by R. R. Banks
I was all too familiar with the pretense and it was that familiarity that ensured I paid close attention to every belonging that any of the women who spent time in my apartment had with them, so I could make sure that they had every single one of them with them when they made their way down the sidewalk. If I had wanted to see them again I would have given them my phone number or accepted theirs. I would have cared more about knowing their names or anything about them. As it was, I only had a shadowy recollection of the fact that the woman who was walking away from me now had a name that started with a “B” and that I had picked her up at the bar where I had been having drinks with a potential new client.
The meeting had gone well so she was my celebration. Now that it was morning I didn’t really have any more need for her. Or her bra.
Giving her a wave from the balcony, I walked back inside and closed the door behind me. Throughout my apartment my staff was already going about the tasks of removing the signs of the night before. One of the maids scurried past, her arms filled with the sheets from my bed. I knew that there was another of the fast, meticulous women in my bedroom, replacing those with a set of fresh sheets that didn’t have the smell of the woman’s body on them. I couldn’t even remember what color her eyes were. I really didn’t need a reminder of her smell. I’d leave the staff an extra tip at the end of the day to show my appreciation for their attentiveness and discretion.
I made my way further into the apartment toward the dining room. Taking up the newspaper that had been set on the corner of the table, I walked toward the chair where I always sat. I reached out with the paper, using it to sweep an apron up off of the table so I could hold it out toward the cook as she approached. The last time I had seen it the woman who had just performed the quintessential walk of shame was wearing it and nothing else as she did a pathetic job of trying to make breakfast.
“You’re going to want to have this washed, Bettie,” I said.
The older woman glared at the apron like she was searing the naked girl who had once been behind that piece of cloth with her very eyes.
“She was in my kitchen,” she said, sounding offended by the very concept.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“She touched my stove and messed up my refrigerator.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I repeated. “Go ahead and throw everything out. I’ll call up the grocery delivery service and have them replace it all this afternoon.”
“Now, don’t you go and do a fool thing like that,” Bettie said, the anger disappearing from her voice just as I thought that it would. “Can’t waste all that good food just because one disaster wandered into the kitchen. I’ll clean it up.”
I smiled at her. Bettie was the only person who would ever dare speak to me the way that she did, but there was something disarming and endearing about her that kept me from ever being offended that she didn’t keep up the formalities of the rest of my apartment staff.
“Thank you,” I said, then looked at the table in front of me and the scattering of plates that cluttered it. I peered into the closest one, using a fork to prod the unidentifiable splatter of blackened food on it. “Do you think that you might be able to give this a decent burial and make me something actually edible for breakfast?”
Bettie grabbed up the plates, stacked them on top of each other, and stomped out of the room, grumbling under her breath as she went. I didn’t hear everything that she said, but the few words that I caught made me hope for her sake that the woman from the night before hadn’t left anything else in my apartment and might be planning a reappearance.
The image of the woman wearing the apron and brandishing a partially cooked piece of bacon at me as she rattled off her plans for our day together was still almost disturbingly clear in my mind.
Our day together.
Just the thought made me shudder. Her very mention of me taking the day off so I could enjoy a leisurely breakfast and then go to the farmer’s market with her smacked so much of a relationship that I had the urge to toss her out on her pert little ass without even letting her get dressed.
I don’t do relationships.
I was finishing up my breakfast when Aidan came into the room, bringing with him the almost frantic energy that he always had, as though he was on the brink of disaster with every breath. He paused by the table. Just to frustrate him, I continued reading through the newspaper and chewing slowly. I made it a habit of reading a real newspaper in the morning, preferring to stay unplugged until the very last moment that I could get away with it.
“Are you still here?” Aidan finally asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been gone for hours.”
“You have meetings right up until you are going to have to come home to get ready for the party tonight. I’ve been in contact with the vendors and they are doing final preparations.”
I sighed, cutting him off, and looked at him.
“Do I really have to do this? There’s no way that I can cancel or get a stand-in?”
“Are you serious?” Aidan asked, his voice slightly higher and more fragile as though it were going to shatter.
“Alright, alright,” I said.
I held up my hands in surrender and got up from the table. Ten minutes later I walked out of the apartment, reaching out as I always did to run my fingers along the silver frame sitting on a table in the foyer.
Chapter Two
Ella
“I can’t believe that you volunteered me without even asking me first.”
I finished scrubbing the last of the breakfast dishes and rinsed it, tucking it away in the drainer positioned beside the sink. Resting forward on my hands for a moment, I watched as the soap bubbles and water swirled down the drain. The sink would look fresh and perfectly clean, giving a sense of order to the house, for all of about an hour before it started filling again with dishes from snacks, lunch, more snacks, and supper. I did my best to keep them in submission, and these moments of soapy perfection were among my favorite in the day.
“I didn’t volunteer you,” Molly said from where she sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee from the first of the new wave of dishes that would fill the sink. “I told them that you were my partner.”
“Your partner in a company that doesn’t exist.”
“It does exist!” she protested.
“Having one rich old man hire you to do his bidding doesn’t make you into a professional assistant, and making sure that one afternoon tea with his mother went through without her judging the china doesn’t make you an event coordinator.”
“Thank you for your words of support and love.”
I turned toward her and took the now-empty mug from her hand, deciding I would wash it before she had a chance to add it to the sink.
“I’m sorry. I love and support you and am very happy for you that you have fulfilled your life’s dream of being a professional assistant and event coordinator even though two weeks ago your life’s dream was to join the rodeo circuit.”
“I’m still holding out on that one.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Look, Ella,” she said imploringly, joining me at the counter. “I’m sorry I’m kind of blindsiding you with this, but I didn’t really have a choice. He asked me if I had someone else to help me because he wanted to recommend me to his friend for an event that he’s hosting, and I didn’t even think. I just said yes.”
“That’s the problem. You didn’t think.”
“What would you have wanted me to do? Say no? Admit that I’m flying by the seat of my pants as it is and let him just find someone else? It’s not like either of us can really turn up our noses at the money.”
I sighed. I didn’t really know how to answer that. The truth was, I couldn’t even begin to think about turning up my nose at any money. The savings I’d had when I lost my job a few months before had been meager as it was, but even living with Molly to cut down on expenses hadn’t been enough to keep it from dwindling away to near
-nothingness. Soon I was going to be without any money and while there was a time in my life when that wouldn’t have bothered me so much and I would have known that I would have found a way to pull through. But then again Branden would have been by my side. He had died before he even got to see Edmond born. Now I was alone, and I wasn’t just worried about myself. I was thinking about my son and he deserved more than the struggles that I had been putting him through since his father died.
“So, what is it that you’ve signed me up to do as your apparent partner?”
Molly’s face brightened a little as she saw my resistance starting to fade.
“Mason Dupree is hosting a party tonight.”
“Mason Dupree?” I asked, shocked. “The Mason Dupree who owns the Manhattan Showstoppers basketball team? The Mason Dupree who invented the app that essentially runs society, sold it, invested the absurd cash he got from it, and now has more money than God? The Mason Dupree who is single-handedly working toward bringing clean energy into all of the cities throughout the country, quite literally changing the modern landscape and transforming the nation’s carbon footprint? That Mason Dupree?”
Molly stared at me blankly for a few seconds.
“Did you go to a briefing or something before I got up?” she asked.
“I read the newspaper,” I told her. “You should really try it some time.”
“Well, did whatever form of outdated information transmission you chose today tell you that Mason Dupree of the Everything in the World is having a party to celebrate a new player who just signed? And that that party is going to be held in his apartment in The Avalon?”
She sounded almost breathless with excitement at the idea, but I only felt like a rock had taken up residence in the pit of my stomach.
“The Avalon?” I asked. “That ridiculous apartment building by Central Park?”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Molly said. “It’s opulent. It’s also home to the wealthiest men in the city. There’s a lot of opportunity there, Ella. This could be our chance.”
“I just don’t know what it is that I’m supposed to do,” I said. “It’s not like I’ve ever done something like this before.”
“You’re making it sound like I’m asking you to be his personal exotic dancer.”
I reached up into the cabinet above my head and grabbed the cookie jar that I had taken to keeping there rather than on the counter because Edmond’s four-year-old hands were becoming more and more adventurous and I didn’t want to see what would happen if the century-old jar decided to slip off the edge of the counter toward my son’s head.
“Are you sure that’s not another specialty that you’re going to add to your list of services?”
There was a hint of teasing in my voice, but a part of me was a bit worried that she was going to get inspired by my statement. I pulled out a cookie and bit into it, reveling in the simple deliciousness of the chocolate chips.
“Are you eating cookies for breakfast?” Molly asked.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“I’m an adult,” I said through the crumbs that were falling between my lips.
“Elegant.”
“See?” I said, sighing as I wiped my mouth and sagged back against the counter. “I can’t possibly do this.”
“Because you think being an adult justifies you eating chocolate chip cookies for breakfast while standing over your kitchen sink?”
“No,” I said, “because I’m just not the type of adult who can fit in in a place filled with exorbitantly wealthy men.”
“That’s the thing. You don’t have to fit in. You aren’t going to the party. You are doing preparations for the party. You aren’t going to have to interact with anyone. Mason isn’t even going to be there.”
“Mason?” I asked, shooting her a sideways glance. “You’re on a first-name basis with this man?”
“I’d like to think that if he met me that we would be.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said.
Mason Dupree’s face showed up in the newspaper on a frequent-enough basis that I knew why even without his billions he would be considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the city. He was gorgeous in a dark, smoky way, with eyes that seemed to cut out of the page and into me.
“It’s just decorating,” Molly said, going back into her appeal. “We’ll just go to the apartment, decorate it, and leave. He’ll be at work and we’ll be gone well before any of the guests get there. You probably won’t even have to talk to anybody but the doorman, and he’s a sweetheart. That’s all. Just think of the money.”
“How much money?”
“Enough to not have to worry about finding a job for a few more months.”
“How did you pull off something like that?”
“I told my client that as a boutique company our services come at a premium.”
I gave a deep sigh and looked back at the sink. Those last lingering bubbles wouldn’t be putting food on the table or paying for clothes for a child that was growing faster than I could keep up with. I looked back at Molly and nodded.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Molly squealed happily and wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug, nearly crushing me in the process.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you. You’re not going to regret it. I promise. By this time tomorrow you’ll be counting your cash and getting a pedicure.”
“Probably not on the pedicure front, but I might be trying to find a tiny T-shirt with a talking dog super hero on it.”
Molly gave me a quizzical look and I shook my head dismissively.
“Never mind.”
At that moment Edmond came wandering into the kitchen, his little eyes still sleepy as he gripped his blanket to his face.
“I just need to find Edmond a babysitter.”
Chapter Three
Mason
There are few things I hate more in life than corporate meetings. Stuffy men twice my age in suits just slightly too retro for my taste droning on and on about things that I already knew as they tried to convince me of the way that they thought that I should bring my own company. Yet, there I was. Sitting in a meeting listening to several members of the board argue about an issue that I had already resolved and was only waiting for them to quiet down to explain, staring out of the window at the day beyond.
The morning looked innocuous enough. Now that the sun was completely up it was revealing one of those days that looked as cold as it felt. Even though the sun was shining brightly, it seemed to be shimmering, as if bouncing off of the cold itself. I was dreading the party that night even more now than I was when I was talking to Aidan. As my personal assistant it was his job to handle all of the details of events like this, but he had a tendency to try to run things by me “just to make sure”. While I appreciated his thoroughness, the more that I heard about the party, the less I wanted to deal with it. Unfortunately, it was just one of the things that I learned was expected of me when I bought the Showstoppers. It wasn’t just about the game itself or even making decisions about players and the stadium. Instead, it was about wooing players, schmoosing investors, and being the face of the franchise hosting apparently important people in my private box and having parties to celebrate everything from new corporate partnerships to new players, as was the case with the party that was looming that evening. There were times when I felt like as the owner of the team I should be the one making the decisions about how things were going to go and what I was going to do, and yet I found myself getting tumbled along, doing what was expected of me for the good of the team and my investment.
“Don’t you agree, Mr. Dupree?”
I looked at the two men who were now staring at me from where they stood beside a presentation board and tried to find the place in my subconscious that I hoped would have been paying attention and chronicled what they said for future review. I glanced at the presentation board, scanning the notes and figures on it. None of it had anything
to do with the solutions that I had come up with, which meant that I really didn’t need to comment on it at all.
“As I told you gentlemen at the beginning of this meeting, this situation has already been resolved. I have done my own research and come to the conclusions that I believe are the best for this project. You will have full reports on your desks by the end of the day.”
“But Mr. Dupree,” one of the men protested, obviously perturbed that I wasn’t impressed by whatever half of the presentation for which he was responsible.
I stood and held up a hand to stop him.
“I appreciate the efforts that both of you went to, but I assure you, you will find the plans that I have made the ideal solution and will be ready to cooperate with me in implementing them as soon as possible.”
I purposely kept my tone and the words that I chose a careful balance between encouraging them and making sure that they knew that they didn’t really have a choice when it came to going along with what I had decided. They would either cooperate with me and do as I expected of them, or they were welcome to try to find another position in one of the companies that wasn’t even close to as advanced and progressive as mine. It was completely up to them. Frankly, they were both dispensable and replaceable with little concern from me.
“Can we schedule a meeting to discuss the reports after we have had a chance to read them?” the other man asked.
I started around the long conference table toward the door to the room, buttoning my suit jacket as I went.
“You’ll have to discuss that with my secretary and personal assistant. They will see if there is a convenient time in the near future. Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have several other meetings to prepare for and need to be on my way.”
I left the room before either of the men, or any of the others who had been sitting silently at the table listening could say anything. The truth was I did have several other meetings set up for me that afternoon, but I had already made the decision to have my secretary, Lindsay, reschedule them for me. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with any of them. It would be better to reschedule them for a time when my mind was clear and I had the fuss of the party over with so that I could give the issues being discussed at the meetings the full attention that they deserved.
