Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  I crossed to him with the tea tray and two packets of sugar pressed between my lips.

  “And getting your grades up wasn’t an option?” He put the iPod back into the cradle, then plucked the sugar from my lips.

  “Fuck her.”

  He laughed. “You haven’t changed.”

  Was that true? I felt more beaten down and more defiant than when my father was alive. Maybe the only difference was my volume. I was the same, but more of it.

  Blind Willie Johnson came over the speakers. I’d hoped Logan would find something he liked so I could feel him out based on his musical choices, but he’d chosen the list I played most frequently—probably for the same reason.

  I didn’t know this person. He didn’t know me.

  How badly did I want to buy back my father’s company?

  How much did I want to keep my promise to him and get Bianca out of my life?

  Because getting married for it was absolutely insane.

  He pinched the tops of the sugars and flicked them to get the granules to the bottom of the packets, blue eyes on me, then the chair.

  Did I want to obey the eyes that commanded me to sit without saying a word, or the strong, graceful hands that promised so much more without guaranteeing it?

  “So, you want to talk about getting married,” I said, sitting on the couch. “Why?”

  “Mandy said she told you.” He was so confident and sure, so dapper and traditional, that this meeting was simply the first step in a reasonable, time-tested process.

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “The only thing I ever wanted to do was run Crowne Industries.” As he spoke, he tented his fingers around the cup’s edge. “We all figured Byron would be the guy. But I wanted it, and I was going to be ready to take it. I majored in business. Got a Harvard MBA. Top of my class, by the way. But my brother? I love Byron, but everything’s easy for him.” He shook his head, drinking pensively. “He split and did his own thing for five years. My chance, right? I busted my ass to prove I could handle it. Five years, and he strolls back into his old office like he owns the place. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I’m sidelined. And I’m going to stay sidelined unless I get married.”

  “Is that an official rule or a feeling you have?”

  “My father thinks I work too hard. He brought Byron back in so I’d have time to find a wife while he retires to take care of my mother.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “No.” He put his hands up to cut off further questions. “And I know what you want. I can execute that for you. We’ll start buying up shares after the first six months. The buys could take time, but I’ll own enough of Papillion to exert pressure by the time we’re done. I’ll sign it over to you as part of the divorce.”

  He made it seem so simple. He was absolutely positively sure that if we did this thing, stuck to it, waited an allotted amount of time, we’d both walk away with what we wanted.

  I believed we could walk away, but I wasn’t so sure getting us both what we wanted would be that easy.

  “So,” I said, pressing my praying hands between my knees. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. The rest is in the details.”

  “Right. So, where do we start on those?”

  “Your house,” Logan said. “Your rules.”

  I liked that. Rules would make the conversation a little less weird. “You get a question, then I get one. Then you.”

  “What about follow-ups?”

  “Permitted. I’m the host, so you can go first.”

  He sat back in his chair with his cup in his lap and crossed an ankle over his knee.

  “I think it’s best if we stay monogamous,” he said, respecting me enough to get right to the point. “Can you handle that?”

  “For how long?”

  “Two years.”

  “One year.”

  His jaw tightened as if he was holding back a reply.

  “I’m an adult human woman,” I added. “You and I obviously? Not a thing. We can marry for business, but I can’t hold that up for a year.”

  “One year,” he said with a nod. “No cheating.”

  “For either of us.” I put my cup down as if I meant it.

  “I’m also an adult.”

  “I’ll take that as a sign you can keep it in your pants.”

  “That’s right. Your turn.” He ceded the floor, and I noticed his strong wrists the width of his hand.

  I toed a boot off and kicked it to the side. “So.” I pulled off the other boot and laid it next to its sister. “You can run an empire, but you’re threatened by a woman’s ambition?”

  His laugh didn’t make me feel silly for asking as much as it answered the challenge. “I’m not, but I don’t want to marry it.”

  “Well,” I said churlishly, tucking my socked feet under me. “That’s good to know right off the bat.”

  “That won’t count for you.”

  “Which brings me to the big one. Why me?”

  “Is that a follow-up, or are you asking two questions in a row?”

  “My house, my rules.”

  He nodded, and I feared he might think I couldn’t stick to an agreement. I wasn’t ready to give up before we even finished the conversation, but I had a perverse need to sabotage every opportunity.

  “There are a hundred women who’d marry you in a heartbeat,” I said. “But here you are. In my studio. After not having seen me for how long?”

  “At least ten piercings ago.”

  “See? And that’s another thing. Am I even your type?”

  “Am I yours?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Right.” He put his cup on the table, and I thought he was going to walk out. Instead, he bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Look, I could dip into the usual pool and be half of a ‘cute couple.’ But I’m not interested. I don’t need a woman nagging me for attention. Bitching about birthdays and anniversaries. I don’t have the patience or the time. I’m interested in doing private business with a businesswoman who can keep the business private. Is that you?”

  He had me on a string until the last sentence. I was an artist, not some powerhouse in pumps and a jacket with inch-thick shoulder pads.

  “What I don’t get,” I said, “is why you don’t hit up an ex-girlfriend or something.”

  “I’ve had four long-term girlfriends since Millie. Some better than others, but I work seventy hours a week and I travel. Every one of them resented it. Two sulked. One made an ultimatum.”

  “They loved you.”

  “Love makes for messy divorces.”

  “Wait. That’s three. What about the fourth?” I asked.

  “Doctor June Mackie. Worked eighty hours a week. She married John Burkis last year. The senator.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You weren’t kidding. You literally broke up with her because she worked.”

  He sighed, and I got the feeling that this was the one woman he’d really loved. “I’d rather jerk off than schedule a fuck every two weeks.” He poured more tea in his mug. “You want yours warmed up?”

  Was making himself the host a strategy? Was he showing me how nice he could be? Or did he want to be in control?

  I peeked in the top of the teapot to check the water level, then I nodded and watched him refill my tea. “You could have worked less, you know.”

  “That’s not what I wanted.” He handed me my cup by the handle so I wouldn’t burn my fingers.

  “Thank you, Logan. You’re a full-service provincial asshole.”

  “Imagine if you married me.” He sat on the couch with me, keeping a respectful but crossable distance between us.

  “Imagine if it was the nineteen-fifties,” I said. “You come home every night at ten from a hard day running the world, expecting your slippers right at the door and the ironing board put away. Dinner hot. Wife in full makeup—”

  “That’s not—”

  “Ready to get on her back a
nd spread her legs at the drop of a hat.”

  “Okay.” He stopped me, hand up. “That, I won’t deny.”

  “Knew it!”

  “But she’d be the one dropping hats.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Totally worth her while, and not just on her back. On her knees, or facing down on the bed with her feet wide on the floor. My wife’s gonna be ass up begging for it. She’ll wait all day, soaking her panties until I come upstairs to give her everything she wants for as long as she wants it.”

  A knot the consistency of oil paint gathered in my throat when he started, growing into a sticky, unswallowable lump as if every bit of liquid from my mouth had pit stopped there on the way to the throb between my legs.

  Oh, hell no he wasn’t talking like that for a year.

  “Those are big promises,” I said, voice cracking when the knot broke.

  He shrugged. “I only promise what I can deliver.”

  “To your one-day-real wife.”

  “Who may or may not have my slippers at the door.”

  And that was the rub, wasn’t it? He was shameless in his needs. Everyone close to him must have known what he was looking for in a mate, and every one of them would know I wasn’t anything close to his dream girl.

  “No,” I said. “We’ll never sell it. I have friends too. They know I want what my parents had. Same as you. If your side doesn’t blow it, mine will and we’ll be caught.”

  His laugh was so deep and authentic, I froze with my tea getting cold against my palms. How could he miss what getting caught would do to his name? I was damn sure of what it would do to my father’s.

  “What’s so funny?” I twisted to face him, swinging a pillow that he caught and tucked behind him when he faced me.

  “Anyone else would give me a song and dance about the ‘sanctity of marriage.’ Or that their whole lives, they dreamed of their wedding day to some Prince Charming, blah blah. You’re worried about getting caught.”

  “That makes us compatible because we’re equally immoral?”

  “We’re surprising. Unexpected.”

  “We’re not a movie!” If I sounded frustrated, it was because my deal-breaker was his dealmaker. How did you get past that?

  “Have you met people?” he asked. “They’re worse than a movie. My brother got a woman smart enough to do better but picked him anyway. You see it all the time. Mandy? What about Mandy and that fucking—”

  “Ugh! Renaldo!”

  “Total slimeball.”

  I grabbed a pillow and screamed into it. Logan laughed. When I picked my head up, I must have been a sight, because he laughed harder.

  “Now you tell me,” Logan said. “Does that couple make sense? Did Mandy dream of hooking up with a philandering—”

  “Manipulating—”

  “Controlling—”

  “I’m going to scream into this pillow again.”

  “She didn’t fantasize about a guy like that, but we believe it. They’re not convincing in spite of being wrong…”

  “They’re convincing because it’s so, so wrong.”

  He tapped the tip of my nose. It was a shockingly intimate gesture, touching me then pulling back into his own space, but I didn’t jerk away or flinch. My body was okay with him.

  “And think how easy the divorce is,” he said. “Everyone gets to say ‘I knew it,’ and ‘I told you so.’ We’ll be surrounded by psychics who aren’t surprised by anything.”

  “How are you going to make them buy you being in love with me in the first place? We have to show up places together. You know how people in love act. It’s disgusting.”

  “I can act. Can you?”

  “Acting and faking it are two totally different things. As soon as you kiss the bride, it’s going to be obvious it’s the first time.”

  He tried to put away his smile, but the corners of his mouth wouldn’t obey. Even when he tried to obfuscate with a sip of tea, he was irritatingly bemused. “Is that all, Ella?”

  “That’s not enough?”

  “No. It’s not.” He shifted close enough for me to smell the layers of his cologne.

  Anise. Musk. Wealth.

  “We’re going to kiss for the first time, and you tell me if you’re convinced,” he said, putting his hands on either side of my face.

  I surprised myself by leaning into his caress, resistance melting away in the warmth of his palms and the intensity of his gaze as his thumbs stroked my cheeks. “Convince me then.”

  The world got so small, so fast that I didn’t have a moment to think, only act.

  Or not act. Just stay still while he wrapped me in the cocoon of his attention.

  If I spoke again, I’d break the spell.

  If I breathed, all the pain and uncertainty would rush into the space between us like backstabbing friends.

  If I moved, something I wanted to know would be forever unknown. An idea I didn’t have yet would be forgotten.

  He leaned forward slowly, as if giving me a chance to push him away.

  Not gonna happen. He smelled too good. He was too handsome, too well-dressed, too charming for me to refuse. Maybe this scheme would fall through in an hour. Maybe it would be an utter disaster financially and emotionally. But that kiss was a risk I was willing to take.

  His mouth found mine willing, and when the tip of his tongue brushed my bottom lip, I went boneless. I tasted crisp mint leaves wet with dew. When his hands moved back on my neck to hold me still, I let my weight drop into the support, giving him more control than he needed but less than I craved.

  Time could only be measured in stars while he kissed me. I wanted for nothing and felt nothing but his lips and his hands. I thought not in words, but in dots of moments strewn across the sky and connected by his touch.

  But even a billion light years has an end. Gently, he dropped his hands and pulled away. My spine held itself up and my lungs filled with air.

  “Now,” he said. “That’s out of the way.”

  “It is.”

  “So?” He laid his thumb on my chin and turned my head to face him. “Do you want to practice more? Because I think we got it.”

  I couldn’t live through another kiss like that and maintain my sense. “You made your point.”

  “I can make things happen for you. More than just a buyout.” He spoke softly, as if offering not a business deal, but personal satisfaction only he could provide.

  The tea was cold. I needed to get off the couch and boil more water, but I couldn’t. I was locked in place not just by the promise in his words—but by the suggestion in his tone.

  “I’m scared,” I said, and like a punctured balloon, the smallest opening let out all that I barely held inside. “My father’s name isn’t just a name. He made it mean something and he gave that to me. It’s the only thing I have left. And when he died, he asked me to hold on to it. He said I should use my gifts for it. It’s what he wanted and I’m scared. If I do this, and we try to take it over, we could fail. I could lose my connection to Papillion and I’ll break my promise.”

  “He’s dead, Ella.”

  A fact was a fact, but I didn’t like it coming out of his mouth right after it kissed me.

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  The pressure behind his words propelled me up, where I could see a leftover bag of blue crystals glittering through the plastic like a transparent geode.

  “I’m a bad choice for you.”

  I took the cups back to the kitchen before I said something I couldn’t take back.

  6

  LOGAN

  One minute, I had her. The next, she was rinsing mugs of mint tea in the kitchen.

  Unpredictable, that Ella.

  Again, not the kind of woman I’d spend the rest of my life with, but I saw the appeal of a partner who always surprised you. Whose heart wasn’t easy to see and whose mind was a fascinating tangle of emotion and motivation.

  It didn’t hurt that she was lovely to look at. Ev
en with the holes in her face and the tattoos peeking from under her clothes.

  I could find someone else, but I didn’t want to.

  Bringing the teapot, I went into the kitchen. “Why?” I put the pot on the counter. “Sell me.”

  She dumped the tealeaves and rinsed the pot without looking at me. “If I tell you why you shouldn’t marry me, what are you going to do with that information?”

  “Use it to tell you why you should.”

  “Or believe me?”

  I leaned on the counter, arms folded, watching her profile as she looked into the sink. Her nose was a soft curve, and her forehead looked higher from the side. “Tell me and I’ll decide.”

  “Did you hear about the house in Westlake?” she said, running water into the pot. “The one they demolished? On Benton?”

  “No.”

  “It was all over Twitter.” She swirled the water and dumped it. “The LA Times.”

  “I’m more of a Wall Street Journal guy.”

  She threw me a white towel and pushed the pot into my chest. I took it, but wasn’t sure what she wanted.

  “Dry.”

  “Ah.” I’d never dried my own dishes, but I’d seen people do it in movies, so I stuck the towel in the pot and pushed it around.

  “When they bulldozer-demolished it, it had been vandalized. The inside walls and floors were covered in rhinestones. It was like they opened a geode.”

  “Sounds… cool?” I wiped the outside.

  “After it was down, they gave out the rhinestones. People all over the city kept them like good luck charms.” She faced me. The fluorescent light hit the apex of her forehead, making it higher and more pronounced. What was going on under that skull of hers?

  “When I was pulled out of Wildwood,” she said, “I was put in Fairfax High. I fell in with ‘a crowd.’ Graffiti artists. Really creative but really wild. Amilcar was one of them. We got busted a lot. They got arrested and I got sent back to Daddy. You know how it is, don’t you?”

  She’d gotten arrested at least twice, but I wasn’t ready to tell her I knew already.