The Billionaire's Fake Fiance

by Annika Martin

  I walk out with two thousand dollars and a heavy heart.

  After that, I go around to caterers to see whether there’s anyone who’ll pay me up front for three weeks of work—that’s how long I have in the apartment. My ads for a subletter all say it starts the first of April.

  The caterers all turn me down. I think my desperation scares them.

  I’m back just after noon, making a new list of caterers to hit after lunch. I’m cheap and good—it’ll be a perfect deal for the right caterer. It won’t be enough money, but it’ll be something to show Lenny I’m trying.

  Meanwhile, Mia can’t be around for whatever fallout there is.

  My plan to keep her out involves installing a sliding bolt on the inside of the door. Literally locking her out. I’ve arranged to have her stay on a mutual friend’s couch. She’ll be pissed as hell.

  But safe.

  So that’s my plan. I look at the pristine skin on my arm. What does it mean to carve up a person’s arm? Do they carve a message, like, pay up? Or just stab it a bunch of times?

  I nearly jump out of my skin when the buzzer sounds. I go to the panel, heart racing, unsure whether I should answer. They can’t be here already. It’s Friday. The money isn’t due until Sunday morning. “Hello?”

  “Delivery for Ms. Cooper.”

  I’m freaking out now. I haven’t ordered anything in a very long time. Is this how the loan sharks think they can get in? Or maybe it’s a dead rat or black roses. Or a horse’s head. So far, the loan shark guys have shown zero originality.

  “From who?”

  “Vossameer.”

  I frown. Did they courier over some severance stuff? Maybe my pro-rated salary? It won’t be the twelve thousand dollars I still need, but it’ll be something.

  I whip down the stairs.

  Down in the lobby, a delivery boy hands me a large white box with a white ribbon. What? I give the kid a few bucks. Not like that’s going to make a difference at this point.

  I happen to look out, across the street just then, and I nearly throw up when I see Lenny’s enforcer leaning against a car out there. He smiles.

  I hurry back upstairs and lock the door, then I set the box on the kitchen island and grab the scissors. There are three white boxes inside the main box—one large, one the size of a shoebox and one quite small. I open the large one first. It’s something soft wrapped in gray tissue paper. Something velvet. My heart begins to pound as I pull out a red velvet dress.

  Not just any red velvet dress; it’s a beautifully made strapless dress with satin detailing around the bodice. And a matching wrap. So gorgeous, I can’t breathe.

  But that’s not what shocks me.

  It’s a lot like the dress that Audrey Hepburn wore at the end of Funny Face. A slightly updated version.

  Mr. Drummond. It has to be.

  Why would he send me this? He told Sasha our most intimate secrets. Had her fire me. He betrayed and embarrassed me.

  Is this some psycho way of saying he’s sorry? Or is he being weirdly mocking?

  I clutch it to me. I should be angry, but mostly I feel tired. And sad for all my lost dreams. For how hard I try all the time.

  I hold it to myself. My size.

  I shouldn’t open the card, but something perverse inside me forces my fingers to open the little envelope.

  Tonight. Six. The Blue Stag Club.

  I stare, dumbfounded.

  Does he really think I’d go out to dinner with him after all of this?

  “Screw you,” I say to the card.

  The shoebox-sized box is, of course, a shoebox. It has two pairs of Audrey’s shoes in it—seven and a half, the other in eight. I’m an eight. What did he do? Study the security tapes to get my size?

  He did, I think.

  I assume the smallest box will be a necklace of some sort. Some mocking costume jewelry.

  It’s not. It’s a cookie with mostly chocolate frosting but just enough pink and green to create a cellphone. There’s a card, too.

  Happy wake-up-call girl discovery day.

  I sink into the chair. All my life I’ve baked special little cookies for people, commemorating things that are important or unimportant, but nobody ever made one for me.

  And now this. I get a mocking one.

  He wants me to go out to dinner at the Blue Stag? I should go, just to rip up the dress in front of him. And maybe I could set fire to the shoes and leave them burning on the table.

  Or maybe I wear the dress and shoes. I walk in and give him the sassy mean smile he probably wants from the likes of me. He would sit there in his dinner jacket thinking I’ve capitulated. And I make him buy the most expensive champagne, and then I throw it in his face. In your dreams, asshole!

  I adjust my vision of the scene to him sitting in his lab coat. He’s all hot and scowly in his lab coat. And then I toss the champagne in his face.

  Or maybe I drink the champagne and toss the water.

  Hell yes!!

  It’s just about the chase with him. He thinks he can fire me? He thinks I’m such a beggar for him that I’ll wear this dress and eat with him and fuck him now?

  I break off a corner of the cookie and taste it. Just the perfect amount of vanilla in the dough. Only the best for Mr. Drummond.

  I grab the dress. It really is like the one in the movie…except better. I hold it up to myself. I could just try it on…

  Ten minutes later, Mia gets back. Her eyes grow wide as saucers. “Lizzie…Oh my god.”

  I smooth my hands down the bodice. I’m thinking about saying something funny about looking good for when the loan sharks carve my arm, but I don’t have it in me.

  Mia just looks upset. “Lizzie. No. Whatever you’re thinking. You don’t have to resort to that.”

  “What?”

  She just widens her eyes.

  I snort when I get what she’s thinking. “Dude. No.”

  “What? I come home and you’re all dressed up…”

  “You think I’d wear this to prostitute myself? I don’t know if I should be insulted that you think I’d actually do it, or that you think I’m insane enough to pick this out for the occasion. It’s not like I’m whoring myself to the ladies of the Audrey Hepburn Appreciation Society.”

  “I don’t even understand anything of what’s happening here. Why would you buy a beautiful gown?”

  “This dress is more dimensions of assholery from Theo freaking Drummond.” I hand her the note.

  She reads it. “He has some nerve.”

  “Like I’ll go to dinner.”

  “Go. And demand the sign-on bonus,” she says.

  “On what grounds? The contract says I have to last thirty days. I didn’t last the thirty days.”

  “He sent you this dress. Maybe you should go.”

  “That’s what he wants, don’t you see? This is not a dress. It’s a power play. He thinks I’ll go. And even if I go with elaborate fantasies of telling him off, he thinks he can get me to sit down to dinner. He thinks he can get me to kiss him. To sleep with him. Get me to the next step. He probably had me fired so he can make it all happen without fear of a lawsuit. This guy plays to win.”

  “That is cold.”

  “And arrogant. And ruthlessly efficient, which we knew about him. This is the man who doesn’t even want his employees to be comforted by treats or decorations lest it detract from their efficiency. I mean, really? Now I’m going to sleep with you? You think you’re so hot and amazing with your lab coat and your bad-boy lips that I’ll just sleep with you after you fire me?”

  “The hell with that!” She crosses her arms and frowns in solidarity with me. “He has bad-boy lips?”

  “Shut it,” I snort.

  Mia stares at the dress.

  “I should do something drastic to the dress,” I say, “like cut it up and send it back to him, but he’s not worth the energy.”

  “Wait. Come here.”

  I glide over. “At least I look good. If you�
��re going to be beaten by loan sharks, you should at least look awesome. That’s my new motto. What do you think?”

  “Turn around.”

  I turn. She unhooks the back. “Oh, hell, yes,” she says. “This is an Iggy Miyaki!”

  “Iggy...”

  “Miyaki. A dress designer. Socialites love her stuff for the big parties. I heard about her when I nannied. You even see her stuff at the Oscars.” She turns me around and looks me in the eye. “This dress could be worth several thousand dollars.”

  “Really?”

  “Several thousand.”

  “You think they’ll let me return it for cash? I highly doubt it.”

  “No, but they’ll let us return it for store credit.”

  “And that helps me how?”

  “You’ll see. Mia has a plan,” Mia says, unzipping the dress.

  “Should I be scared that you’re undressing me and talking about yourself in third person right now?”

  “Scared of how brilliant I am, maybe.”

  We pack the dress back up and put on our best clothes.

  Not an hour later, we’re in one of those West Side boutiques where they serve you champagne the minute you walk in the door. “I wish they would do this at Target,” I say, taking a glass.

  “God, that would be dangerous.”

  She straightens her spine and marches up to the counter. She talks to the woman in a low voice. Before you can say sweetheart neckline, we’re in possession of a store credit. Five thousand dollars’ worth.

  I finger the card. “This would be the perfect thing…if Lenny was a high-fashion cross-dresser.”

  “Part two.” We go outside and sit on a bus bench. She makes a few calls and eventually locates a woman who is willing to pay four thousand dollars cash for the gift card. “Little-known secret,” she says, pocketing her phone. “Rich women are the ultimate penny pinchers.”

  An hour later, we have four thousand dollars cash from the dress and two thousand from the rings. We head to the bar in Murray Hill where Lenny’s crew is. It’s long and windowless and lit entirely with colorful neon beer signs, which makes everything slightly pinkish.

  Lenny’s hunched over a beer at a booth in the back.

  I slap the money down. He flips through the corner of the stack instead of counting it like a normal person. “Six large,” he says. “Where’s the rest?”

  “Since this is two days early,” I try, “I thought maybe I could get a few extra days for the rest.”

  He gives me a look that means no.

  “I’m doing my best.”

  He looks down at the stack. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, but…”

  “A few more days.”

  “I’ve given you a few more days.” He looks me up and down. “You want to work it off?”

  “Do you have need of a baker?” I ask hopefully.

  “Does the baker know how to lie back and spread her legs real nice?”

  “Uh!” Mia grabs my arm. “She most certainly does not!”

  “Thousand a night, two guys per. Eight nights. It’s a good deal,” he says.

  “She’s not even thinking about it.” Mia drags me out of there. “You’re not even thinking about it,” she instructs me.

  We catch a train back home. Mia’s cutting it close to get to her workshop.

  “You’re not thinking about it, are you?”

  “You’re a good friend,” I say softly.

  She grips the overhead strap and puts her free arm around me. “Oh my god, it’s after six. He’s at the restaurant right now,” she says.

  “Oh, right,” I say. Like it hadn’t crossed my mind.

  “Sitting there alone. I hope he feels like an idiot.”

  “I hope so,” I say.

  “You can’t always get what you want, asshole,” she says.

  “He wants what he can’t have. He wants to win,” I say. “Just like Mason. Mason was always jealous of the bakery. And now Mr. Drummond is ruining my life because why? Just because he can? So done with jerky guys!”

  “You’ll get through this, and you’ll find a non-jerky guy. Not that you even need one.”

  I sigh. I liked when Mr. Drummond was jerky during phone sex, but I didn’t want him to be an actual jerk. Is it so impossible to have one without the other?

  “Here’s what’s amazing to me,” she says. “They always show loan sharks on TV having an unnatural ability to count money just from flipping through the corner of the stack. And it turns out that that’s a real thing? Did you notice that?”

  “I know, right?” I say, glad she noticed it, too.

  “Do they make them practice? Is it part of an initiation? Do they have to demonstrate that they have skills in accurately counting a stack of bills just by flipping through the corner and shooting somebody in the face?”

  “And what if a guy has really good skills in shooting somebody in the face, but he can’t count the money like that? Is he disqualified?”

  “So weird,” she says.

  “I’m glad I at least got to wear it.”

  “It looked beautiful on you.”

  Twenty-Four

  Theo

  * * *

  I give her forty-five minutes. In that time, I drink two scotches and go through the bread basket. I’m about to close out the tab when I see the email come through. A return processed. Iggy Miyaki on West 31st.

  Returned the damn dress.

  It was the most personal, most non-oblivious gift I could come up with. It took two personal shoppers working round the clock to find it. I thought she’d love it.

  Hoped she’d love it.

  Apparently not.

  If she’s trying to drive me insane, she’s succeeding.

  I throw down my napkin, pay the bill, and get out of there.

  We had a connection. I wasn’t imagining it. Something happened.

  I direct Derek back to her place, back to the spot we parked at last time. “We’re going to sit on it for a while,” I say.

  He nods.

  What I really want to do is storm up there, but I can’t be reckless. There’s something I’m not understanding.

  I sit back and watch her window. Lights on. What does it mean?

  Insufficient data.

  According to my PI, Elizabeth Cooper, aka Lizzie, moved from Fargo to New York City right after high school. She attended an elite baking school on a scholarship and went on to land an apprenticeship with one of the top people at a Michelin-rated restaurant. She started a little pop-up bakery after that, then got a permanent storefront just before she turned twenty-five. Cookie Madness.

  The place became quite successful. She got a few write-ups praising her offbeat cookies. An article from the Times food section has an image of her grinning, holding a huge tray of brightly frosted cookies up to the camera. Young hipsters in baker’s hats—her employees, presumably—are gathered around her. But the strange thing is that none of them are looking at the camera, they’re looking at her—beaming at her—with undisguised affection.

  Another article has a photo of her next to a blond man with movie-star looks and a smile for the camera that I don’t like. Or maybe it’s the way he drapes his arm around her shoulders. Or maybe I just don’t like him. The article identifies him as Mason West, who, according to Lizzie’s interview, “pitches in with business expertise.”

  Some business expertise—the bakery imploded around two months ago, and Mr. West bought a one-way ticket to St. Thomas the same time.

  Did Mason West have something to do with the collapse? Or was he a fair-weather boyfriend who left as soon as the gravy train ended?

  And why did things go bad? My PI is still digging. He said it looked fast and furious. Gambling debt, bad investment, relative in trouble, or embezzlement—those were his guesses.

  It can’t be too dire, though—her blog is full of glowing plans and ideas. Vossameer was clearly just temporary for her. She quit with no notice. She would’ve gotten a
great bonus if she’d stayed. What happened?

  A face at the window.

  Her.

  Does she see me down here? No chance; even if I weren’t in the back of a town car with shaded windows, I’m a full block down. She seems to be looking at something directly across the street.

  Discreetly I get out and take a look. Right away I see it—two guys leaning on a car directly across from her. Staring up at her window. Just standing there, eyes on her windows, no phones.

  She grabs the curtains and yanks them shut. Angry? More like scared.

  “Wait here for me,” I say to Derek.

  “Sir,” he says.

  I button up my coat against the cool March air and head for the guys.

  They’re still standing out there, still looking up at her window.

  I’m taken back to a time I’d prefer to forget. My dad had gotten into another jam, but this one was bad. Guys just like this outside our house. Watching. Dad acting nonchalant. They just wanna know they’ll get their money, he said.

  But he wasn’t the one who had to deal with them—he was blacked out by the time they came to the door, so it was Mom and me. She’d wanted me to go to my room, but I was in my early teens, too big for her to boss. With trembling hands, she gave them the secret money from the soup can, with promises to bring more later on.

  Is Lizzie in money trouble? It would make sense, considering her credit report. And if so, why blow off the bonus?

  They become aware of me half a block down. Or at least that’s when they show me they see me.

  I smile as I approach them. “Evening,” I say.

  They’re both looking at me hard.

  I show them my hands. I come in peace. “You have business with Ms. Cooper?” I ask.

  “You a cop?”

  “Just a friend of hers,” I say.

  “And we care why?” the one guy asks.

  “I might be in the mood to clear it up, maybe save everyone a little trouble, if I can get a sense of what it is.”

  “Maybe you’re just nosy,” the one says.

  “Maybe. Or maybe I handle this and you guys get to go out for wings and beer instead of sitting here.”