Billionaire's Playmate

by Chance Carter

  “Listen, I feel bad,” Garrick replied. “I’m going to see what I can do to set you guys up for the weekend. I’ll get the hotel staff to rustle up a care package.”

  “Sure, whatever.” I sighed and glanced back out the window. The wind whipped the snow into swirls in the air and whistled past the windowpane. I supposed I could see how driving home right now might not be an option.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Garrick said. “If I were you, I’d try to patch things up with Frankie.”

  “Talk to you then.”

  I hung up and tossed my phone onto the couch. A frustrated scream built in my throat but I pushed it down. I thought about going outside and kicking the snow, but that wouldn’t clear the roads and the last thing I needed on top of this dumpster fire of a situation was cold feet.

  I grabbed another mini-bottle off the bar instead. Gin, this time. Maybe being drunk all weekend was a viable option. It was easier to stomach than the thought of going to apologize to Frankie, which I knew was the right thing to do. I didn’t apologize to anyone. I’d made a name for myself in my family’s business as a hardline negotiator who didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of me, and I carried that with me everywhere.

  Why did I feel bad for Frankie? I didn’t know anything about her. She didn’t know anything about me, except apparently the most interesting thing there was to know. She was probably sitting in the bar right now congratulating herself for giving me a taste of my own venom, and I couldn’t blame her for it. By all rights that made us even. Didn’t it?

  I let the empty bottle clatter into the trash and hoped that Garrick’s care package contained booze. Lots of it. And in normal sized bottles, too.

  My answer came around twenty minutes later. I was lying on the couch, staring at the dark TV screen. I tried putting the football back on, but all it did was aggravate the knot of guilt in my stomach. So I watched nothing instead. I couldn’t decide whether I was waiting until Frankie got back or waiting until I dared to go talk to her. I knew I needed to go tell her about the roads at least, unless she and Val had already had a similar conversation.

  Just as I was deciding whether to storm the minibar for more spirits or head out to find Frankie, someone knocked on the door. I got up to answer it and was surprised to see a bellhop standing there with a big plastic bag in one hand and a shit-eating grin on his face.

  “Mr. Wheeler?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your brother called and requested we bring some items up to the room.” He thrust the bag toward me.

  “Thanks.” I took the bag from him and wrestled a bill out of my pocket to tip him. He accepted it gratefully and hurried off back down the hall.

  I emptied the bag on the kitchen table, and my curiosity soon hardened into frustration. This was my brother’s grand solution for making the weekend bearable? There was wine, at least, though Garrick hadn’t stopped there. I wished he had. I couldn’t tell what pissed me off more—the game of Monopoly, or the box of condoms.

  Chapter 12

  Frankie

  I was getting tired of the endless string of holiday songs. Normally I loved Christmas music, but tonight I wasn’t in the holly jolly mood. I sagged over the bar top like a deflated balloon, keeping one hand on my drink while the other rested on the phone in my lap. I’d picked it up to call Val a few times now, but stopped myself every time. Not only was she dealing with her own problems at the brewery, but I couldn’t justify calling a client to vent to her about my problems. Even if I felt like we shared a deeper connection than I was accustomed to with clients, it didn’t change the fact that she was paying me. I rarely felt lonely, but it struck me hard now. The realization that the one person I wanted to talk to was the one person it would be ethically wrong for me to call hollowed me out.

  “Another drink?”

  I looked up to find the bartender smiling at me. Xavier, his name tag read.

  “Yes, please.” I finished the rest of my beer and placed the empty glass on the bar.

  Xavier was already pouring me a fresh pint. “You seem like you’re having a rough day.”

  “I’ve had better.”

  “Is it a guy?”

  He placed the frothing pint in front of me and leaned his hip against the counter. He was a friendly looking guy, somewhere in his mid-forties with brown hair beneath his bald crown and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. I wasn’t the kind of person to spill my life story to strangers, but I was in a funny sort of mood. I looked around to see if anybody else was listening, but the bar was basically empty. A couple sat in one of the far tables and an old man in a suit was playing one of the video lottery machines, but apart from that I was alone.

  “Yes and no,” I said.

  Xavier raised one of his patchy brows.

  That one simple movement triggered something that made the whole story spill out. His eyebrow tugged a thread inside of me. I tried to keep the story as simple as possible, identifying myself as the maid of honor. I wasn’t keen to get into the specifics of my unusual job.

  By the time I’d finished my tale, or the approximation of it, anyway, I was half-finished with my pint, and I felt twenty pounds lighter.

  “I don’t understand how someone could be so horrible for no reason,” I said. “What do you think?”

  Xavier, who was now leaning on his elbows, nodded slowly. “He sounds like a man in a lot of pain.”

  This surprised me since I hadn’t even told Xavier about Levi’s ex.

  “Or he’s just an asshole,” I replied.

  Xavier shrugged and stood, pouring himself a glass of coke from the spray nozzle. “Could be. Assholes usually take pleasure in being assholes, but he sounds miserable.”

  “He’s not miserable,” I said. “He’s smug.”

  As I thought about it, though, I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t say I’d ever seen Levi smile, except in that dream. I hadn’t spent much time with him, and my very presence seemed to make him unhappy, but maybe it wasn’t my presence that did it.

  “Either way,” Xavier continued after taking a drink. He waved his cup in my direction. “Not your problem.”

  “It feels like I’ve made it my problem,” I said. “When we fought in the room, things got personal.”

  I felt ashamed of what I’d said to Levi, even if he’d volleyed it right back. I couldn’t tell whether I felt worse about what I said to him or what he said to me. It all hurt, just in different ways.

  Someone sat down at the far end of the bar, drawing Xavier’s attention. My heart jumped, and I flicked my gaze down to see if it was Levi. Nope. Just the old man who’d been playing the video lottery. Based on his gap-toothed grin, he’d gotten lucky.

  Had I wanted it to be Levi, or was I afraid that it would be?

  I’d been sitting at the bar for nearly half an hour, and I still couldn’t figure out whether I wanted to go back to the room and sort things out or run off into the night and never see him again. The second option grew more tempting with every drink.

  Even though I hated him for saying everything he did, there was a part of me deep down that knew there was some truth to it. I wondered what Levi would say if he knew I was divorced.

  Xavier came back over after he finished serving the old man. “You want some chips?” he asked, tossing me a bag of chips from the basket behind the bar. “On the house.”

  I laughed. “If I start crying can I get some pretzels too?”

  Xavier looked toward the bar’s entrance, and a wrinkle of concern tapered his brow. A second later, Levi sat down beside me.

  “Glenmorangie, please,” he ordered. “Neat.”

  Xavier nodded, poured him his drink, then looked at me. I gave him a short nod and he moved down to the other side of the bar.

  Levi brought the glass to his lips, took a sip, and placed it gently back on the bar. He cleared his throat. “The roads are closed.”

  My heart sank. “What?”

  I looked over to see if he w
as playing a prank on me or something, but he was dead serious. He licked his lip and looked down at his glass.

  “Yeah. Snowstorm, I guess. They might open up tomorrow, but Garrick said it looks like we’ll be stuck up here all weekend.”

  “Great,” I muttered, finishing up my beer.

  A whole weekend with Levi. I began to wonder if stealing a skidoo would be worth the jail time and potential hypothermia.

  Xavier brought me another beer and passed it over with a kind smile. I drank it in silence, wondering why Levi was still sitting there. If he’d come out here just to tell me about the roads, shouldn’t he have finished up his whiskey and gone by now? Why’d he order a drink in the first place? Levi had made it quite clear that being anywhere near to me was the last place he wanted to be in the world, and I thought I’d done the same.

  After a while, his presence started to irritate me. It was bad enough that I was stuck here the whole weekend. I didn’t need him following me around, reminding me of everything I didn’t like about myself. He probably didn’t even care. I bet he was just bored because he didn’t have anyone to antagonize back in the room.

  When he finished his whiskey, he ordered another. I was down to half a beer, and I took a big swig of it before clearing my throat.

  “Are we just going to sit here in silence all night?”

  “It’s going well so far,” he replied, staring down into his drink. It was a typical Levi thing to say, though his voice held none of its usual arrogance.

  Screw it. He wanted to sit here, he was going to get an earful. “I’m divorced,” I announced. “So you were wrong.”

  Levi lifted his face to look at me, but I kept my gaze firmly on the basket of chips behind the bar.

  Talking with Xavier must’ve loosened my tongue because soon I was telling Levi a story I never thought I’d share with him.

  “I got married when I was nineteen to this guy Aaron. My maid of honor was my best friend from school, and I thought I was going to have the best wedding ever.” I paused to take a drink. I could still feel Levi’s eyes on me, but I was too afraid of what his expression might reveal to look over at him. “It wasn’t. I didn’t think she was doing it on purpose at the time, but my supposed best friend did everything she could to ruin my big day. Then the two of them started having an affair. I caught them. We got divorced. I didn’t build my business so I could fantasize about the wedding I’ll never have. I want to prevent anyone else from having the horrible one like I had.”

  I mustered the courage to look at Levi. He wore an unguarded expression, and it felt a little like I was seeing him for the first time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It was the most sincere moment that had ever passed between us, but it wasn’t enough for me. I shook my head.

  “I don’t want your pity.” I tipped my head back to finish my drink. “And to answer your earlier question, no, I don’t get tired of being so saccharine all the time. Being happy is a choice, one I make every single day. You should think about trying it sometime.”

  Xavier noticed my empty glass and came back around.

  “Just two bottles of champagne for the road, please.”

  If the older man was shocked by my request, he didn’t show it. He reached down into the fridge and pulled out two bottles of champagne while I looked anywhere other than Levi. The second he passed them to me I was off my stool and stomping back to my hotel room.

  I couldn’t be certain why I’d told Levi everything I had. The most likely answer was that I was a little bit drunk, and I wanted him to feel bad. But, as I walked back to the room, I wondered whether part of it might be a tiny bit of hurt from me reaching out to the hurt in him.

  I banished that thought. It wasn’t my job to fix Levi, and Levi didn’t want to be fixed. There was no need to get sentimental. I had said my piece. As far as I was concerned, there was no reason for us to speak for the rest of the weekend.

  Chapter 13

  Levi

  Frankie sure knew how to make an exit. I turned and watched her leave, head held high, wielding a bottle of champagne in each hand.

  When I turned back, the bartender was still standing there looking at me. From the disapproval in his gaze, I assumed Frankie had told him a little bit about our situation. I wondered if the hotel had another bar I could go to where I wouldn’t be judged all night.

  “What?” I asked.

  The bartender jerked his chin toward the exit. “Aren’t you going to go after her?”

  What did he think this was? An airport scene in a cheesy nineties romance film?

  “No. I’m not going after her.” I lifted my glass, signaling that I wanted another drink and I didn’t want to talk anymore.

  Instead of getting me a drink, he leaned onto the counter and crossed his arms.

  “Why not?”

  I sighed in frustration. “I’m sure you heard her. She doesn’t want my pity. She wants to be left alone.”

  He shook his head. “She never said she wanted to be left alone.”

  “No, I figured that one out myself when she stormed out of here with enough champagne to put herself into a coma.”

  “I’ve spent the past half hour talking to that girl, and I’ll tell you right now, alone is not something she wants to be.” He removed my glass and started wiping down the bar. “Of course she doesn’t want your pity. Nobody wants that. She wants your compassion.” When I didn’t say anything, he looked up at me mid-wipe and paused. “Surely there’s some way you can relate?”

  As I learned today, there was. When Frankie spoke about her ex-husband, I recognized the hurt in her eyes. The betrayal. Much as I tried not to think about Evelyn, I still wondered from time to time what about me was so horrible that she had to leave without even saying goodbye.

  I still hurt.

  I finally stood from my stool, and the bartender nodded approvingly. Not that I needed his approval. I settled the tab before I left, taking care of Frankie’s portion too even though she requested to pay on check out. It seemed fair since I was the one who’d driven her to drink.

  I entered the room and was surprised to find that even though it was getting dark out, all the lights were off.

  “Frankie?” I called, flicking on the kitchen light.

  There was no answer except the icy click of snowflakes as the wind swept them against the window. The door to Frankie’s room was ajar, but she wasn’t inside, and I checked the other rooms too with no luck. If she hadn’t come straight back here, where was she?

  I did another lap of the suite but still couldn’t find her. I was just about to go search the rest of the hotel when I noticed the curtains were drawn in front of the French doors.

  Sure enough, I pulled back the curtain and saw a mass of blankets in one of the deck chairs that I soon recognized as Frankie. She was holding one bottle of champagne, and the other rested in the snow at her feet. The deck was covered and shielded by the sides of the building, but it was freezing still. What was she doing out there?

  I walked back through the living room to my room and rifled through my suitcase for another sweater, grabbed a spare blanket from the closet, and walked back to the French doors, turning off the lights as I went. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and slipped out onto the deck.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” Frankie raised the bottle to her lips and drank.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  She shrugged. I took that as a yes and cleared the snow from the seat next to her. I surreptitiously grabbed the other bottle of champagne and, when she didn’t protest, popped the cork off and took a drink.

  We sat like that for a while, watching the snow whip through the air, listening to the howling of the wind. The clouds looked brown in the darkness, and I wondered how much snow they had left in them.

  Finally, I did what I came out here to do. “I’m sorry about the things I said to you.”

  “Which things?” she answered dully.
<
br />   “All of them.”

  “I don’t want you to apologize just because you feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m apologizing because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s probably about time I started doing that.”

  She glanced over and cocked a brow. “I didn’t think cabin fever set in this quickly.”

  “Look, you’re different than I thought you were,” I explained. “The whole situation with you and Val was weird to me. It was hard for me to understand. It still is, but at least I know you’re not just a leech.”

  “Do you know why Val hired me?” Frankie asked.

  “I’ve been asking myself that question for months.”

  She glanced over at me, half her face cast in shadow. “She’s lonely. Her only friends are people she knows through her family, and they’re all just as shallow and vain as you seem to think she is. She wanted to have somebody there for her who she could count on not to talk shit behind her back. Someone every bit as invested in her happiness as she was. Garrick has you for that, but Val didn’t have anybody.”

  “I guess I never thought about it that way.”

  Frankie adjusted herself in the chair so that she faced me, cradling the bottle of champagne in front of her.

  “I don’t know you very well, but to me it seems like your problem is that you have difficulty accepting people at face value.”

  “That’s not a problem,” I replied. “You should never take anything at face value. People especially.”

  “But you did once, didn’t you?” Her lips came together in concern—genuine concern. Maybe we both had a touch of cabin fever.

  “Do you think the fact that the woman you loved abandoned you has anything to do with your inability to trust people’s good intentions?”

  I took a swig and frowned at her. “You don’t skirt around things, do you?”

  “Not my forte.”

  “It’s never too late to learn the art of tact.”

  Frankie scowled. “Hey. We had a brawl over a remote control earlier that devolved into a mudslinging contest. We’re beyond tact.”