Most Eligible Billionaire

by Annika Martin

  “Oh, meaning me?” I say. “You think it’s only me who calls it that?”

  “Yeah, I do. Which reveals the direction of your thoughts.”

  “So arrogant,” I say, as if his nearness isn’t a tickle. As if my skin isn’t pure shivery nerve endings when I get around him. “I’m not the one covering the city with massive phallic symbols emblazoned with my name. It’s the direction of your thoughts we should be concerned about.”

  “Like a Rorschach ink-blot test,” he teases. “Some people see cranes, the progress of a city, but you see something quite different.”

  “Oh, pull-ease.” I snatch the vest from his hands and get Smuckers out of the purse. “You ready to be on team Cock Worldwide, buddy?” I put the vest on him. It fits perfectly.

  “People wouldn’t call us that.”

  “Think what you want. The world is your golden crib.”

  Henry reaches over and runs his finger over the cursive L in Locke, a move that brings his arm and hand dangerously close to my lap.

  “The loop on that L looks like a C. You have to at least admit that.”

  “Well…Cock Worldwide, huh.” He seems to ponder. “If the name fits…”

  “Oh my god!” I grab his hand. I'm just laughing now. “You are so bad!”

  He grins at me, and there’s a whoosh where the whole world stops. And I think he’s going to kiss me. I know he’s going to kiss me. And I want it.

  God, how I want it.

  I let go and sit back, cross my arms, take a shallow breath.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “Your fake seduction plan. You think I’m that stupid or just that desperate?”

  “Look at me.” Then, voice strained, “Vicky.”

  I don’t look at him.

  “I would never think you’re stupid or desperate. They’re the last things I’d think of you.”

  “I know what you’re doing. And just…I want you to understand that you don’t have to do it.” This is as close as I can come to telling him I'm giving back the company without breaking the pact.

  I don’t have much, but I have my word.

  He slides the back of his fingers across my cheek. My blood rushes hot through my veins. I shut my eyes.

  Hard skin brushes soft, featherlight. Smooth and slow. His touch is so gentle, I think my heart might crack.

  His voice, when it comes, is a whisper. “Kiss me, Vicky.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Kiss me.” His voice is low and urgent. “Be with me.”

  My heart stutters.

  He skims down below my jawline now, sliding against my skin with the back of one finger, slow, slow and scorchingly tender.

  “You want to.”

  “You are so…” I pause, breathless.

  His finger travels downward, putting pressure on the top button, popping it. He finds more skin to slide down, pausing at the center of my chest, a whisper of a presence above my pounding heart.

  “You are so…” I try again.

  I don’t have it in me to think up a playful insult. Heat swells heavy between my legs.

  He leans in. Lips to my ear. His face is a soft rustle on my hair.

  My breath comes faster.

  “You’re going to kiss me,” he says. “Maybe not today, but you’ll come to me. I can wait.”

  “Such an operator,” I say, gaze falling to his hand at my chest.

  He moves down, unbuttons another button. “You like watching my hands, don’t you?” He undoes another button.

  “Are you just undoing my buttons now? Yes,” I say.

  “And you’re into it.”

  “And the arrogance just doesn’t quit, folks.” I’m going for light quip here, but my voice is rough with desire.

  “You like my hands, I think.” He undoes another button, revealing the top of my camisole. “You’re going to like them even better when they’re between your legs.”

  Dark lust arrows through me. “Oh my god,” I say, as though I think it’s funny. It’s not.

  “I’ll get you off, baby. I’ll take such good care of you. I’ll take you slow and deep. I’ll print every inch of your skin. Nothing—nothing about it will be fake.”

  “So entitled,” I breathe, finally mustering up the strength to shove away his hand.

  He pins me with his gaze. “I’ll wait. I can bide my time.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to wind your watch to infinity.”

  A baffled light appears in his eyes. Like a baffled light of wonder. That’s probably fake, too. Fake fake fake. I’m not interested in his fake seduction.

  I pull out my phone. “So what is this groundbreaking thing?”

  He takes a ragged breath. Like he’s so overwhelmed he can’t talk for a bit.

  I roll my eyes. “Seriously?” But inside, where he can’t see, I’m shaking with need for him.

  In a rough voice, he tells me about the facility, and how getting a reputation in high-tech research could lead to some important jobs.

  Eighteen

  Vicky

  * * *

  The groundbreaking turns out to be a lot of people in their Sunday best standing on bare dirt inside a fenced-in lot that takes up nearly an entire block.

  And cameras. Lots of cameras.

  I put Smuckers on his long retractable leash and let him run around and receive petting from his minions. I smile and laugh and discreetly lower my sunglasses.

  But I can’t help wonder what Henry had planned. What if I had said yes? Would we be at a hotel right now instead of here? Butterflies whirl in my belly every time I look over at him.

  Brett comes over and presents Smuckers with a plastic squeaky shovel in Locke blue and everybody’s taking pictures of him running around with it in his mouth.

  Then the people involved with the facility get a silver shovel with a blue handle and they all take turns digging bits of dirt out of the ground.

  When it’s Henry’s turn, he takes off his suit jacket, rolls up his shirtsleeves, and digs up a massive shovelful of earth, heaving it aside. Everybody’s clapping, and he’s standing in the sunshine with his wicked, billion-dollar Henry Locke smile. He jams the shovel into the dirt and grabs his suit coat, slings it over his shoulder.

  When the applause dies down, he shoots a sly glance my way. He pretends to wind his watch.

  He’s mouthing a word. Infinity.

  My face flares hot. But I just shake my head. Like I’m immune.

  Brett has his own shtick. He holds Smuckers in his arms as if they’re wielding the shovel together. Afterward, people close in and pet Smuckers. I realize that Henry never pets Smuckers just for the pleasure of it.

  “You guys got him a little Locke shovel,” I say once we’re back in the limo. “Nice optics.”

  “I meant what I said,” he says. “I’m waiting.”

  “For me to come and kiss you,” I say.

  “And then all bets are off, Vicky.”

  My mouth goes dry. “I heard you the first time.” I try to think how to change the mood. I want to kiss him. Right now. In this place. “Do you not like dogs?”

  He frowns. “I like dogs.”

  “I don’t think you do. The only time you ever pet Smuckers is…for a purpose. You want to make him paddle his legs or calm down or something. You never just pet him out of fun.”

  “He’s just a dog, Vicky.” He doesn’t deny it, and I feel a little sorry for him right then.

  “You hardly ever even say his name.”

  “Smuckers is just a dog.” He glances over at me. “Is that better?”

  “A dog your mother left her company to.”

  “You think I’m jealous of a dog? Please, Vicky. If I wanted to wear my hair in a marshmallow Afro and live in a woman’s purse, I think I could find a way to arrange it. This is New York, after all. There is probably a dominatrix out there who’d make it happen.”

  I cross my arms. “You know what I find weird? People aren’t freakin
g out about Smuckers’s control of the company very much. They all seem to think it’s a PR stunt.”

  “A lot of people see it as a PR stunt. Connected to his dog shelter gift.”

  “And you’re letting them think that.”

  “We are.”

  “Why not tell people the truth?” I ask. “Unless…I don’t know…”

  He says, “Unless we have more evil plans to get rid of you?”

  I say nothing. Because, yeah, does he have yet another trick up his sleeve? I wish I could just tell him—don’t worry, you’ll get it back.

  But how can I expect Carly to keep her word if I don’t keep mine?

  “You know how many people we employ?” Luckily he answers the question for himself. “Directly, we employ three hundred forty thousand people across ten offices worldwide. When you count vendors and subcontractors, it’s double that. Those are real people with real lives and families and homes, people who depend on the health of this firm to make house payments and put food on the table. Do I want to announce that a Maltese is in charge of all that?”

  I wait. I know a rhetorical question when I hear one.

  “No. I’m not going to rock the company with that kind of announcement. I’m showing them that things remain consistent after Bernadette’s death. I want them feeling strong, steady, capable leadership.”

  “Okay.” I make myself not look at his hands. I try not to think too hard about him caring about people. Or turning out so different from Denny.

  We have a late lunch at a sidewalk café in Soho. It feels like a date. He asks me a lot of questions about my life and my jewelry biz. He seems really interested in the makers studio, and I swell with pride talking about it, because it’s such an awesome space and an amazing group of people.

  Then I remember he’s not my boyfriend. He’s not even my friend. He’s an entitled wealthy man who thinks I’m going to come to him and beg him to take me.

  I keep my distance.

  I tamp out every spark that lights between us. Sometimes I feel like Smoky the Bear, stomping sparks left and right. Too many to stomp out.

  Day after day.

  Biding my time.

  The worst are those moments when he lets down his guard, when he stops being beloved playboy Henry Locke. When it feels real.

  It’s a mindfuck when it feels real.

  Here is the last guy you should ever trust or want. He’s fooling you. Fake seducing you. And you want him anyway!

  The mindfuck of hanging out with Henry twists and contorts into confusing new shapes every hour over the following days.

  The man is on this kick of showing me every aspect of the company. “You need to understand things to vote out of a place of knowledge,” he says.

  This involves Smuckers and me getting picked up in a limo and taken to a different part of New York or New Jersey and meeting people and learning new things that a giant company does.

  Building turns out to be a small part of the Locke activities. Every one of those companies that got listed off in the will reading has its own little empire of activity.

  Henry does work in the car and discusses corporate things on the phone with the people we meet. He’s good at what he does. He really cares. Is this his new method of seduction?

  On one outing we tour a nearly finished building that has a zero carbon footprint—it’s heated and cooled through underground circulating water. Super green. Henry’s excited.

  It’s infectious.

  On another outing, we tour a mammoth prefab facility in New Jersey where they make parts of buildings so they don’t have to build everything on site. He’s just as excited about that. Also infectious.

  “How do you know everyone’s names?” I ask on one of our many limo rides.

  “I make a point of it.”

  “But how? You know so many names.”

  “If something’s important, you find a way to do it,” he says.

  Bird, I mumble.

  He gets that amused smile that always annoys me. “What was that?”

  I want to grab his lapels and yank him to me and say fuck you, lip to lips, and then kiss him.

  But I know where that leads.

  Instead, I lock my hands together in my lap and turn away.

  The worst thing is the family feeling throughout Locke Worldwide. Like they really are one big happy family with Henry Locke as the strong, fierce leader, a man who’d go to the ends of the earth for his people.

  It makes him twice as hot, how he fights for his people. How protective he is.

  At times, tooling around the five boroughs with Henry, touring sites, meeting employees, learning new things at Locke HQ, I get this feeling like I’m part of that team, part of the family that Henry fights for and protects.

  It’s intoxicating.

  And so predictable. So pathetic.

  It doesn’t take a team of psychoanalysts to understand why that would be wildly attractive to me, considering it’s been me alone for so long, looking after Carly on my own. Even back home, nobody was protecting us. Nobody was fighting for us.

  Sometimes when we’re talking about the company I use the word we. As if I’m part of the Locke family. So cool that we’re opening an office in Raleigh. How are we doing on our stadium proposal? Wow, our development team is kicking the shit out of those assholes at Dartford & Sons!

  I constantly have to remind myself I’m not in the family.

  We ride around in elevators and limos and other enclosed spaces and it’s exciting. Sometimes our gazes lock and the earth seems to still.

  My vibrator gets a workout at night.

  I’m a week through the twenty-one-day cooling off period and I just want to touch him. Even just his arm. He’s irresistible as catnip. Irresistible as a super-charged magnet. Or maybe irresistible as a black hole, the kind that sucks in spaceships and girls who just want to be loved and trusted.

  None of his affection is real, that’s the thing I need to remember. He’s had PIs on me, after all. He thinks I’m a scammer.

  I’m something far worse. I’m Vonda O’Neil.

  Again I remember that picture of me, smiling out at the world so hopefully, repeated a million times across Twitter and Facebook with captions like I’m a lying whore.

  Sometimes, right before I go out the door in the morning to meet the car, I give myself a little pep talk. I remind myself that I don’t need team Locke.

  I control a giant company and have access to all the money I could ever want. I ride around in limos with literally the sexiest man in New York, but somehow I’m still that hungry girl looking in from the outside, nose pressed to the bakery window, wanting just anything.

  A crumb.

  Henry is like the hottest and most charming vacuum cleaner salesman who ever came to your door. And you invite him in and you let him show you the vacuum, how well it cleans and how all of the attachments work. And you see that he loves this vacuum, and his love for the vacuum makes him insanely desirable. And you guys laugh and have fun cleaning the carpet. And it’s nice.

  And you keep telling yourself it’s not about you—he just wants to sell you that vacuum cleaner. That is his only motive! Except it’s getting harder and harder to remember that.

  Maybe sometimes, when he’s expertly changing that nozzle with his amazingly capable hands…or when he’s smiling at something you said, and you’re looking into his gorgeous blue eyes and getting that floaty feeling in your chest, those times you start to believe, that even though he came to sell you that thing, maybe he has started to like you.

  Then you hate yourself for being gullible, because hello! He’s New York’s most eligible bastard and you’re not even in the top million bachelorettes.

  In fact, you’re barely an eligible bachelorette for any bachelor, unless the bachelor in question is a poetry-scribbling parking lot attendant with self-esteem issues or a junior pastry chef with eight roommates and a video game obsession, or a cook/musician/student, not that that sums up m
y last three years of dating.

  One of the hardest things about hanging out with Henry is how he has this knack for reaching into me and hauling the pure Vonda out of me. Sometimes provoking it out of me. Sometimes enchanting it out of me with his questions and his jokes and his endless interest in my opinions.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I finally tell him at lunch after another afternoon of finding out about the awesomeness of Locke Worldwide, another afternoon of witnessing him play the part of the fierce protector, admired by all. We’ve left Smuckers behind today.

  “Beyond the supposedly fake seduction?” He cracks a popadam in half and hands me the big piece, because it turns out we’re both heavy into popadams.

  I take it, remembering what he said about his hands. So good between your legs. You’ll come to me. I’ll get you off. I’ll print every inch of your skin.

  Needless to say, my vibrator has been getting quite the workout in recent days.

  He studies my face, expression unreadable. He does that sometimes. Like he wants to know me. To figure me out. Again and again I tell myself it isn’t real, but it feels so good.

  And I want to kiss him. I want to press GO on us. I want to stab that button so hard he flies to me. I want him to print every inch of my skin. I’m not sure what that means in his mind, but I want it.

  “You know what I’m doing?” he asks. “What would that be?”

  “You want me to love Locke like you do,” I continue in a breezy tone. “You can’t trick it out of my evil clutches, you can’t seduce me, so you’re doing the next best thing. Trying to humanize it.”

  “Don’t count out the part where I seduce you. That’s still going to happen.”

  “Uh,” I say, belly tightening. “You probably think all women would just die for your magic peen.”

  “Not all of them.” Casually he cracks another piece of popadam. “Just the ones I’ve slept with.”

  Gulp.

  “And for the record, my seduction of you isn’t goal oriented. I’d seduce you if all you had was a dog bow tie Etsy store. Though, really, I should turn you in for animal cruelty. Because those bow ties you put Smuckers in? No.”

  “He likes his little bow ties.”