by Mika Lane
Mimi looked back at me with approval. “Okay. I’ll get in touch with our contact there. You just talk about the company as much as you can. You know how many bored stay-at-home moms with a lot of money read Page Six?”
Maybe these auctions were not such a pain in the butt after all. “God, Mimi. Will you remind me to give you a raise some day?”
She laughed. “I will remind you. As soon as the we start turning a profit.”
Amen, sister.
We pulled up in front of our building. Mimi took off to get our favorite lunch from the corner vendor—hotdogs smothered in mustard and relish. And of course, Diet Cokes. The vendor had a crush on Mimi and always gave us an extra dollop of sauerkraut.
I hustled into the office. In all the morning’s excitement—getting fitted for a dress I didn’t want and buying a date with a guy I didn’t want—I’d missed a call from the asshole, fake husband Simon. His voicemail message was predictable.
“Nara, darling, I hope you’ve been thinking hard about my proposal. I want my ten grand back, and the clock is ticking…”
Bastard!
I deleted his message without hearing the rest. He wouldn’t even be in this damn country if it weren’t for me. He had a career, a great apartment. Probably an occasional date, although I can’t imagine with whom.
But if he ratted me out, didn’t he realize he was risking his own well-being in addition to mine? If it got to the INS, he’s the one who’d be deported. Not me.
I Googled sham marriage INS. And the blood drained from my face.
Up to five years in prison. Up to $250,000 in fines.
Oh dear god.
But he wouldn’t rat me out. He couldn’t be that stupid. Or self-destructive. I mean, he’d be imprisoned, fined, or both, and kicked out of the country. All for ten thousand dollars.
Back when I agreed to marry Simon, I was desperate for money. And I knew other people around the city doing the same thing—earning some quick cash by marrying someone who needed a green card; the non-US resident would get one fairly easily and quickly once married to a US citizen. In fact, one of my girlfriends married an adorable French guy. I figured, how tough could it be? It seemed easier than donating my eggs.
Just as I was dreaming about Simon crossing the street and being leveled by a city bus, my cell rang. The phone screen said Mom.
“Hey there,” I answered.
“Hi honey. It’s Mom.”
“I know it’s you, Mom. My phone recognizes your number.”
“Oh right, you told me that last time.”
“Why don’t you let me get you a nice new phone? Get rid of that old flip phone.”
She sighed. “I know you’re really into technology and all that, but I’m perfectly happy with my old phone. It works great. I don’t do that texting thing, and I don’t know how to Facebook, so I’m doing fine.”
Ugh. How the mother of a software developer like me could be so dismissive of technology baffled me.
“Okay, Mom.”
She sighed. “How’s the company, sweetie? Are people catching on to the idea of being told when their child has a dirty diaper as opposed to the way we did it in my day? You know, wait till you smell something awful, or the kid starts wailing?”
Fortunately, she couldn’t see my eyes roll. “Yes, Mom. People are starting to hear about us. We have several mothers testing the software right now, so far with good feedback.” What I didn’t explain was that the app sometimes had trouble telling the difference between number one and number two, which was vital to our success. Whether the mess was solid or liquid had a big impact on a mom’s approach to keeping her kid’s butt clean. The things I’d been learning about…and the diapers I’d had the unfortunate luck to get a whiff of…
“So, honey, you know your fifteen-year high school reunion is just around the corner.”
Oh shit. That was why she was calling? No way I would not be attending that fiasco. Hell to the no. Just what I needed, to be reminded of the shit show that was my high school life.
“You’re coming back home for it, right?” So much hope.
“No, I’m not. I don’t want to see those people.” Nor did I want to return to the horrendous podunk town I’d grown up in.
“What do you mean by those people? You grew up with those people. They were your friends your entire life until you left town. And besides, don’t you want to see me?” she asked.
“’Course I want to see you. I’ll get you a ticket to New York anytime you like.” She didn’t fly, which was probably just as well because I could really only afford to get her a bus ticket. Luckily, she loved the bus.
Mimi dropped off my hotdog. Mmmm. Salty New York deliciousness. I nodded my thanks, and she disappeared back to her own cube.
“I don’t understand why you are so opposed to coming back home and seeing your old friends. You needn’t be embarrassed you’ve never gotten married.”
It was so cute, her assumption that I didn’t want to come back because I was single. Maybe she’d feel better if I told her about my sham marriage to Simon. In her world, that would probably be better than nothing.
Going to the reunion as a single woman was the least of my worries.
“Mom, you know I don’t fit in there anymore. I have a new life. What could I possibly have in common with them?”
“Now, I don’t know why you think you’re so much better than those people, but just because you went to New York and started your own company doesn’t mean you’re anything special.”
Gee, thanks.
“I want you to expect a call from the reunion committee,” she continued.
“What? How? Mom, you didn’t give them my contact info, did you? I expressly asked you not to do that.”
“Sorry, but you’ll some day regret neglecting your old friends back home. I gave them your phone number and address.”
Note to self, do not answer any unknown callers.
“I asked you not to—”
“I know Becca would love to see you.”
The mention of Becca really crashed my mood even more so than the stupid dating auction and Simon’s extortion.
“Oh, Mom.” I groaned. There would just never be any meeting of the minds on this.
But I couldn’t go back. For one, what would I possibly talk about? How I was no longer the slut I was in high school? How I’d gotten it together, gone to college, and started my own company in New York City? Becca, on the other hand, had had four kids before she was thirty. Our lives had gone in radically different directions, just as I always knew they would. But the guilt of leaving her, my mom, and the town itself gutted me. I’d worked so hard to get out, and yet I felt crappy about it. Made no sense, but it was a fact.
“Hey, Mom, I have a meeting. I gotta go. Talk to you later. Love you. Bye.”
I waited for her to return the sentiment, but all I heard was bye.
Whatever.
Chapter 6
Brodie
Exactly two weeks after the auction, I grabbed a ride uptown in the hotel limo. Time to meet the crazy redhead who’d bid on me at the Avenue A fundraiser. Seriously, what chick would spend so much for one lousy date? I could understand why the guys did it—there was always the possibility of getting a lay out of it. But the women who bid on guys? Were they out for a lay, too? And it’s not that my “winner” was a bad-looking woman. On the contrary, that red hair and those freckles were damn hot. But experience told me the women who were into this were on the whacky side.
Just get the damn date over with.
My admin Trudy was briefed, god love her, and she knew the drill. I’d send her a text just as soon as the “date” got started. She’d call me forty-five minutes later with some sort of “hotel emergency.” I’d escape. No harm, no foul.
The driver wove through the heavy rush-hour traffic but we were moving at a snail’s pace. I still had plenty of time to get there, but I hated being late. And I hated late people, too.
Last week, I’d gotten a brief email from Nara, the woman who’d won me in the auction. Usually, these women, once they set up our date, would start sending me the emails from hell, telling me more about themselves than I ever wanted to know. Maybe it was to break the ice—I was never sure. Either way, I dutifully read them so our forty-five minute date wasn’t spent just staring at each other. These dates had invariably Googled me beforehand, finding that I was the owner of the most exclusive and in-demand hotel in all of Manhattan. They liked that. They liked my money. And if they’d really dug deep, they’d find the story of my father. That part, they didn’t like.
They might allude to Dad and his crimes, digging around for more info, or to get my take on the whole fiasco. But they were most always too polite to really persist in finding out more about the embezzling bastard. It wasn’t like I needed reminding. I was paying for his sins every day of my life, trying to make things right with the people he swindled. And I was going to be for a long time.
Anyway, Nara’s email was different. Short, sweet, to the point. Perfunctory. No facts or details about anything much less her life. Maybe redheads were like that? She wrote:
Hi, Brodie. Can you meet me at Bella Stella on Park next Thursday at five? Thanks, Nara
That was it. No blathering on about her boring-ass job or that she had a really cheap, rent-controlled apartment, or how every Christmas Eve for the last ten years she went caroling with her friends. Which was fine. She could do the talking. Forty-five minutes for charity. I could deal with that.
As we crept along Park Avenue, I took the opportunity to check on the cleanliness of the hotel limo. I was stuck sitting there, so why not?
And don’t you know…there was a condom wrapper stuffed down the seatback. Goddammit. Why did I even bother looking? Now I’d be pissed for the rest of the evening. I put it in my jacket pocket to get rid of first chance I got. Better I had found it than some A-list hotel guest. On the other hand, it was probably some goddamn A-list hotel guest who left it there to begin with.
Of course now that I found the wrapper, I couldn’t help but wonder where the damn condom was. I looked around without touching anything. Guess the asshole who used it had taken it with him. Nice of him. I fired off a text to Trudy to make sure the limo went through a deep clean as soon as it was back in the garage. The shit I dealt with.
A text came in from my stepbro, Dalt:
hey, i have some folks who want to discuss your san fran expansion. call me.
I texted back: dude. on my way out. will call in the a.m.
Yeah, baby.
He knew my business partners were douches. Ever since my dad screwed the company, which was at the time owned by all our dads, the partners had been putting me through the ringer. They were basically pains in my ass whenever they got the chance. And they got the chance a lot.
Not that I really blamed them. My dad stole from their dads, straight up. I was trying to make it right. But sometimes, they really tested my sense of obligation. They didn’t give a crap about Hotel Vertigo. They just wanted payback. The day they were repaid could not come soon enough so I could get them the hell out of my life.
According to an agreement worked out by the courts, until they were repaid, I had to run everything by them. I couldn’t blow my nose without their permission. Which wouldn’t have been so bad had they been decent businessmen with the ability to recognize an opportunity when they saw one. But they’d only inherited their old man’s money, not their business sense. I got it, their dads had gotten swindled by mine. No one was more tortured by it than me. But they were angry and bitter, and seemed more interested in putting the hotel out of business than making it a success so they got their due. Talk about cutting off their noses to spite their faces. The hotel’s success was their repayment, but they resented it at the same time.
But things might be different with Dalt’s offer of help. He knew people in San Francisco who were both entrepreneurial and good investors. People there were always looking for their next deal. They lived to take chances, much more so than the folks I knew on the East Coast. And they loved hotels and restaurants. It would be a brilliant move to expand the current New York property to San Francisco. ’Course I could always finance it myself, with my own investments, but it was always better to work with partners—as long as they were savvy business people. It lent more legitimacy to the project.
With the right investors, I could just open something completely new and escape my shortsighted partners. I had enough contacts in the entertainment biz to attract plenty of big name guests. Once I got those folks, the others always followed, which was key to making a hotel as hip and in-demand as possible.
Dalt and I hadn’t become stepbrothers until we were in high school when my mom married his dad. But when the shit hit the fan, and my father had been exposed for all his crooked dealings, Dalt had really stepped up to the plate to support me. You don’t forget something like that.
I’d worked for the company since I was a kid, but when it all went down and Dad had been arrested, I’d been left in charge. My head had spun from the press, the lawyers, and yes, death threats. But Dalt had stood by me and even loaned me some cash when I was nearly broke; all the hotel’s assets had been seized, and I was trying to pay all the bills out of my own savings. Later, when the dust had settled and our accounts were unfrozen, I was able to pay him back and then some. I’d invested in him, and now, he was a well-known and successful artist. Best thing I’d ever done.
At last the limo pulled up in front of the restaurant. I hadn’t been to Stella Bella before but its Yelp reviews were decent. It didn’t really matter, though. It would be a quick in and out.
In spite of the all traffic, I was still a few minutes early. So I went inside to get an early start on a nice scotch on the rocks. Alcohol would help the forty-five minute date pass quickly. Then Trudy would rescue me and I’d be on my way. I sent the driver off to kill the better part of an hour, and smoothing out the wrinkles in my suit, I headed for the door.
Bella Stella—what a corny name—was a typical New York City restaurant, with an outside awning over the doorway and a couple sidewalk tables. I entered the cozy space with exposed brick walls, heavy chandeliers, and a lit votive candle on every table. I settled in at the bar and watched the wait staff hustle through their last-minute dinner preparations. At five minutes to the hour there was no sign of the redhead, but maybe she’d be early, like me.
Chapter 7
Nara
Of course I ended up being late for my date with…what was his name? Oh yeah, Brodie something-or-other. My team and I had been presenting Mommy Knows to some beta test customers, who were going to try it out for us on their babies. I’d lost track of time, and Mimi was off doing something else so hadn’t been there to rein me in. Not many people get as enthusiastic as we do when it comes to talking about dirty diapers. It was a rare skill.
Luckily, Bella Stella was right around the corner from our offices. Actually, that’s why I’d chosen it. I’d spent the money “buying” the date, so I figured I could pick the location. The guy hadn’t had any objections; he’d just replied to my invitation with an okay. I just hoped that during our time together, which I was going to make sure was short and sweet, he had something a little more interesting to say than that.
Because the restaurant was right around the corner from my office, the staff there knew me. It was our “place” when we wanted an after work drink or when we had investors to take to lunch. The food was good enough, like most Italian joints in the city, and when you went there often, it felt like home.
Before slipping inside, I straightened out my skirt and smoothed down my hair. I don’t know why, but I wanted to look nice. I also wanted to get the date over with so I could say I’d done it, and have something to report to Page Six. I wasn’t going to give this guy the chance to say he’d been “bought” by some disheveled woman with lipstick on her teeth.
I slipped inside, tucking myself nex
t to a booth by the door, staring at the back of a solo man at the bar. I figured it was him. The manager nodded to me from the kitchen where he was involved in cooking something amazing smelling. I supposed they got a lot of first dates at Bella Stella in this day and age of online hookups. They’d probably seen it all.
He leaned on the bar, nursing some type of brown liquor. Probably a scotch, like every other master of the universe-wannabee in New York. His hair was nice and thick—I’d give him that—and he was wearing a suit. I guessed it was expensive from the fit.
Oh shit, he turned around and looked right at me.
Busted.
But strangely, he just turned back to the bar. Maybe he hadn’t seen me? He looked at his watch and took another sip of his drink.
I waited longer. Of course, it was rude to be late, but I was curious and relished the thought of having someone I was quite sure was overly impressed with himself wait for little old me.
At twelve minutes after the hour—late, but not hideously so—I approached him. He turned at the sound of my clicking high heels, and I put on my best hey-how-ya-doin smile.
I hadn’t realized how good-looking he was until I got closer.
“My date, I presume?” I extended my hand.
He looked surprised as hell as he studied my face and hair. What was that all about? Did I look that bad? My hand flew up to check my hair. “I’m Nara Kincaid.”
“Hello, Nara, I’m Brodie Harcourt.” He stood and took my hand as I climbed onto the barstool next to his. Chalk one up for good manners. And good lord, he was tall.
His phone vibrated, and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket. I spotted what I knew was a fancy watch. Some of the investors we’d met with wore the same, but I couldn’t tell what kind it was.
“Excuse me, I’m just gonna respond to my admin’s text.” He typed a couple words and set the device face down on the old wooden bar.
The bartender, who obviously knew me well, delivered a glass of pink bubbly.
