A Billionaire for Christmas

by Phillips, Carly

  Then I take off in a run, tugging Jesse behind me.

  But the car has reached the stop sign at the end of the street and has a blinker on, ready to turn left. “Stop!” I yell. “Here we are!”

  Jesse lets go of me and sprints off.

  “Stop!” Karen is calling.

  I look over my shoulder to find her running after me. I double down and pump my arms, booking it harder to catch up with Jesse.

  He’s reached the car and is banging on the hood. “We’re here!” he’s yelling. “It’s us.”

  The Uber car stops in the middle of turning left and Jesse yanks the door open just as I reach him. I slide in, Jesse slides in, and we both say, “Go, go, go!”

  The car takes off and I turn to look behind me. Karen is standing in the middle of the road with her phone in her hand. “Oh, my God. I think she’s calling my mother!”

  “Please!” the driver says. “I don’t have any money!”

  “What?” Jesse says.

  “I don’t have any money! Please don’t steal my car! I need it for my job!”

  Jesse and I both look at each other.

  “Oh, shit,” I say. Just as the smell of Italian food wafts up to my nose.

  “You’re not an Uber driver, are you?” Jesse asks.

  “Door Dash!” the frightened woman says. “I was making a delivery. I think it was for that lady back there. I was just gonna turn around and—”

  “We’re just going to the airport,” Jesse says. “We’ll pay you double to take us there. Hell, we’ll pay you two hundred dollars to take us there and pretend this never happened!”

  “Do we even have two hundred dollars?” I ask. Because I don’t normally carry cash.

  The driver pulls over, like she’s gonna make us get out, or get out herself, and then we really will have to steal her car, because when I look out the back window, fucking Krakken is running down the street after us, yelling, “They just stole my dinner! They just stole my dinner!”

  Well, I can’t really hear her say that. But I’m pretty sure that’s what the Kraken is yelling.

  “No, no!” Jesse says. “Please! Don’t pull over. This is just a weird misunderstanding. And I do have cash. I promise.” He pauses to look at me. “I do. Only three hundred, but it’s fine. We can hit up an ATM in Vegas when we arrive and get more. Just keep going,” he tells the driver. “Please. Or crazy Kraken Karen will catch us!”

  And maybe it’s the word ‘kraken’ that changes the poor woman’s mind, or maybe it’s the promise of two hundred dollars. Could go either way. But she gets back on the road and accelerates just as Karen starts pounding on the passenger window.

  Jesse and I laugh as we leave the Kraken in the dust. Then we settle back into the seats and breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Well,” the driver says. I glance up at the rearview to meet her gaze. “I’m gonna need all three hundred of those dollars now. Because I’m pretty sure Karen is already asking to speak to my manager and I’ll have an outrageous one-star review before this night is over.”

  Jesse and I both say, “Done.”

  At the airport, Jesse gives her all his cash, we thank her and apologize to her simultaneously and profusely, and then we realize he left the wheelie carry-on in Karen’s backyard.

  “It’s fine.” Jesse laughs, taking my hand as we make our way through the check-in for the private jets. “We’re only going to be in Vegas like six hours. We don’t even need toothbrushes.”

  And pretty soon we’re climbing the airstairs to the jet and Miles is making everything better. He even changed back into his butler outfit.

  “Miles,” I say, tsking my tongue. “You didn’t have to change.”

  “Ma’am, I take my job very seriously. Looking the part makes me a better butler. Mr. Boston, will you require some Barbie and Ken mini rolls during our trip?”

  “Nah, I’m good, Miles. Take the night off. In fact, you can have the bedroom if you want. We’ll just sleep in our seats.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Miles snaps back. “And I already have your sleeping clothes laid out for you.”

  “We have sleeping clothes?” Jesse asks.

  “I procured them from the jet lounge concierge while we were fueling up.”

  Jesse smiles at me. “I love your butler.”

  “Would you like some tips for getting married in Vegas, ma’am?”

  “Well…” I look at Jesse and he shrugs. “Sure, I guess. Do you have much experience in Vegas weddings?”

  “I’ve done it twice myself,” Miles says with a straight face.

  Jesse leans forward and pats the seat across from us. “Sit, Miles. You’re off the clock. Tell us everything you know about getting hitched in Vegas.”

  So Miles sits and starts talking.

  He tells us all about our options, and who knew that the drive-through wedding isn’t even the most outrageous way to tie the knot in Vegas?

  You can get married while sky-diving. “If you book online, they give you the tourist package. But if you know who to talk to, they will recite your actual nuptials fourteen thousand feet in the air. It’s a tandem jump,” he explains. “But they will give you mic-enabled helmets and situate you so that you and Jesse can hold hands and say ‘I do’ while you fall towards Earth going two hundred feet per second.”

  “Wow,” Jesse says. Then he looks at me. “That’s pretty outrageous.”

  “What else can we do?” I ask, not sold on the whole falling-from-the-sky wedding.

  “There’s always the underwater wedding.”

  “Oh, shit!” Jesse points to Miles and snaps his fingers. “That’s perfect!” He looks at me, excited like a kid at Christmas. “Right? Dumas Diving! Vegas style!”

  “That would really piss my mother off.” I snicker. “But what else? Because getting married underwater sounds like something my mother might actually be into.”

  “There’s the Elvis wedding, of course. With optional showgirls as bridesmaids. I did that once when I married John.”

  “John, huh?” I wink at Miles. “Who was the other guy?”

  “The other one was Cynthia. She was an actual showgirl, and since her life was nothing but glitz and glam from top to bottom, she wanted something more traditional. So we did the skydive.”

  “John and Cynthia,” Jesse muses. “You’re an enigma, Miles.”

  “That I am, sir. But there are many other ways to do a Vegas wedding right. You can even have a real ceremony in one of the five-star hotels.”

  “Doesn’t that require things like… planning?” Jesse asks. “I mean, I’m sure they’re all booked up. It is Christmas Eve.”

  “I have connections, sir,” Miles says. And he’s not even smug about it. Just very matter-of-fact. I have connections.

  “Wow,” I say. “I don’t know. There seems to be a lot of choices.”

  “Which is good, right?” Jesse says. “We want all the choices. Isn’t that what you were talking about earlier? You want to pick the dress, and the flowers, and the cake and all that shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So…” Jesse looks at Miles. “We want that. All the choices.”

  “Very well, sir. I have a man called Fingers. He’s the most sought-after wedding planner in Vegas, ten years running. He plans very unique, custom-tailored wedding experiences. And he owes me a favor. So I’m sure he will be happy to help.”

  “Fingers, huh?” Jesse chuckles. “Any relation to Shoes?”

  “None, sir.”

  “OK.” Jesse looks at me. “What do you say? Should we go with Fingers and let him make the plans?”

  “Why not?” I laugh. “Seems very Vegas to have a man called Fingers planning your outrageous on-the-run elopement.”

  Chapter Nine

  Miles insists that we change into our silky new PJs and take the jet bedroom while he makes some phone calls to Fingers, assuring us that everything will be all set by the time we land.

  And even though I have
big plans for seducing my bride-to-be while we’re in the air, we’re both kinda exhausted when we finally snuggle under the covers and turn out the lights. Add in the low, white-noise hum of the engines and… yeah. I’m pretty much asleep immediately.

  But it feels like I only just closed my eyes when Miles is gently shaking me awake and offering me a lemon-scented hand towel to freshen up.

  “We’ll be landing in about twenty minutes, sir. I’ve taken the liberty of steaming the wrinkles out of yesterday’s clothes and they are hanging in the closet.”

  “Jesus, Miles. You’re one in a million, ya know that?”

  “I do, sir.”

  It’s nearly dawn when I finally drag myself up out of bed and open the window shade to look outside. The barren terrain of desert greets me down below and our plan suddenly seems a lot crazier than it did last night.

  Emma covers her mouth as she yawns. “What time is it?”

  “Almost six AM. Miles left you a hot lemon towel.”

  “God, I love Miles.” Emma swings her legs out of bed and gazes out the window for a moment. “Holy shit. We’re really doing this.”

  “We really are.”

  She looks at me. “Are we nuts?”

  “Uh… yeah. That’s a given. Especially after that whole Krakken chase last night.”

  Emma snorts. “Take that, Karen.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Emma. It’s your wedding. You only get to do it once.”

  “Unless your name is Miles.” She chuckles.

  “You know what I mean. This is supposed to be your day.”

  “It is my day. I’m excited.” She pouts at me. God, I still love that pout. “But if you’re not into it—”

  “No, no. I am. I’m up for any crazy wedding you can cook up. But… I just want to make sure this is what you really want. Because we could just go back home, talk things out with your mother like rational people—”

  “She’s the irrational one! How could she invite Karen to be my wedding planner-slash-bridesmaid? I mean, come on! She knows that Mila, Nat, and Hannah have been my besties for over a decade now. That’s like… unforgivable.” She points her finger at me. “And I know what you’re going to say.”

  “What am I gonna say?”

  “That she only wants what’s best for me. But seriously. This is my mother we’re talking about. Sure, she loves me. But she’s always trying to control me. And you give in to her.”

  “When?”

  “All the time!”

  “Name one time.”

  “Hello? Have we or have we not been flying to Key West for Saturday dinner every freaking week?”

  “We did miss that one time in September.”

  “Yeah, once! And that month had five Saturdays instead of four, so it was a bonus dinner! And she forced my whole family to drive up to the city in the freaking Suburban!”

  “And I did tell her I wanted to come when we first met.”

  “Twice a month! Not every week. See, this is what I mean. She makes all these reasonable offers like, ‘Would you like first and third Saturdays, Jesse? Or second and fourth?’”

  “And I chose second and third. See? I made my own plan.”

  “She wants you to think that, but it’s not true. Not even a little bit! Second and third turned into every week. That was her plan all along.”

  “You make her sound like a sneaky buttinski mother-in-law.”

  “She is! Mark my words. When my mother makes a plan, she makes a freaking plan. I’m talking plan A, B, C, D all the way to Z. And each plan is worked and reworked so that no matter what road you take to get to the end, it always turns out the way she wants it to.”

  I laugh at her.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “OK, your mother is some crime-family matron who has all the power and will send in her henchmen to get what she wants. Got it.”

  “No! That’s me! I’m the crime-family matron now!”

  “Oh, Emma.”

  “Stop looking at me like I’m ridiculous! I’m telling you, she’s plotting my wedding so that no matter what I do, it will end up the way she wants it. I’ve been through this all before. Ask me about prom night!”

  I’m not gonna ask her about prom night for two reasons. One, I’ll get jealous no matter how it turns out. And two, I need to talk her down off this ledge she’s on before things really go off the rails. We were very close to being charged with carjacking last night. And we did steal the Kraken’s Italian Christmas Eve eve dinner. So I say, “Well… not anymore, right?”

  She sighs. “Right. This is the perfect plan. I’m telling you. The look on her face when I tell her we eloped and it’s a done deal—that’s my Christmas present this year. That’s all I want.”

  “To foil your mother’s wedding plans?”

  “Yup.”

  “OK, babe. Then get ready for your present. Because that sound right there?” I point to the floor where we can hear the landing gear being released. “That’s Santa’s sleigh coming in for a landing.”

  We take our seats in the main cabin and Miles serves us coffee and mini rolls to munch on while we land. Then we go back into the bedroom and put on yesterday’s refreshed clothes. Once that’s done, we exit and meet Miles at the bottom of the jet stairs.

  Vegas isn’t as hot as Key West was, but it’s still pretty nice when we finally get out in the sun and turn to Miles, eager to hear what our plans are.

  He hands me a glossy black mini-folder and says, “Here is your itinerary.”

  I open it up to find the charter jet scheduled for our return trip, the details for the car that will take us to our first meeting with Fingers, and a hundred dollars cash.

  “For any incidentals you need until you can get to an ATM,” Miles explains.

  God, I love this dude. He thinks of everything. When I’m in Miles’ capable hands, everything is right in the world.

  “But,” Emma interjects, taking the little folder from my hands, “there are no wedding plans in here. Just the car and the plane.”

  “Fingers will have all those details for you when you meet him at the restaurant,” Miles says. “I hope you both have the Vegas wedding of your dreams and I’ll see you after New Year’s.”

  “Thank you, Miles,” Emma coos, then kisses him on the cheek.

  “Merry Christmas, ma’am.”

  I stuff the little folder into my back pocket, take Emma’s hand, and head off across the tarmac with a smile.

  It’s not every day you get to marry your soulmate in an impromptu Vegas elopement planned by a dude called Fingers.

  I’m pretty sure this will be the most exciting day of my life.

  Finding the driver after leaving security is easy. He’s a big guy in a black suit and sunglasses holding a digital sign that says ‘Boston Wedding.’

  Nice touch, Miles. Nice touch.

  Since we don’t have any luggage, we just follow him to the pick-up lane and get in the back of a black Lincoln Navigator. The temperature is perfect, the leather seats are luxuriously butter-soft, and there are two bottles of Fiji water chilling in an ice bucket.

  Emma and I look at each other, smiling.

  “This is gonna be great,” she says.

  “Fuckin’ perfect. I can just tell. Fingers has it all figured out.”

  “What do you think he looks like?”

  “Fingers? Uh... I imagine he’s missing a few.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, like the name? It’s gotta be ironic, right? That’s the only way it works.”

  “He sounds like a gangster.” Emma chuckles.

  “He so does. But fuckin’ Miles? He’s sorta gangster so that fits.”

  “Miles? What are you talking about?”

  “You know. His whole seedy Pittsburgh past with that guy called Shoes.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. He’s here because of his Mob-nurtured Rain Man abili
ties.”

  “What. The hell. Are you talking about?”

  “He never told you about his childhood? Growing up with the Mob?”

  Emma guffaws so loud, our driver checks on us in the rearview. “No. This is a joke, right?”

  “I don’t think so. Dude told me this whole long story about how he was like an orphan or some shit back in Pittsburgh and got shuffled off to a Mob boss in Chicago and then bought his way out and went to butler school and found your ad on the Modern Butler magazine website and that’s how he got here.”

  She’s laughing so hard by the time I stop talking, I can’t help but laugh with her. “What? Was he lying to me?”

  “Jesse.” She can’t stop laughing.

  “What? It sounded so reasonable.”

  “Modern Butler?”

  “Everyone needs trade publications. Hell, I used to get a magazine called Douche Yacht High Life when I was younger.”

  She’s still laughing.

  “They just send it to you when you… never mind.” I huff and look out the window. “So what’s his real story then? If that was all a lie.”

  “I don’t know. But it wasn’t that.”

  “You don’t know then.” I huff again. “I think he was telling the truth. And look, the wedding planner is called Fingers. It has to be true. Miles showed us that crazy map of how he had to get to the poker tournament tonight, remember?”

  “I wasn’t really paying attention, but OK. Fine.” Emma stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “You win. Miles is Mob. Got it.”

  “He is,” I insist. “I can smell a lie.” I point at her. “And that story wasn’t a lie. Why would Miles lie to me? He totally laughs at my jokes. Dude gets me.”

  She’s still chuckling, but she’s polite enough to do it behind a hand over her mouth. “You’re adorable.”

  I adjust the collar of my t-shirt. “Thank you.”

  But I’m still kinda miffed at Miles when we land at Big Mike’s. The jukebox is playing Sugar, Sugar and the whole place looks like a Fifties diner.

  A hostess on roller skates dressed up in a classic pink uniform rolls her way over to a table and pans her hand at it.

  We sit together on the same side of the booth, expecting Fingers to show up and sit across from us.