Girl Meets Billionaire

by Brenna Aubrey et al.

  A smile spreads across Brett’s face. “Like it’s just a PR stunt.”

  “Exactly. What mother would leave a company to the dog and not her CEO son?” I manage to say this without emotion. “We write an over-the-top press release. We give a big cardboard check to some dog pound. And guess who gets to be in charge of choosing the charity?”

  Chapter Nine

  Vicky

  I take Carly and Smuckers out to a sidewalk café where we order whatever we want without looking at the prices, and for dessert we get our favorite treat: ice cream with a stupid amount of candy in it.

  “Everything’s good now,” Carly says, searching my face for confirmation.

  “Def,” I say, because I want that for her, even if I don’t have it for myself.

  I still get spooked when groups of people seem to be looking at me; I think they recognize me, and that they’re silently condemning me. A built-in flinch reaction.

  I remember being shocked a few months back when people were looking at Carly and me down on the subway platform, and that whole hunted, hated feeling rushed over me.

  Then I looked over at Carly, and she was grinning at me. She put her hand on her hip, gave me a cocky look, and said, This coat is so badass nobody can even believe it.

  And I wanted to cry from relief. And happiness. My beautiful sister with her bright red hair and orange faux-fur coat. People stare at her and she decides she looks amazing.

  That night after she’s asleep, I go to my old jewelry collection, sifting through the pieces I’ve collected over the years. I finger a charm bracelet, one of the few beloved things I still have from my childhood, and that’s when the brainstorm hits.

  I’m thinking high-end charms crossed with Valentine’s candy hearts. I’m thinking fun animal faces and playful sayings. Smuckers’s face with Smuck U. A cat with meow, mofo. An owl: GrrOWL.

  I start sketching and scribbling, coming up with increasingly outrageous messages. I stay up all night designing and making reckless decisions. It’s just a one-time outfit, so who cares?

  I work up a bracelet and a necklace, all animal medallions the size of quarters set in neon pink alloy. The fact that Henry partly inspired it all adds to the crazy, fuck-you fire of it. But really, it’s not solely inspired by him. It’s the city and the battle of the jungle and droplets of water on windshields, the flashing perfume billboard out our window, bright desserts on a tray and me having some fun for once.

  Somewhere around four in the morning I redesign everything to make it double sided, with the animal face on one side and white letters on the pink metal. I design sandal charms and hairpins, too. It’s messed up and wild. I forgot how much I missed color.

  I drop my sister off at school and head to the makers space. Almost nobody is around. I make medallion molds of different sizes and work out how the lettering will go. Everything feels new. It’s a lot of work for a one-time outfit, but sometimes you make shit just to make it.

  The place fills up. I work through lunch, and suddenly Carly’s calling. It’s already time to get her.

  It’s only when I stroll out of there into the hot afternoon that I realize things I’ve been making don’t feel new at all.

  They feel old. Like Vonda stuff. I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry when I realize that.

  My insane collection is ready two days later, matched perfectly to the large Smuck U medallion that adorns the back of Smuckers’s throne.

  I show Latrisha the bracelet and necklace set.

  “You’re really committing to the madness,” she observes.

  I inform her that there will also be a large zoinks medallion in my ponytail.

  She’s just looking at the necklace. “I kind of want one. Exactly like this.”

  I tell her I’ll make her one. A few other artisans come around. By the end of the day I have orders for ten pieces. I’m thinking about putting it on Etsy. I force myself to go back to my serious collection—Saks is tomorrow—but when I open the box I keep it in, my heart seems to sigh. Not a good sigh. A sad sigh.

  Even tucked into elegant black velvet, the pieces look sad. I’m selling safety. Invisibility. Being on trial. Jewelry for a girl who wants desperately to be trusted. Wants not to be hated.

  And I realize I want more.

  Chapter Ten

  Vicky

  The prebuyers frown. “This is completely different,” a woman in mod stripes says. She’s rail thin like so many in the fashion industry trenches. “You can’t switch.”

  “The old stuff was about women hiding their true personalities, and that’s not what I’m interested in anymore,” I say. “Jewelry should express something.” Even as I say it, I’m wondering if I’m committing too much to the cray. But I can’t deal with the old collection. It’s like I’ve developed an allergy to it overnight.

  Her blue-haired partner, who looks like he’s eighteen, is not happy. He closes the case and slides it across to me. “We worked up a whole new biz-casual strategy for the other, and that’s not this.”

  “We had this designated for a specific niche,” the woman says.

  The main buyer comes in. They both look really nervous. “We might have to postpone this,” the blue-haired buyer says. “This isn’t the collection we were slotting. This new one…no offense.”

  The main buyer frowns. “Usually when somebody says no offense, there is some. This I gotta see.”

  “I brought one that wasn’t requested,” I explain, not wanting to throw the prebuyers under the bus. “I wasn’t thinking. I’ll go back through the channels.”

  She makes a come-hither motion with her finger.

  I slide the case to the middle of the table and open it. She pulls out the necklace and studies the animal faces with their weird little messages.

  “Hmm,” she says, stopping on GrrrOwl.

  I try my best not to slump or appear to crumble. Did I go overboard in all of my enthusiasm? Lose my judgment? Yes.

  But it felt good while I was making it.

  “What do you call it?”

  “Smuck U,” I say.

  She looks confused.

  I pull out the sandal medallion. “Inspired by my dog, Smuckers.”

  She tilts her head. “What’s the thinking?”

  I look up and down. She thinks I’m crazy already, so it can’t get worse, right? I pull out the bracelet. “People have tried to push Smuckers around. Take things away from him. Smuckers wears bow ties, and he’s cute and fluffy, but he is so done with people pushing him around. So done.”

  Everyone is looking at me now.

  “Cuff bracelet. All metal is a pink alloy. This is what you wear when…” I pull out the choker and hold it up to my neck. “Well, it’s what you wear whenever you feel like it. It’s high-end, but not playing the high-end game.” I pull out a bracelet and lay it flat. On the front of each medallion, the size of a quarter, is a fun painted animal face. On the back are the various messages. Zoinks. Hell no. Hell yes. Smuck U. “It’s not about what the world tells you to be. It’s about what makes you feel alive. This is for a woman who’s so done with being pushed around.”

  Do I sound like a crackpot? Probably.

  The buyer gazes at the prebuyers. Back at the Smuck U collection. Back at me. “I like it, but it doesn’t work for us, and especially not…it’s not what we had slotted.”

  I thank them for their time and get out of there, down the elevator, out onto the sunny sidewalk where I’m jostled by pedestrians and assaulted by the scent of diesel trucks and burned hot dogs.

  I just blew the biggest meeting of the year.

  I might be making sequined dog collars for the rest of my life.

  And I feel…happy.

  Chapter Eleven

  Henry

  She’s late for the board meeting. Almost ten minutes late. I’m surprised. I keep watching the elevators across the vast empty space that, since this is Manhattan, costs more per square foot than a Bentley.

  Brett rock
s back in his chair and says, “Somebody didn’t read the bylaws as well as she should’ve.”

  The bylaws stipulate that if you’re fifteen minutes late without alerting anyone, the board votes your percentage. It’s a rule that was originally created so meetings wouldn’t get held up if our grandfather decided to grab a dozen glazed bear claws from Jolly’s on the way in from Long Island.

  “Let’s do this.” I pull up the motion to strip her of her votes and enter it into the agenda with a sense of disappointment.

  I was looking forward to today. Perverse, I know. But I’m curious to see what’s next in the pretty little scammer’s playbook. Does she cram on the bylaws? Bide her time until she attains expertise in all things Locke, and then go in for the kill?

  Or does she play bull in the china shop, making us suffer and squirm until we make her a better offer?

  Does she cut in a lawyer? Somebody to read everything that comes up for vote? I definitely wouldn’t blame her if she did that, considering what we pulled in that last meeting.

  Mandy seconds the additional agenda item and moves that we consider it first.

  Kaleb seconds the emotion.

  At thirteen after, right as we’re about to vote her off the island, the elevator doors open.

  I sit up, heart pounding. Saved by the bell, I think, folding my hands in front of me, ready to give her the amused smile that seems to annoy the stuffing out of her. Ready for another one of her prim-but-strangely-hot librarian outfits.

  But it’s not her.

  It’s a pair of mimes, and they’re carrying something large between them—a piece of wooden furniture with shiny detailing, like some kind of fancy high chair. They start across the floor with the thing hoisted between them.

  Vicky steps out of the elevator after them with Smuckers on a leash.

  Her hair is tauntingly confined in that polished ponytail. Her simple brown dress has a slim, shiny belt that matches the dark brown of her glasses. But it’s not her outfit that gets me—it’s her bright gaze, her flushed cheeks, just the energy of her.

  It charges the air around her. It sends shivers across my skin.

  I have the feeling that medieval warriors must’ve had, seeing the enemy pour over the hill, flags flying, armor glinting.

  I go to my feet.

  “What the hell?” Brett mutters. We’re all standing now.

  The mimes proceed toward us with whatever it is they carry, followed by Vicky and April. Smuckers trots along on the end of a leash. Wearing a blue bow tie.

  A Locke-blue bow tie.

  My pulse races.

  Vicky cuts ahead of the mimes and opens the door for them. They’re your classic mimes’ mimes: white painted faces, striped socks, berets, black suspenders, the whole dorky deal. They enter bearing the strange piece of furniture, acting surprised and delighted to discover us.

  What. The. Hell.

  I watch in shock as they set the thing—some sort of a cross between a high chair and a throne—down at the end of the table. They make a huge production out of shifting chairs around to make room. They measure the space with an invisible measuring tape, gesturing dramatically to each other.

  They’re not really very good mimes; this adds to the insult of it.

  Vicky seems engrossed with the operation. Smuckers pants excitedly in her arms.

  “What is this?” I ask hoarsely.

  Vicky turns to me, adjusting her glasses in her tantalizing I’m-looking-at-you way.

  “Provisions and accommodations shall be made for board members attending meetings,” she says.

  Damn bylaws.

  My pulse thunders, and it’s not just annoyance.

  Kaleb clears his throat. “This is irregular.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Brett bites out. “Mimes aren’t accommodations.”

  As if the mimes are the problem.

  The mimes are beckoning Vicky and Smuckers over now. Vicky goes and hands Smuckers to the shorter of the two. Smuckers licks a bit of white paint off the one mime’s face in the process of being installed on what I see now is some sort of custom throne, like a high chair with a blue satin cushion. The back of it has some sort of circle picture of Smuckers wearing a Locke-blue bow tie, like a royal portrait.

  I swallow.

  Smuckers wags his tiny tail as the mimes hook him to the chair via a velvet ribbon, also Locke blue, salute him, and exit.

  Kaleb grumbles from the other end. Brett comes to stand next to me. “The hell? Tell me that’s not a throne for the dog.”

  “Okay,” I breathe. “How about an elevated, highly decorated dog bed?”

  “Not funny.”

  No, it’s not funny. It’s scrappy. It’s…I don’t know what. I don’t know how I feel about any of it. It’s been a long time since I didn’t know how to feel about something.

  Vicky goes over to inspect.

  “Seriously?” I say.

  She turns to me.

  I shove my hands in my pants pockets. “You want to explain this?”

  “Isn’t it self-explanatory?” she says. “Smuckers needs a place to sit, too. I mean, does it seem fair to you that every board member here has their own seat except Smuckers? Who ever heard of an individual who sits on the board of a major corporation having to sit on another person’s lap?”

  I go over and inspect the image of Smuckers’s face in the chair-back portrait. “A bit redundant,” I observe. “His portrait, when he’s right here.”

  “Smuckers likes people to know who’s in charge. Especially since there was some confusion about it at the last meeting,” she adds.

  My gaze drops to her lips. Dimly I’m aware of Kaleb suggesting we call this meeting to order. She’s wearing some sort of a necklace—circles the size of quarters between bright pink metal beads. Smuckers’s face is on some of the circles. Others have cats and foxes, and some have words, like Meow and mofo.

  Of all the things she could’ve done with her time over the past week, she’s spent her time making custom jewelry to match the Smuckers throne. This is a move and a half, what she’s doing here.

  So outrageous.

  “Do you like it?” Her voice is husky. She lifts it a few inches off her chest for me to see better.

  My knuckle brushes her throat as I take hold of one of the colorful disks, and I can’t focus for a moment, because the sense of her is overwhelming. My skin feels too tight for my body.

  I turn a disk in my fingers. It’s cool and heavy and exquisitely made. On one side is the face of Smuckers. On the other it says Smuck U.

  I keep hold of it. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what she is. My knuckles hover just above her chest, my fingers just under her chin.

  “Pretty nice, huh?” she says.

  My heart punches in my rib cage. It comes to me here that battling a person can be as intimate as fucking them.

  “It’s as good a thing as any to wear while I take you down,” I whisper.

  “You think you can take me and Smuckers down?” Those plump, kissable lips form into a smile. “’Cause in that badass throne? Look at him!”

  I bite my tongue. I don’t give a crap about Smuckers.

  Mandy clears her throat. “Should we get to it?”

  I let go of the necklace. I turn and pull out her chair for her.

  “Thank you.” She sits.

  April has taken up her post as board secretary.

  Kaleb clears his throat. “I didn’t dedicate my life to Locke Worldwide for a dog on a throne to preside in the boardroom,” he says unhelpfully.

  I take my seat opposite Vicky. I meet her sparkling gaze. “Is Smuckers ready to proceed with the week’s business?”

  “Very much so,” she says.

  I shift in my chair and introduce today’s central agenda item, the authorization of funds for a software switchover. Mandy has been pushing for that, and she has a presentation.

  Mandy puts the PowerPoint on the screen. I should be watching that, but I can’t
stop staring at Vicky.

  “Wait,” Vicky says. She moves Smuckers’s throne so that Smuckers can see the screen.

  I exchange glances with Brett. From the way his phone is tilted, I can tell he’s filming for the competency hearing.

  Good.

  No mediator in their right mind will think this is anything but harmful to the company.

  Mandy goes on about deeper integration of our construction, development, and architectural businesses.

  I watch Vicky follow along. She asks a few questions—rookie ones, but she’s interested. I was right about the construction stuff. Numbers bore her, but timelines and construction methods don’t. It makes sense, I suppose. She has that Etsy store. She’s made this jewelry and some of this throne. She does on a small scale what we do on a large one.

  It’s too bad she’s the enemy.

  When Mandy’s done, Vicky turns to Smuckers. “What do you think?”

  “Smuckers’s share of the company will increase with this,” I say. “This makes Smuckers richer while delivering better service.”

  She winces.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Smuckers doesn’t like the idea of new software. The learning curve—he’s not into it.”

  I frown. “If we wanted to stay away from learning curves we’d still be adding and subtracting on abacuses.”

  She shrugs. “You’re preaching to the choir, dude. I’m not the one to be convinced here.” She widens her eyes and tips her head toward Smuckers.

  “Smuckers can hear me just fine,” I say.

  She holds up a finger and turns to the dog as if listening intently.

  Mandy sighs loudly. Brett keeps filming.

  Vicky says, “Smuckers doesn’t like how you’re talking to me when he’s the one making the decisions. He feels alienated.”

  “Does he,” I say.

  “You should make your arguments directly to Smuckers,” she says. “If you want him on your side you need to work a little harder.”

  “We’re not going to do that, Vicky.”

  She frowns, eyes dark and dazzling. “Smuckers isn’t feeling favorable to the funding, that’s the problem here.”