The Billionaire's Fake Fiance

by Annika Martin

  Fear shoots through me. Now he’ll get me fired.

  “I tried to call back and ask yesterday,” he continues. “You wouldn’t pick up. You made me wait until now to get my question answered. I don’t appreciate it.”

  What happened to unorthodox? “Well…” I don’t know what to say. Now he’s going to complain to Sasha, and she’ll freak out on me. And fire me. “Um…”

  “Yes?” he asks in an imperious tone.

  “But if you were calling me back,” I try, “it means you were awake, right? Which means my duty was completed successfully. And efficiently,” I add.

  “No, it means you insulted and annoyed a client. Does your boss know you speak to people like that?”

  Asshole, I think as tears cloud my eyes.

  “Do you not understand how a wake-up call is supposed to go?” he continues. “Because whatever you think you’re doing here, it isn’t something I should be asked to pay for. You’re supposed to call the person and say good morning. Inform him as to the temperature outside and briefly tell him the forecast.”

  Fucking Mr. Drummond. He’s such a control freak that it’s not enough for him to run his own company like Stalin on steroids, now he has to tell me how to do my imaginary job.

  Inform him as to the temperature outside.

  “Now let’s try it again,” he says. “Call me again and do it properly.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m trying to do you a favor.”

  “You want me to do some role-play now? And then you’re going to get me into trouble with my boss?”

  “At least you’ll know how to do a proper wake-up call in the future.”

  “What do you even know about wake-up calls? Nothing.”

  “I know a lot about wake-up calls,” he rumbles. “More than you might imagine.”

  “No, you know nothing.” I turn over, conscious of the feel of the cool sheet sliding against my skin. “How do you know I’m not the best wake-up caller on the whole East Coast? Because guess what? You are totally awake. I bet you’re more awake after two minutes of my awesomeness than repeated calls from any other service. Come on, tell me. Has any other service gotten you to the level of alertness that I’ve gotten you to?”

  He’s silent of course.

  “I think not,” I say.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Oh, it’s totally the point. I’m amazing, and you are lucky to have me.” I’m committing, like Mia said. What do I have to lose? “However,” I continue, “due to your back talk and poor attitude, I’m thinking about firing you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re a bad client. The worst.”

  I can feel the stunned silence through the phone. The slight tenor of his breath. A strange mix of anger and fear and weird swirls through me.

  Finally he speaks. “Are you telling me there are people out there who prefer this kind of wake-up call? This is just what you do?”

  Every molecule in me goes still, because I’m thinking about what he said—he didn’t complain yesterday because he had to have his question answered. I lasted one day. Can I last another? “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you. Are there other people you speak to like this? Are there people out there who prefer a rude wake-up call?”

  “That’s funny, I thought you were the expert here.”

  “Answer the question.”

  There’s something wildly sexy about his demanding attitude. In a flash I imagine him in the bed with me, demanding wrong things. And I would be all, buzz off! And then he’d make me do them, and it would be so hot.

  And then I blot that mad thought from my mind. Because hello!! It’s Mr. Drummond!

  “Well?” he grumbles.

  He really seems eager to know. Well, he’s a scientist, isn’t he? Famous for his curiosity. His puzzle-solving abilities.

  Can I last yet another day? And then another?

  Coyly, I say, “I don’t know if you deserve an answer. What with your attitude.”

  “Excuse me?” he rumbles.

  “You heard me.” I steel myself. Am I really going to do this? Yes.

  I suck in a breath and glance out the window. It looks cold. I can see little droplets reflected in the orange light from the Royale Hotel looming above our building.

  I say, “The current temperature at JFK is thirty-seven degrees with periods of light rain forecasted throughout the day.” With that, I stab my finger onto the red hang-up button.

  Gone.

  I sit cross-legged on my bed, pulse racing, cradling my phone with both hands, cool and heavy, screen perfectly black and a little smudgy. Quiet for the moment.

  Suddenly it vibrates. A huge smile takes over my entire face as I hit send to voicemail. And wait.

  Beep.

  The voicemail icon shows up.

  My pulse whooshes in my ears. I click to hear the message. It’s short—just two seconds. The sound of a man sucking in a breath, then letting it out. It sounds like frustration. Vulnerability. Heat.

  I listen to it a few times more. Even in the one frustrated breath, you can catch the deep timbre of his voice. It feels strange, this little message. Like a little gift. Something of his that’s all mine.

  I listen to it again, squeezing my legs together, feeling happy and thrilled and turned on.

  Wait—turned on? I sit up, mortified.

  Hell, no!

  I toss aside the phone. So over controlling assholes!

  I need to survive another day. That’s all that matters.

  I should try and go back to sleep, but there’s no way. The wake-up call definitely woke me up. Mutually assured destruction. I get up and make coffee in our tiny kitchen, careful not to make noise and wake up Mia.

  Trying to get his rumbly voice out of my mind.

  I bring the coffee to my bedroom and sit in bed with my laptop. I navigate over to my bakery’s blog and start working on a post, which always makes me feel serious and sad and not at all sexually aroused.

  Sure enough, it does the trick. Because I put my heart into the business, and Mason reduced it to rubble.

  Never mind. It won’t be easy to rebuild, but I’ll do it.

  First, though, there are my knees to protect. The safety of my best friend to ensure. My bullet-hole-free skin to keep bullet-hole-free.

  Even though I’m sad, I keep things extra positive on my blog and on Instagram. My new post has a picture of flowers with one of my famous random-occasion frosted cookies. Canary Appreciation Day. We’re coming back bigger and stronger! it says underneath.

  Someday soon. NOT, I add in my mind. I duplicate the post onto Instagram.

  Last week’s post: New recipe: vanilla-maple glaze, just in time for Paul Bunyan Day! And a picture of my tester batch. I used a special frosting nozzle to get the red-and-white-checked shirt looking just right.

  A few people commented excitedly. One wonders whether I’ll be back up and running in time for National Ferret Day. National Ferret Day is April 2nd—just a few weeks away. I answer with a smiley face. The ferrets will have to go cookie-less this year, alas. #ChocolateferretsFTW

  I didn’t tell the customers that Mason is the reason my business crashed and burned, or that he fooled me and squeezed every penny out of my life. It’s better that way, image-wise. I don’t want people feeling sorry for my bakery. I want them to see it as a place of joy, the way I once did.

  I loved going in there in the mornings. I’d laugh with my staff and customers. We’d listen to music and bake and frost.

  And then came Mason. Gorgeous, controlling Mason, who was full of ideas for modernizing my accounting systems and things. He’d give me lectures on how much of a slacker I was with money management, how I should tighten this and that.

  And god, he was so charming, so out of my league. This sexy suit guy who worked on Wall Street. It was love at first sight the day he came into the bakery. Or so I thought. He seemed to
have all this money. Not that I cared—I had my own, after all. The bakery was killing it! It never crossed my mind that the bakery was paying for his nice suits and limo rides.

  I wanted to believe he loved me. I was willfully blind.

  The police actually knew who he was. They had five names for him. A list of female victims. They said he was one of the best in the business. It was supposed to be a consolation, but it wasn’t.

  This time I’ll stand on my own two feet. No man involved. I’m going to oversee every aspect of my business, or hire professionals I can trust.

  I sip my coffee and create and schedule more hopeful posts. Maybe my bakery is a whimpering little woodland animal, and maybe I’m a whimpering little woodland animal too, but I’ll never show it to the outside world.

  A few hours later I’m strolling down the sidewalk in the last of my three-prairie-dress rotation, having had not at all enough sleep, yet I feel good. Like the world is fresh and new. I tell myself it’s the ionization from the rain, or maybe my fun canary post, but deep down, I know it’s a little bit the phone call with Mr. Drummond.

  It was so wrong. Yet strangely intimate. I never speak to people like that!

  When I emerge from the scaffolding tunnel at the corner, the Vossameer building comes into view, rising up from the ground with all its concrete muscle. Butterflies swirl madly in my belly.

  There’s the prison I’ll soon escape, I remind myself.

  But the butterflies aren’t thinking prison; they’re thinking stern Mr. Drummond’s lair. They’re thinking sparkling gray eyes glowering out from nerdy glasses. They’re thinking lab coat. Bad-boy lips.

  Stop!

  I force my mind to the Instagram strategy as I ride up the elevator to the third floor. Betsy up at reception is her cheery self, persevering in the face of utter grimness. “You look nice today,” she says, a total pity compliment.

  “Thank you,” I say, looking down at what is basically a stitched-together ream of fabric. “Maybe this dress looked better on the rack.”

  She holds up a hand. “Been there.”

  I smile. Betsy is the nicest person in the entire place. I head down cubicle row. Sasha pops up and crooks her finger.

  Come here.

  Danger bells start clanging.

  “The wake-up-call service,” she says.

  I frown, as though that’s the last thing I’d expect her to bring up. “Is it still…working out?”

  “Apparently so. Mr. Drummond wants an extra call.” She hands me a card. “This is his office line, to be used only for the purposes of an extra call to be placed by the current operator he’s working with. The call is to be made at precisely 9:20 a.m.”

  “Huh,” I say with a totally straight face. “Really.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe he’s planning a nap up there or something. And you’re to specifically request that the operator working with the Vossameer account be assigned to this job, but it shouldn’t be obvious he’s the client. Have them PayPal invoice me. Understand?”

  “I understand,” I say, scrambling to think how I’d ever get away with placing a call from my cubicle. What will I do?

  “Unusual, I know. But there’s always a method to Mr. Drummond’s madness,” she assures me breathlessly.

  “Of course there is,” I say. “But this request is for a call in two hours.”

  “Are you saying you think you can’t handle it?”

  “I’ll put in the order,” I say. “I don’t know how they assign things over there, in terms of scheduling the operators. I suspect that they might schedule twenty-four hours in advance.”

  “Figure it out. Whatever it costs. This is something Mr. Drummond wants, so this is something Mr. Drummond gets.”

  She turns back to her work, my cue to scram. I take a look at the card, vaguely disappointed to find his office line written in Sasha’s loopy and polished hand instead of Mr. Drummond’s expressively angular pencil writing. Crisp, dark lines, like he presses really intensely, so deliciously stern is he.

  The handwriting of an asshole, I remind myself.

  Also, microwave popcorn ban!

  I head down cubicle row, clutching the card. Trying to think how to handle this.

  I know what he’s doing, of course. He wants to figure out whether his wake-up-call girl speaks rudely to all her clients. So he’s posing as a different client. Scientist that he is, he’s set up a wee test.

  Hah! He has to wake up a lot earlier than 4:30 in the morning to outfox me.

  I smile, just at the craziness of it all. I shouldn’t be smiling, but I like that he wants more of the calls. I want to make more of the calls. Because it’s so damn fun.

  I take the card back to my desk.

  The problem is that there’s no way to be sure I can get alone in two hours. Sasha might need me. Even if I ran to the bathroom stall, somebody could be there. But what kind of service turns down business? What reason will I give?

  It comes to me then that I can just say no. He may be perched up there in his CEO lair atop the Vossameer building, but I run the wake-up-call company.

  The answer is no. End of story. No reason. Just no.

  It feels good and a little bit revolutionary to tell a handsome and controlling guy no, especially after I spent so long accommodating Mason’s requests, always trying to make him feel happy and listened to.

  Back at my desk, I press my phone to my cheek and pretend to put in the order for the benefit of my coworkers in the surrounding cubicles.

  “You’re sure there’s no way to arrange it…” I say. “We really would like this call to be made…no, I understand…yes, we are extremely disappointed.”

  I return immediately to Sasha’s desk, dutiful employee that I am, and tell her the bad news. “The operator he wants is all booked up. They can’t give her any more clients. Do you want me to try for a different one?”

  “It can’t be a different one. He said her or nobody.”

  I nod. “I tried everything. They’re just like, ‘No, Operator Seven is not available for another call.’” I don’t know where I pull Operator Seven from. It sounds official, though. “Not at 9:20, not at 10:20, not this morning, not this afternoon…” Not in a house, not with a mouse.

  “Did you offer them extra money?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I don’t think there’s anything that’ll sway these people. No dollar figure. Nothing. Looks like I got the last slot open for their very best wake-up-call girl.”

  She frowns. “I don’t understand. Operator Seven won’t take one more spot? How hard can it be to place one more call?”

  I shrug. “Again, I could ask about a different operator…”

  “No, Mr. Drummond was very specific.”

  I try to appear sheepish, but hopefully not in a way that looks like I think it’s funny. Which I do.

  Sasha gazes into the distance. “When Mr. Drummond finds something that works, he commits to it fully and completely.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t either,” Sasha snaps, turning back to me. “He is going to be very disappointed.” This like it’s all my fault.

  I furrow my brow, mirroring her expression, hoping against hope that she won’t want to take a crack at the wake-up-call people herself. Because that would be a total disaster.

  How did I get into this ridiculous situation?

  “Well, if they won’t, they won’t.” Sasha waves me off.

  Nine

  Theo

  * * *

  Sasha calls with the news—my wake-up-call girl, Operator Seven, is all booked up.

  “I don’t see how that can be,” I say. “It’s a simple phone call.”

  “My point exactly,” she says. “It’s one simple phone call. How is that not doable? I even offered to pay extra, but they simply weren’t interested. They didn’t even want to talk money. There’s no more room in her schedule anywhere. It seems that I landed you the last available time slot f
rom their very best and most in-demand wake-up-call girl.”

  I stab my pencil into my desk, again and again, hard enough to make a tiny divot. “It doesn’t make sense. A wake-up-call business sells punctuality, not time.”

  Or maybe she really does spend ten or twenty minutes talking to every client. It is possible? Something dark twists inside of me.

  “Do you want me to try for a different operator?”

  “No!” I straighten and pause, get ahold of myself. “Never mind,” I say through gritted teeth, circling the lead in the divot now, feeling utterly aggravated. I’m the CEO of a billion-dollar company. I should have the service I want.

  I’m amazing, and you’re lucky to have me. Is it possible she wasn’t bullshitting me?

  “Should I seek out a different service?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Somebody here could place the call for you…”

  “No,” I say. “Leave it.”

  And why do I even care? She’s rude.

  But it’s more than the rudeness. There was something fiery and genuine about her. Compelling. Sure of herself, yet vulnerable. And she didn’t feel like a pro, rattling off lines. She felt…spontaneous. As though she was speaking from the heart. And that husky, sexy voice. “It’s fine. I’ll survive,” I say.

  Operator Seven—that won’t do. I want her real name. I want to know who she is as a person. I press my fingers to my forehead.

  “Mr. Drummond? Is there anything else?”

  “Uh...” I feel half crazy. “How’s the…uh…Instagram thing working out?”

  “Oh, fabulous!” she says. “I think you’re really going to like one of the directions I’m having the team create. We’re working up a behind-the-scenes view of the formulation process. A tools-of-the-trade thing. Think beakers and whiteboard shots. Race for a cure. But don’t worry, we wouldn’t bother you with it or divulge trade secrets. We’d have a junior chemist work with marketing on it.”

  “Hmm,” I say. It’s actually not a bad idea. The race to develop the new Vossameer formula is far more dramatic and exciting than anything else we’re up to. “I’d take a look at that.”