Oh shit.
He was the star.
His nuts were probably insured.
What had I just done?
Isabelle
The Blacklist
“They fired me!” I squealed. I tossed a pink toolbox on the ground and stared at my dad in disbelief. I’d just run downstairs to his workshop, and I was out of breath. “They fucking fired me. That prick Ashton Radley kissed me, and I told him not to and he did it again, so I kicked him in the nuts and they fired me! Can they do that? Ashton said he’d get me blacklisted.”
I was babbling hysterically, and I didn’t care. I threw myself into my dad’s arms with a sob. My heart hurt. My pride hurt.
“You kicked him in the nuts?” my dad asked, patting the back of my head as I bawled.
I nodded.
“Because he tried to force himself on you?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “He’s an asshole.”
“Then good for you. That’s my girl.”
I laughed into my sob. “Dad, this is bad.”
He laughed then, although I could feel it rather than hear it the way I was up against his chest. “It’s probably not the best first impression you could have made on the director, but I’m still proud of you. Nobody messes with my daughter.”
“What are we gonna’ do?” I asked my dad, pulling back to stare at him anxiously. “You need the help.”
I was unpaid on this production because the studio refused to pay my dad what his thirty years of experience were worth. He needed an assistant to keep up with the ever-increasing demands that were shoved his way. He needed me.
My dad just shrugged though. He drew a hand through his thinning grey hair and looked around himself like the answer might just be lying around somewhere. “I guess we’ll just go. Both of us. If they don’t respect my daughter’s right to not be sexually assaulted on soundstage six, they don’t deserve my services.”
“Dad, we need this job.”
“We definitely don’t need this job,” he replied.
“Okay, but we do need a job.” I shook my head. “You can’t just quit with nothing lined up.”
Night Stalker, guaranteed box office bomb that it was, might have been the only thing standing between us and actual poverty. I made some money on the side selling prints, sculptures, and drawings at art festivals, but it wasn’t enough. Practical effects jobs just weren’t what they used to be. I’d even started doing face painting at children’s birthday parties to help with the bills, but the work was exhausting, and I hated it.
My dad seemed much less concerned about our finances than he should be. His expression was mild. “I know it’s less than ideal, but I’m definitely not going to stay here if my daughter is going to be mistreated, Izzie.”
“Mom would want us to make the smart decision here, dad.” I aimed for a reasonable tone of voice, although inside I was genuinely very worried. We were down to the last few credit cards. Our savings account was at zero.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Your mom would want me to go kick Ashton Radley in the balls on her behalf,” he replied. “You know I’m right about that.”
He was right. But he was also wrong. Mom wouldn’t want us deeper in debt or on the public dole. She would want us to figure out a way to stay in the income bracket she left us in.
“I wish she were here right now,” I mumbled. Another, bigger hurt, one still raw and throbbing, displaced the current issue.
“I know sweetheart,” my dad told me. His eyes momentarily lost their sparkle. “So do I.”
My mom had been the financially responsible one in our family until an abrupt bout of meningitis took her about six months ago. It came out of nowhere. The loss of her income as a CPA coupled with the trauma of losing her had put my dad and me into a not-so-great financial position. We were creative types. Money wasn’t our strong suit. And when we got stressed out, we bought a lot of paint and modelling clay and didn’t realize until the credit cards were getting maxed out that we even had a problem. We woke up one morning to realize that we were right on the edge of a financial disaster.
Thoughts of Orange County Surrogates and the bearded, blue-eyed man from the elevator flashed through me. I shook my head to clear the idea away. That was totally ridiculous.
“They can’t do this,” I said. I stood up and paced back and forth like a caged tiger. “They just can’t. I have rights! This is unfair.”
My dad just shook his head. He’d been around Hollywood for a long time. Long enough, maybe, that he’d seen worse injustices go unpunished. It’s not exactly a secret that Hollywood is full of sexist pricks and misogynists. The whole “Me Too” movement was born on Hollywood casting couches and backlots.
“You can try to fight it, Izzie. And I’ll do whatever I can to help, but don’t get your hopes up.” He sighed. “You know how power and money works in Hollywood. You can get anything if you’re rich and influential enough.” He frowned. “Look at OJ. He literally got away with murder in this town.”
I frowned. OJ Simpson was not in trouble today. Ashton Radley was.
“No. I don’t need any help. I can do this. I’m going to march up there and give that bottom-feeding director a piece of my mind. If they don’t give me my job back right now, I’ll call the police on Ashton Radley. That’ll show them.”
I stomped off before my dad could say another word.
Isabelle
The Offer
The police got called alright, but only to escort me outside the gate and give me a stern talking to. I was told never to come back or I’d be arrested and charged with trespassing and
‘prosecuted to the full extent of the law.’ My response that I’d see them in court only made them laugh. I was nobody, and nobody cared what happened to me.
The rest of the afternoon was a fucking disaster, too. I tried to take the bus home only to realize that my card was expired. I ended up having to walk almost three miles through the not-so-nice part of LA to the tiny condo I shared with my dad. My middle finger was sore from flipping off cat callers by the time I finally got home. Who cat calls the girl wearing overalls in one-hundred-degree summer heat? The answer, apparently, is lots of people.
I was seriously considering swearing off men forever by the time I got home. And the surprises just kept coming, because a well-dressed man with an elaborately styled mustache was sitting on our front porch swing.
“Isabelle Schmidt?” he asked.
“She doesn’t live here anymore,” I hedged. This guy looked like a bill collector or something. Something bad. I didn’t need any more bad news today.
The man just smiled at me. “You’re still wearing your studio ID badge, Isabelle.” I winced. Of course, I was.
I rubbed my temples in frustration. “Okay, you caught me. I’m Isabelle Schmidt. What do you want? You should know right now that I’m currently satisfied with my cable provider, knife set, vacuum cleaner, and religion.”
He ignored my attitude. “Today you met my employer in an elevator. He has a proposition for you.” The man had a slight accent. French maybe?
I frowned. “Sexy Homeless Guy?” I guessed. “Wait. Sexy Homeless Guy has people?” After the crap day that I’d had, the social filter was all the way off.
Mustache guy laughed merrily. “He doesn’t actually go by that, and he’s not homeless, but I can see where you’re coming from. That beard has gotten a bit unruly.” He shook his head at me as if filing away a comment for his employer. “Anyway, yes. Him.”
“And he has a proposition for me?” I repeated. What the fuck? “Is this a weird prostitution thing? Because I am not for sale.” I might be unemployed, but damn, I expected more than a few hours to go by before I was playing the Anne Hathaway role from Les Misérables.
Mustache guy’s eyes widened. “No. Nothing like that. I swear.” He spread his hands out innocently.
At this point I wasn’t sure men could be innocent.
“Then what? What’s
so important that your employer literally sent you out here to sit on my front porch to proposition me on his behalf? You could have just sent an email. Or better yet, he could have showed up in person like a normal human being.”
“This isn’t really something you start a conversation about through email. It’s a bit unusual.”
“Oh, great. So, it is a weird sex thing, isn’t it?” I couldn’t believe what was happening. “Why have I suddenly become a creep magnet?” I asked the universe. “What did I do wrong? Do I just look like a hooker all of a sudden?”
The mustached man absorbed my outburst with almost no reaction. “Let’s start over,” he suggested. “I’m Luc Delacroix. Nice to meet you.” He smiled a friendly, neutral smile at me.
I stared at his extended hand suspiciously. I let it hang there in midair. “Make your unusual proposition or leave Luc Delacroix. I’m in no mood for niceties.”
He raised an eyebrow and lowered the hand. “You two are going to get along like gun powder and flint.” I didn’t know what that meant.
I brushed past him to open the door to my house. I had a pair of brass knuckles in my bag as well, and I fished them out with my other hand. Just in case.
“Proposition me or don’t,” I said. My curiosity was wearing off. “You’ve got until I unlock this door to spit it out.”
Luc reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a check. He handed it to me. I gazed at it, nonplussed. There were a lot of zeros on the check. Five to be exact, with a decimal after the first three.
“My boss would like a meeting with you. Just a meeting. One hour. If you take the meeting you get the check.”
I could use the money. A thousand dollars would buy my dad and me a lot of ramen noodles.
“No weird sex stuff?” I asked again. I felt like I couldn’t be too careful about that.
“Absolutely none.”
“When’s the meeting?” I questioned. With my other hand I was already texting my dad. He’d have my address just in case this did turn out to be a “Taken” situation.
Luc pointed to a black SUV sitting at the curb. I’d walked right past it before. “Right now.”
Isabelle
The Castle
The drive from the pretty crappy part of LA where I lived to my very mysterious meeting took more than two hours. Thanks LA traffic, although I could only blame about half of the commute on that. The rest of it was the slow, careful ascent into the mountains that lay to the southwest of the greater LA area. We weren’t even in the suburbs anymore. We were in rural California mountain territory. At least it gave me plenty of time to Google the man I was about to meet with. Although it didn’t seem to be doing much good.
“Connor Palczynski is his name, right?” I asked Luc. “With an ‘i” at the end?”
Luc nodded. I’d been peppering him with questions the entire drive, but he was not being very forthcoming.
Neither was the internet. I couldn’t find as much as a single result on Mr. Palczynski. Whoever he was, he must be independently wealthy enough to hide himself online. I was no expert on extreme wealth, but that seemed like some next-level shit. Everything was online these days.
“Just give me a hint of what to expect,” I begged for the one hundredth time.
Luc frowned. “Connor will explain everything,” he said as we turned another twisting turn through the Hollywood hills. “We’re almost there now.” He nodded at a dark shape taking form amidst the trees. “All your answers are in there.”
I stared out the window, gaping like the peasant I was. This was his house?
The palatial estate before me was like something out of a movie. A scary movie. Huge, dark, and imposing, but also obviously lacking in basic care and upkeep, the house was perched on a mountainside, buried deeply behind layers and layers of pine trees.
Honestly, calling it a house was probably an understatement. It was a castle. It even had turrets. It probably also had buttresses, parapets, and corbels, too. I didn’t actually know what any of those things were other than that they existed on castles, but I’m sure Mr. Palczynski had them. I felt an odd thankfulness to my third-grade spelling teacher, Mr. Wright, for including them on a list back in the day. By the looks of the place, he also had a dungeon—a dungeon that I might end up in.
“This is the kind of place where a girl gets murdered,” I mumbled, texting my dad my exact GPS coordinates. He was still at work, so he hadn’t replied, but at least the police would be able to find my body.
“No one gets murdered here,” Luc said, hopping out of the driver’s side to come open the door for me. “I promise.” He smiled encouragingly, although I could tell he was pretty fed up with my attitude. I’d asked questions non-stop on the drive over, despite his attempts to get me to be patient and wait for Mr. Palczynski.
I still stared back at him unconvinced. Bad attitude or no, this was a weird situation. I might be curious, but I’m also not stupid. There’s no normal reason a man drives a woman two hours outside of town on a school night to meet in his creepy-ass castle. There was something very strange going on.
I shuffled out of the SUV, wondering then if I should have changed my clothes. I was still wearing my paint-spattered overalls. I probably should have changed. Oh well. Too late now. I’d either earn a thousand dollars or get murdered in my worst clothes.
Luc gestured to the nine-foot-tall front door, indicating that I should just go inside.
“You aren’t coming in with me?” I asked.
Luc shrugged his shoulders. “I think I’ll have a cigarette while you get murdered.”
I gasped and he backpedaled instantly.
“It was just a joke,” he said. He looked, to his credit, genuinely contrite. “Sorry. Your sarcasm must have worn off on me during the drive over.”
I was still standing there, horrified. Although, in Luc’s defense, I do tend to have that effect on people.
“I swear it was a joke,” he repeated. “I’m really sorry. Please go in. We drove all this way. If you hate what Connor has to say, I’ll take you back home right away. Either way, you get your money. But only if you go and hear him out.”
“If I die for any reason, I’m coming back to haunt you,” I told Luc. “And I will make you miserable. You’ll never sleep or masturbate in peace ever again. You think two hours of my constant chatter in the car was annoying? Try the next fifty years.”
He shuddered. “Duly noted. Please go inside now.”
I pushed the door open and went. I thought there was a non-zero chance of murder featuring prominently in Palczynski’s plans for me, but a thousand dollars was a lot of money. Plus, I was curious.
The interior of the mansion looked a lot like the exterior. The entrance hall looked like it had been copied and pasted from a gothic French chateau. My sneakers squeaked on the checkerboard pattern marble floors, and dark, wood paneling seemed to eat up any available light cast by the few sconces that didn’t have burnt out bulbs. Although everything was clearly expensive, if not antique, it was also weirdly shabby.
Dust covered the few exposed pieces of furniture, but most of it was obscured by sheets. My threat to haunt Luc suddenly seemed a bit less scary. Most of his coworkers were probably ghosts.
“There you are,” a voice said from the shadows as I rounded a corner into what looked like a living room. A tall, dark shape was silhouetted against a roaring fire. I nearly jumped out of my skin in surprise. “I’ve been waiting for you, Isabelle.”
Isabelle
The Beast
He looked more feral in the firelight than he had in the elevator. Bright blue eyes seemed to glow out of his face, and the mane of dark hair and beard was even more unkempt than I’d realized at our first meeting. Still, he had the jawline and cheekbones of a model underneath all that fur. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“You must be Connor,” I said, pushing my shoulders and pigtails back. Somehow, from the depths of my reserves of self-est
eem, my voice came out confident and even. I even made myself smile a little bit. “It’s nice to meet you. At least, I hope it will be. It’s been pretty creepy so far.”
“Creepy?” He asked. He sounded annoyed. “Do you mean the house? I’m in the middle of remodel. It’s just taking a bit longer than I expected. Sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
I hesitated. “The house contributed to the creep factor, but honestly this whole situation is very strange,” I said. My voice might have been even, but I’m sure that my eyes crawled around the room quickly enough to betray how uncomfortable I was. I was also trembling slightly, but I hoped the low lighting hid it. “A thousand dollars to get me out here to meet with you? I’ll admit I’m very curious, but I’m also a bit worried you’re going to kill me.”
“I assure you nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. When delivered as a growl, those words can be a lot less than reassuring. He gestured to the chair facing his in front of the fire. “Sit down,” he repeated. “I’ll explain everything.”
Carefully, and somewhat concerned the plush leather club chair might conceal hidden perils, I perched on the edge. The big chair nearly swallowed me, it was clearly intended for someone of his proportions and not mine. We stared at one another for a moment in silence.
“I’ve brought you here because I want you to have my baby,” he told me. No need to be delicate about it, I suppose. He pulled the Orange County Surrogates pamphlet out of his pocket and extended it. “I want you to be my surrogate. I’ll pay you one million dollars, but this arrangement won’t be through the agency. It’ll be directly between us. You’ll walk away a wealthy woman after this is done, and I’ll get a baby with no strings attached.”
I gulped.
Baby and the Beast Page 2
