Dirty Tycoons: King of Code-Prince Charming-White Knight

by Reiss, CD

  Harper stood. “It’s Mister Dorning! Hey, Mister Dorning!”

  She was twelve and didn’t have great impulse control. She had a special rapport with Johnny, based on their mutual love of things I couldn’t get my head around.

  Johnny stood by the white fence with his box. Chris looked into it and smiled. I didn’t want him smiling without me. If I was miserable and ashamed, he had to be too. I went out, pulled behind Harper as if on a tether.

  Johnny put the box on the ground, and everyone looked into it.

  Harper squealed with delight. “Can I have one?”

  The box was full of puppies. Four of them. The bloodhounds were honey-brown and cheerful except for the smallest one. He just looked soulful.

  “It’s up to your parents,” Johnny said.

  “I like this one!” Joe said, patting a tail-wagger with her paws over the edge of the box. She licked the boy’s hand.

  “Me too,” Chris said.

  I realized he was close to me and snapped around to see him looking over my shoulder, bent at the waist so his hands leaned on the three-foot-high fence and his lips were an inch from my body. He flicked his finger against the top of my thigh and I nearly went blind with arousal.

  “I like the little one,” I heard Harper say from a million miles away.

  Chris and I were eye-locked. I could smell his breath, his body, the heat coming off him.

  “He’s the runt of the litter,” Johnny said.

  “What’s that mean?” little Joe asked.

  “He’ll have certain genetic disadvantages,” Johnny replied.

  “In the wild,” Harper corrected.

  Chris blinked. Licked his lower lip. I couldn’t tell if it took more effort to not kiss him or to stay standing.

  “If I take him, he’ll have advantages,” Harper added.

  The voices came from a long tunnel between my connection with Chris and the rest of the world clamoring for attention and getting none.

  “We’re naming them after Arthur’s knights,” Johnny said from the end of the tunnel.

  “I read Sir Gawain in spring.” That was Harper’s voice.

  Johnny. “I remember.”

  Little Joe. “Lancelot should be the big one! And Galahad because he’s the best.”

  Their voices melted into the density of the silence between Chris and me like chocolate in a marble cake.

  “Two are girls.”

  “Galahad can be shortened to Gal.”

  “The runt is Percival and he’s mine.”

  “I promised the runt to Orrin. He needs a beta.”

  “We need an Arthur and there’s no girl name for it.”

  “We can call a girl Arthur.”

  “There something wrong with Guinevere?”

  I shook my head ever so slightly and pressed my lips tight together.

  My expression was meant to speak a few volumes.

  Not here.

  I can’t look at you like this here.

  “Harper Barrington! You put that mutt down!”

  I snapped to attention. Harper had the little puppy in her hands. Our mother bounded down the back porch steps.

  Johnny gently took the dog from my sister before our mother reached us. “I’m sorry, Ella. I didn’t think—”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “But, Mom…” Harper whined, and Harper never whined. “He’s just a baby. He needs us.”

  “Your father is allergic.”

  “We’ll keep him outside.”

  “No. Go wash your hands.”

  Harper stormed off, fists balled on the ends of stiff arms, feet slamming the ground as if she wanted to bruise it.

  “I’m sorry, Johnny,” Mom said gently.

  “I get it.”

  Their eyes locked, and having just had an eye-lock with Chris, I recognized the similarity. But it didn’t last. Not for even a second.

  She spun to me, then Chris, smoldering like hot glass. “Are you finished?”

  “Not quite, ma’am.”

  “I’m not paying you for the time you spend looking at puppies.”

  “Of course.” Chris pointed at Johnny and stepped back. “I’ll take Lancelot.”

  “You got it,” Johnny replied. “You sure you don’t want one, El?”

  My mother was kneeling over the box, letting one of the dogs lick her hand. “Earl’s too sensitive.” Mom stood and put her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get in out of the sun.”

  I followed her back to the house, looking back only once. Chris was looking at me with his arm shielding his eyes from the glare.

  When we got inside, my mother guided me to the kitchen faucet, where we washed our hands. She kept looking out the back window over the sink.

  “Is this clean enough?” I asked, willing my eyes away from Chris, into the endless drain.

  “Yes.” She shook the water off her hands. “Come here with me.”

  She took me to the sun room that overlooked the side of the house. It had windows on three sides and, for that moment, was remarkable for the fact that we couldn’t see the backyard from it.

  “Catherine,” she said, folding her hands in her lap, “are you all right?”

  “Yes.” I pressed my knees together, wondering if she could see what was happening under my skirt.

  She wiggled in her seat as if the conversation made the cushions prickly. “That boy was looking at you.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  She sighed. “Where I grew up, in Philadelphia, we were exposed to more things. More men. I worry about you girls’s prospects.”

  I knew where she was going, and I wanted to deflect her. “I’m not worried about me. Harper though? She’s so smart.”

  “She’ll meet a man in college.”

  “Maybe I will too.”

  She nodded with the satisfaction of a period after a long string of clauses. “Boys like the one out there will ruin your life. Trust me on that. I won’t let it happen. Trust me on that too.” She looked me right in the eye, one eyebrow raised as if she expected me to rubber stamp her message.

  I nodded slightly, because I was sure she was right. He’d ruin my life. I just had to decide if I wanted it ruined.

  “Catherine.” She tilted my chin up at her. “It’s hard being a woman. In Philadelphia, it was hard because you were expected to do everything. Family, work, everything. Here, it’s hard because you can let a man take care of you, but you can’t make a mistake. There’s no coming back from them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I didn’t. Mistakes weren’t always mistakes until after they happened. “Did you make a mistake once?”

  “No.” Her answer was sharp, as if she was cutting off a contradiction. “I married your father and he brought me here. And now I have my two girls who I love more than anything.”

  I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to make her proud and do things the right way. But as she hugged me, I wondered when I’d come to where the road forked between completing her life and completing my own.

  Chapter 9

  chris - LAST DAYS OF LANCE

  Lance liked everyone. He’d even liked Lucia, more or less, though she was never warm to him and she constantly complained about his hair getting in her sweaters. She’d had a point. We had a maid five days a week, yet his stiff fur always wound up in her knitwear. She gave up on wearing anything black more than once. I thought it had been Lance’s way of chasing her out.

  I gave him a pat on the head and tossed him a treat. He caught it, but he wasn’t jumping as high as he used to or landing as confidently. He crunched it slowly, as if his teeth hurt.

  I didn’t think about him getting old. I thought he’d be with me forever.

  He finished the treat and slapped his tail on the kitchen tile.

  Fuck it. I gave him another treat and put the box away. When I lifted my arm to reach the cabinet, I caught sight of a dog hair in my sweater. And another.

  “I’m going to change.”
>
  He followed me to the bedroom.

  Lucia had bought me a pet hair remover brush as a divorce present. I should have been heartbroken to even look at it, but when we split up, I wasn’t hurt. I was relieved.

  I never had to see Lucia again. I never had to hear her brittle, derisive laugh or be nice to her friends. I never had to pretend I was the one throwing her birthday extravaganza. I didn’t have to go to another Montano Foundation event where she worked tirelessly to help children she’d never know to make up for the children she couldn’t have.

  In the end, it was all about money. Even if she’d ever loved me, by the end, all the love had turned into money.

  So fuck me for not seeing it.

  Fuck me for letting her push me into a marriage I didn’t want.

  Fuck me for being weak.

  Lance and I wrestled around for a few minutes, but he was old and tired. He couldn’t play too rough or for too long. In the end, I rolled onto my back, arms and legs spread, looking at the white ceiling.

  I didn’t trust people easily. Why had I fallen for her eight years ago? I had been a kid from nowhere, a little prick hotshot throwing money around in restaurants. She’d been an Italian model for fifteen minutes. She’d started a charity with millions collected from men she denied were ex-lovers. On paper, she seemed better than I could do.

  Fuck the paper. Never again. She should have been no more than an aspirational fuck.

  Whatever. There was no need to worry about it. I was free. I could go anywhere. I could do anything.

  I took Lance by the ears and looked into his brown eyes. “You’re the only one for me, ya hear?”

  He licked my chin and gave me his special whine that translated to, “Go for walk.”

  “Okay, boy.”

  He leapt for the door. By the time I got there, his tail was smacking the molding and he had his leash in his teeth. I was just about to grab it when my phone rang.

  “Give me a second.” I checked the caller ID and answered. “Brian.”

  “Did you see Neville’s London report? If we make the arbitrage window, there’s a thirty percent return.”

  “Thirty?” Holy crap. That was insane.

  “Guaranteed. We need to move on this now.”

  “And big.” I’d paced back to my home office with a mind fully occupied with calculating closing times and exchange rates. We had eleven minutes.

  Brian and I spoke our shorthand, moving money, calculating odds, agreeing to go big on a hunch I’d had the day before and handed to Neville for calculations. We hung up at nine minutes and I pumped the fist that held the phone with a “yes!”

  A nice afternoon’s work.

  I came back to the front of the house whistling fucking Dixie.

  Lance was whimpering, his chin on his front paws. The fur was dark and damp at the ends, and a puddle of piss spread over the floor, flowing in rivulets toward the forty-thousand-dollar Persian rug.

  “Crap!”

  Lance whined and gave me his guilty face, but I didn’t have time. I snapped paper towels off the roll and saved the rug.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Lance on my hands and knees. “It’s my fault, but I just made a ton of money.”

  Lucia’s voice in my mind cut through my satisfaction. “Porque? Christopher, what are you going to do with all this money?”

  That question had come toward the end, and it baffled me. She’d loved spending my money. I’d thought she loved me, but in moments when I was honest with myself, I thought it was all about the money for her.

  I squirted disinfectant on the floor and rolled off more paper towels, recalling the night I met her.

  I was sure she was about the money, and I was stupid and all right with that. I liked it, because she’d have me for what I’d done, not who I was.

  She’d been looking over my shoulder at Lola’s. Bernie had been talking about my quant fund and she was cooing about how she didn’t understand it. I’d tried to hide my phone screen because… why?

  Right. I’d been looking at my checking account. Why? To prove some shit to Bernie?

  Why would I call up my checking account on my phone? At dinner, no less. The most interesting transactions weren’t in the checking. That was a slush fund for bills and crap.

  Lucia had long nails. She’d run them along the back of my hand as I’d slid my fingers over the glass.

  “You have a dog?” she asked, pulling a hair off my sleeve.

  “Yeah.”

  “Little or big?”

  She was making conversation, which you were supposed to do at a big dinner. I was agitated the night I’d met Lucia. I knew why for a while, then I forgot. Something in the checking account had been bugging me.

  “Medium.”

  I’d been counting days.

  Why? I wasn’t late with anything. I had a team of people to pay the damn bills. What was it with the checking account eight years ago? And why had it mattered?

  Tossing the last of the soiled paper towels, I leaned down to face my dog. “Do you still want to go out? Walk?”

  Of course he did. We went around the corner. He gave what he had left to a few hydrants and I tried to pull apart that night with Lucia.

  My personal checking account. Why why why?

  When we got back, I poured Lance some water, but instead of drinking, he followed me to my office. It was hardwood and chrome, shine and windows. My weekend hideaway from the social dramas of the fashion world that Lucia brought home. Throwing open the closet doors, I rooted past the bank boxes and corporate binders on the top shelf, finding my old checkbooks.

  Counting backward, I found the checks I would have written when I met Lucia. No, no, no. Lance plopped down in front of me and whined, tilting his head toward my desk. I didn’t know if it was because of the pain in his spine or if he was trying to mention that looking at my bank account online would be easier.

  “I think I’ll remember better if I feel the paper, you know?” I told him.

  He put his chin between his paws and watched me with his big brown eyes, as if he knew what I was about to find out.

  “Something you want to tell me, boy?”

  He just blinked.

  “Fine.” I flipped through the book.

  Like most people, I used mostly online payments and bank transfers, so a carbon for a check dated six months before I met Lucia wasn’t too hard to find.

  Seven hundred forty-nine dollars, made out to Catherine Barrington.

  My phone number was in the memo.

  Yeah.

  That was why I’d been looking at my checking account.

  Check 3201 had never been cashed, and the night I’d met Lucia was exactly six months after it was dated. The last day it was valid.

  That was the night I gave up on Catherine.

  Chapter 10

  catherine - present

  Dear Chris,

  Your letter came as a surprise. It’s wonderful to hear from you after all these years. How they’ve flown by!

  I tapped my finger against the kitchen counter, reading the note. The black ballpoint handwriting was fine. Neat as a pin. The stationary was old Barrington family paper that I kept in the bottom of my underwear drawer because I had nowhere else to put it. Everything was fine with the note except the intent.

  The soup for church was popping and boiling in the pot. The dishes were clean, and I had nothing to do but write this note. I wished I had something else to do.

  Your letter came as a surprise. It’s wonderful to hear from you after all these years. How they’ve flown by!

  I sounded like a stranger. Like someone who had never promised him a thing. Even the exclamation point at the end that was supposed to warm up the letter seemed like another line and dot of distance.

  Pushing the paper’s corners together, I started to crumple it and stopped. I could use it as scrap. I could write everything I wanted to say then edit it neatly onto a new sheet.

  I am so sorry to h
ear about Lance. I think burying him at home is the right thing. I know Galahad is on Wild Horse Hill. You should get a space nearby.

  Was that all I was going to talk about? Lance? Was I going to let the subtext rule the conversation or was I going to be a grown-up?

  I don’t know when I stopped waiting for you.

  There. That was closer. At least it was true. A long time ago, I’d stopped waiting without even thinking about it.

  I used to cry over you, but not for a long time. Now I just cry out of habit. I cry for a release, even if I don’t feel sad. It’s a valve I can open and I function fine. So, thanks for the tears, I guess.

  The bedsprings squeaked upstairs, and my stream of rage snapped. This thing Harper had. This man she’d met on the internet and brought home. It was strange and unprecedented and I wanted it.

  I didn’t even know what it was and I wanted it. I wanted it so badly I couldn’t think.

  To add shame to sin, the doorbell rang.

  I looked through the front sidelight. It was Reggie.

  “Shoot.”

  He worked in the distribution center off the interstate and painted small canvases of cities and spaceships in his spare time. He’d sold a few to people in Doverton, but mostly he covered them over with new ideas as they occurred.

  When I was upset, my father gave me the master suite as a consolation prize. At twenty, Reggie was Barrington’s resident artistic talent. Dad had hired him to paint flowers on the ceiling to cheer me up. I didn’t sleep in that room anymore because of a roof leak, but knowing the ceiling was there was comforting. It was beautiful and it was mine.

  My sister and every lady in town insisted Reggie held a candle for me ever since then. Even while I dated Frank Marshall and after that ended peacefully. The rumors alone put Reggie at the top of the list of people I didn’t want to come inside while Taylor and Harper were making a racket.

  Pressing the pedal to open the kitchen garbage pail, I gathered the top of the plastic bag. It was only about a third full, but I took it to the front door anyway. When I opened it, Reggie had his hat in his hand.