by Imani King
“Finally!” the old man cried, his toothless mouth a wobbly snarl. “At least you can understand something as simple as following someone’s orders, girl. God knows how you’d have survived back—”
The shrill ringtone of my cellphone cut off Mr. Lambert before he could make even more of an ass of himself than I had previously thought possible.
“Just a moment, Mr. Lambert,” I said, digging my ancient flip-phone out of my bag. Times were tough at the Deveraux house, and with enormous student loans hanging over my head, a fancy phone—along with a fancy phone bill—wasn’t something I could readily afford.
“Unbelievable!” the old man growled, throwing his gnarled, arthritic hands up. “She can’t even show a dying man the respect of turning her damned cellular phone off! Where in the hell is Hagman?!”
I made my exit from the room as quickly as I possibly could, but not before catching the eye of Mrs. Lambert. By the way she was looking down her nose at me, I could tell she shared her father-in-law’s annoyance, but I got the feeling I might have bigger problems.
I looked at the caller ID window before opening my aged cellphone. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but before I could think to screen the call, I caught sight of Mrs. Lambert coming toward me and put the phone to my ear in a panic.
“Georgia Deveraux speaking,” I said, purposely raising my voice before Mrs. Lambert could interrupt.
“Ms. Deveraux? This is Miles Feldman with EduLoan Services. I’m calling in regards to the balance on your student loan account.”
My stomach dropped to the floor like a bag of bricks.
It was a hard call between suffering another minute in a room with that racist old bastard or having to listen to some glorified accountant explain just how fucked-in-half in debt I was. I decided on the accountant.
“Yes,” I said after a moment of silence, “I spoke with another representative earlier this month. He said I might be eligible for a deferment.”
“I’m afraid you’ve exhausted that option, Ms. Deveraux. I’m afraid that your loans are in collection, and that as of this moment, we will have to begin garnishing your wages.”
“Please, I’m begging you, Mister…” I trailed off, attempting to put some distance between myself and Mrs. Lambert. She just gave me a look of scorn and turned round, returning to Mr. Lambert’s room.
“Feldman.”
“I’m sorry?” I replied, momentarily confused, watching the door close behind her.
“It’s Feldman. Mr. Feldman.”
“Mr. Feldman. Please, isn’t there any way that we could possibly—”
“I’m afraid not, Ms. Deveraux. You must pay your debts.”
“But I’ve already had my car repossessed! I can’t have my wages docked on top of everything else! This isn’t fair!”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing that I can do, ma’am. You must either pay your debts or face the consequences.”
I could feel tears beginning to well up at the corners of my eyes, clouding my vision as I sat huddled against the wall. How could everything be going so wrong in my life? How was this much misfortune actually possible?
“Your employer will be contacted by this time tomorrow. I’m sorry that it had to come to this, Ms. Deveraux. I truly am.”
With the softest click, Mr. Feldman was gone and I was left alone with my worries, my fears, and my soul-crushing debt. This was nothing like I imagined. I thought working for a prestigious law firm would solve everything. My entire life would be like walking on air—I couldn’t have been any more wrong.
After leaving Harvard Law, I was practically swimming in unpaid student loans, many of them taken out with the kinds of companies charging interest rates that would have given a frail human being a heart attack. I knew that I was in trouble, but being as young as I was, I thought I had time—time to make enough money to live a life of luxury as a high-powered attorney.
That was before the trouble with my father had started.
John Franklin Deveraux was a proud man who didn’t take shit from anyone—which was code for him being a stubborn ass. I grew up a military brat, which meant that I ended up traveling more than I ever wanted to. My father was a strict man, and whenever he was home our house ran like clockwork. I loved my father more than I could ever express, but things between us weren’t exactly perfect...
After my mother passed away, my father went into a destructive downward spiral. I’d always known that my father hit the bottle a little more than he should, but after her death, his love of booze turned into a full-blown, alcoholic rampage. I still remembered the first night he called me from the police station, begging me to bail him out. I could barely understand him. He was slurring his words.
That scene had played out again and again over the last few years, waking up at the Godforsaken hours of the morning with new messages from my father. I learned to tell where my father had gotten arrested just from what number he’d called from that night. Officers at a few precincts knew me by name, and not for the reason I wanted them to—it was embarrassing.
Eventually my father lost his house, his car, and everything else he owned. It was torture watching the man I had admired and looked up to all of my life turn from upstanding army man to a barely-functioning addict. It broke my heart more than anything else ever had, and with every new incident, the heartache only grew worse.
Last night my father had called me as he usually did, in the dead of night and without any word for weeks on end. I was furious—time and time again I was the one he called to bail him out of jail, using my own money to get him out of the drunk tank. I snapped, screaming at him over the phone.
“You can sleep there tonight, Dad. I’ve had enough of being the one who comes to get you out of trouble and clean up your messes!”
Why can’t my life be easy for once? Just one nice happy uneventful day. No father in jail, no student loans, and certainly no Mr. Lambert. Is that too much to ask for?
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath. I steeled myself for at least another hour with an old racist bastard criticizing my every move before I turned to head once more unto the breach.
But the moment I turned, I found myself face to face with someone I’d only caught glimpses of in pictures on Mr. Lambert’s bedside table.
“Dorian Lambert,” the young man said, his voice low—presumably so as not to attract attention. He held out his hand to shake mine.
“Gigi,” I said, forgetting for a moment I was supposed to be an honest-to-God, professional lawyer. Those gorgeous blue eyes of his were mesmerizing, and the feel of his palm against mine made my knees weak. I swallowed thickly. “I mean, Georgia Deveraux.”
“I like Gigi,” he said, flashing me a grin that must’ve made women’s hearts melt on a routine basis. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
“If that’s what you’d prefer, Mr. Lambert.”
“Dorian, please,” he replied. “My grandfather is Mr. Lambert, and for reasons I’m sure are obvious, I’d rather not be put in the same league as him.” He winked.
A smile quirked the edges of my lips. “Fair enough.”
“Would you mind terribly if we talked?” Dorian asked, glancing over his shoulder to make sure we were alone. “Somewhere more private? Or at least free of my mother?”
“I think that they’re expecting—”
“Don’t worry, Gigi. The nurse just gave him enough morphine to put him out for the rest of the day. There will be plenty of time to hear more of his inane rambling. I promise. He’s too stubborn to die before he has the chance to insult everyone,” Dorian replied. He eyed me almost appraisingly. I wasn’t sure how a man could simultaneously make me feel like a slab of meat, yet flattered at the same time. Once he’d raked his gaze back up past my curves and to my face, he raised a brow. “Since you’re still on the clock, how does breakfast sound?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, actually. On one hand, it sounded great—a free meal was
just what I needed after a morning of debt collectors, disappointing fathers, and dying racists. On the other, I wasn’t sure what a man like Dorian Lambert could possibly want from a woman like me. I was hardly his type. Hell, I wasn’t sure they made Aphrodites anymore. And this guy could definitely pass for a Greek god.
Still, what was the harm? I smiled.
“Yes, Dorian,” I said, pushing my insecurities aside in favor of food. “Breakfast would be perfect.”
“I really couldn’t help but overhear earlier,” I said after Ms. Deveraux and I had been seated in a corner booth, far from the rest of the patrons. This was one of my favorite breakfast spots, and if I knew my family, they had been working the lovely Gigi to the bone.
“So, you were eavesdropping.”
“If that’s what you want to call it, yes,” I said, shrugging as I took a slow drink from my complimentary glass of water. “But I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, and that’s the important thing.”
“And what, exactly, do my student loans have to do with you, Mr. Lambert?”
“Dorian,” I said, cutting her off. “I don’t intend to be Mr. Lambert until that old bastard is cold and in the ground and not a second sooner.”
From the look on her face, I could tell she was a bit taken aback. Even in shock she was pretty, her dark skin and honey-colored eyes were a perfect complement to her regal cheekbones. I sighed, rubbing my temples as I worked out a polite way to explain.
“You don’t have a very high opinion of your relatives,” she observed, filling the silence for me. Saved by the sexy lawyer, I thought.
I offered her a smile. “An understatement of epic proportions, Ms. Deveraux.”
“Gigi,” she said, her full lips spreading in a playful grin. “And you know buying me breakfast won’t help you when it comes to your inheritance, don’t you?”
I let out a laugh, shaking my head. Oh, how wrong you are, I thought.
“That’s not entirely true,” I said, “and it brings us right back to why your student loans—or any of your debts—are so important right now.”
The waitress returned with both of our coffees, which the two of us immediately began to drink. Gigi didn’t even touch a drop of her cream, sipping hers straight black—my kind of woman.
“You’re an intelligent woman. We both understand my dilemma. I’m asking if, for the right price, you might be able to give me some legal advice. I want my family off my back, and you have student loans that need to be paid.”
“Are you trying to bribe me, Dorian?” she asked, a look of suspicion and a hint of anger crossing her face.
“I’m just asking for your legal counsel. You help me out of this mess, and I take care of your student loans. You’ve heard the dying man’s last wishes. He has some rather backwards ideas about the world, and I’d prefer not to let a dead man ruin my life.”
“Mr. Lambert wasn’t being ambiguous Dorian. This is his fortune to give away, and he’s lining out the terms of your inheritance.”
There was a long moment of silence between us as I weighed her words. She almost seemed happy about all of this.
“The terms aren’t acceptable Gigi. Perhaps you could slip in some kind of loophole,” I replied, smiling to break the tension. “Even a partial inheritance would be more than enough. I could begin to rebuild my father’s company instead of watching my mother destroy it. There’s more to this than just money, but I would see that you are well compensated.”
“Tell me again how this isn’t a bribe?” she replied, putting out a smirk of her own. “There isn’t going to be a loophole. The only way you’re getting that inheritance is with a wife and a baby boy on the way.”
Sharp girl. “I can’t let the old bastard win. If I’m going to get married, it needs to be on my terms, not his.”
“You’re being very theatrical about all of this,” she said, furrowing her brow. “I’m not a big fan of drama.”
“It’s part of my charm, I promise.”
Gigi gave me a skeptical once-over before signaling for me to continue.
“You and I both want something,” I said, leaning over the table conspiratorially. “I want my family off of my back so I can be free to live my life the way I want to after my grandfather is dead. And you want to not have to worry about paying your debts. There has to be a way to come together on this. What about one of those mail order brides?”
“There’s no way you’ll get them through the immigration process in time,” she replied with a tired look on her face.
“It sure would piss him off though. You should hear the things he says about the Chinese…” I said, trailing off as a flash of anger crossed her face. Clearly she’d already learned of Grandpa’s less than stellar appreciation of the world’s many races.
“Maybe you need to do this the old fashioned way, Dorian. Meet someone. Get to know them. Go to church. Wine and dine the girl. Marry her. You’ve got a whole year to put a bun in the oven. That’s plenty of time.”
“Do I look like the kind of man who wines and dines?”
“Are you telling me this is just breakfast?” Gigi said in a mocking way that was cuter than she meant it to be.
“You think this is funny, don’t you?”
Gigi just smiled wider, flashing her teeth at me in a way that ran a little shiver up my spine. I sighed. She was exasperating, but in a good way. She didn’t seem the kind of woman who let anyone get anything over on her—yet another admirable quality. I sat back in my seat and took a moment to stare into her dark eyes, an idea catching within the depths of my mind like a spark. The longer I stayed silent, the brighter it became. It was crazy. The idea a lunatic might entertain…
“You know, if we keep doing this somebody might get the wrong idea,” I said, smiling at Dorian over a criminally delicious looking fusion of European cuisine. I took a long sip of wine, attempting to sooth my worries. It was a vintage Malbec Dorian had ordered from the upper echelons of the wine list. At eighty dollars a glass I was going to enjoy it.
Days had passed since our first little extra curricular meeting, but another long stretch spent with old man Lambert hadn’t left me quite as drained as usual. Today was all about the fate of the multitudes of companies and organizations held under the umbrella of the Lambert empire. I’d diligently been taking notes for most of the afternoon before I realized he was liquidating companies that hadn’t existed in decades. Dorian had watched the proceedings with a smile on his face, but he seemed more interested in me than the inane ramblings of a dying man.
“Are you complaining? If you’d like I could drop you back off. I’m sure Grandpa has an excellent plan for the future of his rotary phone manufacturing plant,” Dorian replied, laughing.
“At least I’m not the only one suffering. If you think this is bad just you wait. Tomorrow we start on land and property holdings, and that folder is four inches thick.”
Dorian winced as I sat back in my chair, letting my eyes wander. We were seated inside a restaurant so exclusive the waiting list was months out. That hadn’t stopped us from walking through the front door and getting an immediate table. The little converted house it was built in was just outside the center of the city, a holdout against the inevitable march of progress. Serving exorbitantly priced dinner in this spot for eighty five years, Taste wouldn’t be around much longer. Skyscrapers rose only a few blocks away, and already the land under our feet was worth too much to ignore. Any day now, some old rich bastard would come along and knock this place flat, never having the pleasure of eating this incredible food.
“I don’t suppose you’ve given my offer any additional thought,” Dorian asked.
“You mean the illegal attempt to illegally bribe me to illegally modify a billionaire’s will and final testament?”
“When you put it that way it sounds bad,” he replied, casting me a sideways grin.
“It is bad Dorian. You never know though… The way he’s rambling, maybe something will change between now and the time
he kicks the bucket. The will hasn’t been finalized yet. He could always go back and change the terms,” I said with an upbeat inflection to my voice. Truth was, I enjoyed the thought of Dorian Lambert having his strings pulled by a soon to be deceased grandfather. I’d taken the time to do a little research on the heir apparent.
Dorian Lambert, playboy extraordinaire. Women want him, men want to be him. He’s the ultimate bachelor and he knows it. This was a man who lived his entire life without a damn care in the world, and there were only two possible reasons he was sitting across from me at this table… Sex, and money.
The money was obvious. It seemed like every time we talked in private he was trying to figure out some angle that would get him out of his grandfather’s dying requests.
The sex on the other hand…
