and stare at him, mortified.

  Yeah, it all hangs together. A half-lit hotel room, scattered with clothing and food wrappers, my client, with bloodshot eyes and a dopey yet panicked expression, clutching her sheet around herself…

  And a very fit, rather well-endowed man who was taking way too long to put his pants back on.

  I might have flipped out. Just a little bit. But I knew I wasn’t going to get Steffie’s full attention until the dick was out of the room, so I did the only thing that made sense at the time. I was half-asleep and fully pissed off.

  So yes, I ripped off my kitten heel and I hurled it right at his head.

  Until now, I didn’t make the connection between that nagging sense of familiarity when I looked at pictures of Wakefield, and the few hazy memories that remained of the man’s face. But now, there’s no question in my mind.

  “Relax,” Wakefield says. “It’s all water under the bridge now. I only recently put the pieces together myself, but I figured it wasn’t worth mentioning if you didn’t remember.”

  He rubs the back of his head, like there’s still a phantom pain there.

  “I thought you looked familiar,” I manage to spit out, finally.

  He grins.

  “In my defense,” he says, leaning against the bar, “I was not aware that your client was a recovering sex addict.”

  The whole thing started with one of those infamous frantic late-night phone calls, back when I was still a publicist-slash-babysitter. Steffie, a movie star who’d already ruined two marriages with her philandering ways, had gone MIA and refused to answer her sponsor’s calls or texts. Naturally, the sponsor called me.

  And that was how I found myself stumbling int
o a cab at three in the morning, racing across the eerily deserted streets, and bursting into a midtown hotel room ready for a fight.

  We’d worked so goddamn hard for this, and now some shallow idiot was ruining everything.

  That shallow idiot, I now recognize, was none other than Mr. Wakefield himself.

  “Well, you flushed two months of her hard-won sobriety down the toilet with that used condom,” I tell him. “I hope you feel good about that.”

  “I don’t,” he says. “I would never flush a condom. They’re not biodegradable, you know. Some poor innocent seagull could choke on it.”

  “She’s doing much better now,” I inform him. “No thanks to you.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he says. “But really, I had no way of knowing. I don’t blame you for being upset, but you could’ve just asked me to leave. Nicely. Violence is never the answer.”

  “I did ask,” I remind him.

  “You shrieked,” he corrects me. “I was trying to evaluate the situation while half-drunk and three-quarters asleep. I had no idea if you were a jealous ex-girlfriend, or a crazy stalker, or what. I didn’t want to leave until I made sure that she was okay.”

  Of course, he has to have a rational explanation.

  “Sorry about the shoe,” I mutter, as the bartender puts a glass in front of me. “That was probably an overreaction.”

  “Like I said,” he goes on. “Water under the bridge. I don’t blame you for being upset. Let’s have a fresh start. Hi, I’m Devon.”

  I take a sip of my scotch while Wakefield gets his serving.

  “Tastes like a campfire,” he says, approvingly.

  “Is that a desirable thing?”

  He shakes his head, smiling sympathetically at me. “You obviously don’t know your scotch.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I tell him.