The Billionaire Bargain 2

by Monroe, Lila

  “I will call a press conference and tell the world that he has a tiny dick and a crippling addiction to reality television.”I remembered Grant’s distaste at the state of modern television, and allowed myself a wicked smirk at the thought of twisting that particular knife.

  I tried to look through the peephole, but it was dark; damn teenagers kept sticking gum over it as a joke. I called through the door:“Who the hell is it?”

  “It’s noon, Lacey, for heaven’s sake,”Kate’s voice shrilled through the keyhole. I winced; I love that girl, but that particular tone was cutting through my skull like a buzz-saw.“Open up, open up, open up!”

  My hand was barely finished pulling up the latch when Kate barreled through the doorway like a tornado that had been through a printing house. The San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the SF Weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian…she could have opened up a newsstand with just what she had in her left hand.

  She promptly dumped them on the floor in front of me.

  “What the hell—” I shrieked, my surprise triumphing over my short-term memory, and once again instantly regretted raising my voice.

  “Don’t‘what the hell’me, Lacey Newman,” Kate said.

  She grabbed a first page at random, and I cringed at the full color photo of me in the sleek little black dress—considerably sleeker in the photo than on me now, rumpled with a full night’s sleep and speckled with green mattress lint from my futon bed—gasping in surprise and apparent delight as I looked down at my hand and a diamond so big it looked like it had been chipped from the idol of some forgotten god in an Indiana Jones movie.

  Kate’s eyes followed mine, and then fastened on my hand, the engagement ring still perched there and sparkling away.“Is there something you want to tell me? And do you maybe also want to tell me why you couldn’t have told me it last night, or when we went out for drinks, or any freaking timewe talked in the last week?”

  Where the hell to begin? I avoided even thinking about trying to untangle last night’s events for Kate’s benefit by casting an eye over the sea of newsprint Kate had dumped on my floor.

  Splashed across the pages were photos of me with my mouth making a perfect‘o’of surprise, photos of Grant gazing into my eyes in an impressive pretense of adoration, photos of us both with our arms around each other, smiling like we had just stepped out of a fairy tale. PLAYBOY POPS THE QUESTION, one headline blared. ONE GALA NIGHT WE WON’T FORGET, insisted another. WHO IS THIS LUCKY LADY, wondered a third.“Did you rob a paperboy? Where did you even get all of these?”

  “The pharmacy next to the bodega by my place, and don’t change the subject,”Kate answered promptly.“I got them after I heard about it on the radio when my alarm went off this morning, and after I heard three little old ladies and a teenage girl gossiping about it at the bus stop. Lacey! You did not say anything about this at drinks! You said basically the opposite of this when we went for drinks! You cannot go around saying the opposite of things you are going to do or I will know you are not Lacey Newman, and I will have to hold you hostage until you confess to being a Russian spy who has replaced Lacey in order to inveigle your way into my confidence and steal my lingerie designs.”

  This was a long spiel even for Kate, and I could see in the way that she was rushing through her words that despite her bubbly, silly tone, she was trying not to show that she was hurt.

  “Seriously, girl, I know my designs would do wonders for the Russian morale in this economic downturn, but you couldn’t say anything to your best friend? Even last night?”

  “I didn’t know last night!”I hastily reassured her.“I swear, if I’d known anything about what that jackass had up his hand-tailored sleeve, I’d have been in that taxi to you in two seconds flat. He sprung this on me last night. It’s his idea of listening to my advice about PR.”

  “Wow.”Kate took a second to process this.“Does he maybe want to look up ‘listening’ in a dictionary or something?”

  “Tell me about it,”I sighed. I reached out and squeezed her hand.“I should have called you again when I got home from the gala. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, apology accepted!”Kate said, and hugged me tight.“Just make up for lost time and spill. How are you doing with all this? How do you feel? Are you going to go through with it? Can I look at the ring up close?”

  The last question was by far the easiest to answer, and I slid it off my finger for Kate to inspect. She oohed and aahed over it as she turned it over in her hands, and I contemplated again the headlines on all the local papers strewn over the floor—

  All the local papers strewn over the floor—

  All the local papers—

  “Oh shit,”I said out loud, interrupting Kate’s monologue about Grant’s excellent taste in choosing the round brilliant cut over the more trendy rose cut, which she personally felt was only an excuse to sell oddly shaped gems.“Kate, you said you heard people gossiping about this? Did you—is my family—does everyoneknow?”

  “Er—”Kate’s eyes darted to the side.

  As if to spare Kate from having to answer, my phone buzzed loudly enough that I could hear the vibrations through the purse on the other side of the room.

  With a‘you have not gotten out of this that easily’mock glare at Kate, I ran to check the display and gaped. Sixty-two messages?! This poor little bargain basement cell had never worked so hard in its whole life. I scrolled through them, my eyes widening and my mouth slowly dropping in disbelief at their sheer quantity. ‘Congratulations, girl!’ ‘Sweetie, what good news! Call me so I can set you up with my favorite florist. Love, G-Ma!’ ‘Whoa!’ ‘Hey, babe, saw the news and I know you can’t really want that prick. Hit me up for some hot times.’ ‘Lacey, is this a joke?! Call me.’

  And then, still buzzing like a kid on espresso with a chaser of caffeine pills, my phone started to ring. Worse yet, the ringtone was‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, the ringtone I had specifically chosen for my mom. I groaned.

  “You gotta face her sometime,”Kate pointed out.“Besides, what are the odds she knows? Don’t your parents only read news printed with organic walnut ink on locally sourced hemp paper?”

  “We can but hope,” I said, and took the call.

  “Pumpkin!”My mom’s voice was more riddled with static than a dial-up internet connection, but even that couldn’t disguise the delight shining through every syllable.“Can you hear me, Pumpkin Pie? I’m calling from the middle of the woods, your father and I are at that Santa Cruz retreat! Aunt Jess called me just this morning to tell me the good news!”

  “The good news,”I repeated, hoping against hope that she was referring to my promotion, or that new rug I had found for the bathroom at a thrift store, or some mumbo-jumbo about cosmic forces that she had just read about my astrological sign—

  “About your engagement, silly! Ooh, I just knew good things were in store for you as soon as you got your chakras aligned. Didn’t I say good things were in store for you as soon as you balanced your energy channels??”

  “You sure did, Mom,”I said, trying not to let my eye-rolling show in my voice.“Thanks for that. I definitely went and got my chakras aligned by a professional right after you told me that.”

  “What a mysterious and beautiful universe our Spaceship Earth is wandering through!” she bubbled. “Remember, like Tolkien said, not all those who wander are lost!”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  My parents weren’t always the poster children for Aging Hippie Syndrome.

  For the first eighteen years of my life, my dad wore sweater vests, played golf, and worked in an architecture firm designing vault rooms for banks. My mom worked part-time as a teller at the local bank—that was how they originally met—baked chocolate chip cookies for PTA meetings, and did quilting in her spare time.

  The minute I left for college, though, Mom signed them both up for a yoga class at the local community college—dad had just had a heart disease scare, and she was de
termined to get him healthy—and it all just sort of snowballed from there, from yoga to meditation to sponsoring Tibetan monks to come to the United States and talk about peace, love, and throat-singing. You couldn’t move around their house these days without tripping over a prayer flag, a dream-catcher, or a batch of goat-milk soap from the farmers’ market.

  There wasn’t anything wrong with this, of course, but there were definitely days when I looked at my parents and wondered exactly how committed they were to this extremely extended April Fools’ Day joke.

  “Sometimes when your karma is good, the universe just aligns itself for you,” Mom was burbling on. “When can your father and I meet this Grant fellow? I got such wonderful vibrations from him in the paper, everything he said in the articles just resonated so deeply—”

  It pained me to have to shatter my mom’s happy fantasy, especially when she’s spent my whole life scraping and sacrificing to make sure I had the best chance she could give me, but I couldn’t lie to her.

  “Well, it’s not—it’s not exactly like that, Mom, it’s not—look, this is really complicated, maybe you could call me back later—”

  “Yeah, later it will have totally become less complicated,” Kate said with a grin. I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “What was that, pumpkin?” my mom said. “You’re breaking up.”

  “I said maybe you could call back later—”

  “Call what caterer?! Oooh, you mean the one who catered Lee and Beck’s commitment ceremony? With the vegan ice cream? Oh, what a marvelous idea, sweetie! Do you want them to do the wedding or the—”

  “What! No? I said CALL BACK LATER—”

  “You’re breaking up, Lacey Spacey! I’ll call that caterer and let you know what they say! We’ll be in town next week to meet that Grant fella! Ooh, find out what his sign is, and the state of his chakras! Mmm love you bye!”

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  Once my brain finally caught up to the real world, I looked back up from the phone. While I was talking to my mom, Kate had set up the little couch like a command center, the newspapers sorted according to some system decipherable only to her, scrolling through blog updates on her phone like a military commander receiving new tactical information.

  “Well, the society pages are being catty, but that’s only to be expected; you know how they are. Good news is, the business rags are going with a positive note, they’re all‘a sign of increasing stability,’and‘potentially indicative of a maturity not hitherto suspected.’”Kate made a face.“Would it kill these guys to jazz up their writing a little bit? These things sound like a tax form. Get a load of this one:‘share prices rose serendipitously following the pronouncement, and are expected to peak around noon at—”

  Noon. Noon…Noon! “Oh shit! Noon?”

  “Lacey?”Kate looked confused.“Do you have something against noon? I mean, I don’t have strong feelings either way, but—”

  “Noon!”I called back to her, already running frantically toward the bedroom, where I stripped off last night’s dress, grabbing at the first halfway clean outfit I could see. I ran my fingers through my hair in front of the mirror, trying to make it look more‘artfully tousled’than‘slept on for eight hours and probably drooled on, too.’ “I forgot!”

  “Forgot what? Is there more to forget?”Kate had followed me to the bedroom, and began applying my makeup expertly, even though she didn’t know what for yet.“Did you get engaged to another guy? Are you pregnant? Is Grant secretly Batman?”

  “My lunch date with my future godmother-in-law!” I said, gently stopping Kate from applying any more eyeliner. I needed it, but I was already late and I could not afford to get any later or I was going to be late, as in, Grant’s godmother was going to kill me.“Portia the Hell Beast, remember? I was supposed to meet her for lunch at noon!”

  “Godmother?”Kate said with a roll of her eyes.“What, is she going to take away your glass slippers if you’re late?”

  “I should be so lucky,”I muttered, grabbing my purse and making sure it had my wallet, phone, and emergency lipstick. I tossed my keys to Kate.“Lock the door on your way out, love you, chat later, bye!”

  The soundtrack of Kate’s protestations grew fainter as I ran out the door and into the street, already hitting the speed dial for a taxi as I speed-walked to the corner.

  Maybe if I really rushed, Portia would only slightly eviscerate me.

  THREE

  “I’ll order for you, shall I?”

  Portia’s icy, condescending voice froze the air it passed through and pierced my head like a lance. I suppressed my wince and nodded.

  The hangover had been almost gone by the time I got to the address Portia had apparently texted me at 11:45 am—too late for me to have made it on time anyway, so I was feeling slightly less guilty about that, but no less apprehensive—but one look at her narrowed blue eyes and somehow, that headache was right back where it had started.

  With a power like that, she should really consider becoming a super-villain.

  She already had the whole super-villain look down too; a pale silver circlet holding back her pulled-tight bun, a glimmering shawl of finely spun angora like a cape over her tight steel grey dress. She formed an interesting comparison/contrast to the glittering interior of Cask of Amontillado, a restaurant that looked like someone had turned King Midas loose and told him that for every item he turned to gold, he’d receive a complementary steak dinner with a glass of the famous house red.

  There were gold columns, gold tablecloths, gold uniforms for the waiters. The guests weren’t literally wearing gold—other than their designer watches and tennis bracelets, of course—but between the designer labels and obviously hand-tailored tuxedos and gowns, it probably would have been cheaper for all of them to have worn suits and dresses stitched out of hundred dollar bills and garnished in diamonds.

  …and somehow I had thought I would be able to squeak by with an orange satin-polyester blend sundress?

  Damn, but I had to stop accepting invitations from rich people without checking the dress code first.

  Portia surveyed me over the sugar-crusted edge of her glass of pomegranate juice, and then turned to our waiter and declared,“The spring salad for both of us, Jacques. Do make sure you use the French shallots this time. And lightly on the dressing, Miss Newman certainly can’t afford any extra calories.”

  She smiled in a way that was less like a human smile than a tiger baring its fangs.

  “If I’m going to have to put a wedding photo on my mantel I certainly don’t want to have to look at a walrus stuffed into tulle. And there’s simply nothing more embarrassing than fixing ripped stitches for someone minutes before they walk up the aisle; no one’s ever fooled. Have you booked the fittings yet?”

  “No,”I said, not sure I could trust myself to utter words longer than one syllable without them turning into‘No, you unbelievable bitch, please go find some flying monkeys and a girl with a bucket of soapy water to melt you into a puddle of glop, please.’

  Portia whipped out her day planner.. “For flowers you’ll need something traditional and classy,” she began, flipping through the day planner and speaking more to its meticulously notated pages than to me.

  “Actually, I—”

  “We’ll get Silverstein Floral, of course—but you wouldn’t know them, completely out of your price range. Now, venues: the Fairmont is a reliable choice, if a bit predictable; the Presidio or the Jardiniere might be a more original choice. It must look as if Grant is putting someeffort into this.”

  “Look, you don’t have to go to all this trouble,”I interrupted, stung by the way she had said that last sentence, as if Grant had picked me out of the top of a dumpster on his way for coffee. “It’s—”I waffled for a second, uncertain if I should tell. But if I couldn’t trust Grant’s godmother to keep this secret, who could I trust?“It’s not a, a real wedding. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s just a business arrangement.�
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  “Well, of course it’s a business arrangement, you bargain-basement strumpet,”Portia said without looking up from her day planner, where she was circling some venue names and crossing out others.“Are all whores as naïve as you these days, or were you dropped on your head multiple times as a child?”

  She flipped a page, and began neatly printing another list of place names. Meanwhile, my blood came to a nice, roiling boil. Portia didn’t seem to notice.

  “Given your entire lack of looks, skills, or suitable connections it was completely obvious that your nuptials were the final ingredient in some harebrained business deal cooked up by Grant in a last-ditch attempt to save the company from his own irresponsibility.”

  All that bitchiness and brains, too. Apparently I’d had it wrong before. Portia already was a super-villain. She crossed out a name on the list with particular vehemence, as if she were trying to stab it.

  “But just because you’re more suited to a marriage with a divorced ex-con on unemployment benefits, that’s no excuse for getting married in a courthouse like an uninspired civil servant with something to hide.”

  “But if it’s not real, why does anything about the ceremony matter?”I protested.“We’ll be just as legally married no matter what we do. I still don’t see why there has to be a big fuss.”

  “Of course you don’t,”Portia muttered, almost to herself. Then to me:“If Grant had allowed me to find him a suitable girl with beauty, class, and education, and they had actually fallen in love, and they were actually spending a life together, this is the wedding they would have. And everybody who is anybody in this city knows that.

  “Now, if you want your little business deal to fall through, by all means, go get married in a Quik-N-EZ marriage chapel in Las Vegas next to a streetwalker and a cheap magician. But if you want Jedediah Jennings to actually believe in your little charade—frankly, the whole thing reminds me of nothing more than a slapstick vaudeville routine—your wedding must be up to Devlin standards.”