Mr. North

by Callie Hart

  Mr. North

  Callie Hart

  Contents

  1. Beth

  2. Beth

  3. Beth

  4. Beth

  5. Beth

  6. Beth

  7. Beth

  8. Beth

  9. Beth

  10. Beth

  11. Beth

  12. Beth

  13. Beth

  14. Beth

  15. Beth

  16. Raph

  17. Beth

  18. Beth

  Epilogue

  Calico

  Also by Callie Hart

  C opyright © 2017 by Callie Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by HEA Press

  One

  Beth

  I f you could go back and change a single moment in your past, what would it be? The most embarrassing moment of your childhood? The second you said fine, I don’t love you anymore, let’s call it quits? Perhaps a missed opportunity. That guy you passed on the street, the one who caught your eye. Maybe he smiled. Would you use your chance to go back and talk to him? Introduce yourself? Perhaps offer to buy him a drink in a bar? Maybe you’d take back a cruel string of words. Maybe you’d say something you left unspoken.

  Personally, I’d go back to the day shortly after my twenty-seventh birthday, when my best friend, Thalia Prestwick, shoved a brown manila folder into my hand, telling me she knew how I could make some easy money. I would slide that damn thing back at her across the café table as quick as you like, and I would get the hell out of there. I’d never step foot into the towering pillar of glass on Park Avenue. I’d never have the attention of an entire city focused solely on me. Things would turn out very differently for me if I could go back and change that moment in time.

  Instead, when Thalia hands me the manila folder in the Williamsburg café on a balmy, almost-springlike Thursday afternoon in April, I merely arch an eyebrow at the thing, and say, “What do you mean, extra money ? I don’t need another job, Thalia. I barely have enough time to study as it is.”

  “This isn’t a job. Well, it is ,” she follows up. “But not a real one. You play chess, right?”

  I frown at my friend. “Not since high school.”

  “I’m sure they haven’t changed the rules in the past seven years, Bee. And anyway, you don’t need to be good . You just have to be able to make conversation.” Thalia’s brunette hair is neatly brushed and immaculately braided, unlike my own crazy auburn mane. She reaches across the table, taking a strand of my hair in between her fingers, studying it closely. “And you’re not a blonde. That’s a huge help.”

  “I know plenty of excellent chess players who are blonde,” I say, swatting her hand away. “That’s a terrible stereotype.”

  “No . I mean, the guy who’s looking for someone to play with has something against blondes. I’m not saying blonde women are too stupid to pl—” She rolls her eyes. “Never mind. Just listen.” She taps the folder with an expertly manicured index finger. “I’ve been running a little side line recently. I’ve been expanding on the whole Blizzard Buddy thing.” I’m about to ask her what the hell a Blizzard Buddy is, but she must see the question forming on my lips. She holds up a hand, cutting me off. “Blizzard Buddies are people who hang out with other people during storms. They come over to your place and eat pizza and drink beer while a snowstorm rolls across the city, and then they go home afterwards. No harm. No foul. And no funny business ,” she stresses.

  “People pay other people to hang out with them in New York? That sounds dangerous, Thalia. Tell me you haven’t been doing that?”

  “Of course I have.” She shrugs a shoulder, taking a drink from her coffee cup. “The money’s good. And besides, I like meeting new people.”

  “Who needs to pay someone to come hang out with them? Jesus. Do I need to remind you how crazy people are in this town?”

  My friend tuts disapprovingly, tapping her finger against the folder again. “All of these men and women are thoroughly investigated before anyone goes over to their places. They have to provide a million forms of ID, have psychometric tests, and also undergo a criminal record check, girl. It’s safe as houses.”

  Houses fall down all the time. They get broken into. People are killed in their own damn beds on the regular. People are raped. Thalia steamrolls ahead, though, not giving me the opportunity to voice my concerns.

  “It’s a couple of hours in the afternoon, three times a week, Bee. And for six grand, I think you can clear your schedule.”

  I nearly spit my coffee across the table. “Six grand?” Like hell there’s no funny business if a guy’s willing to pay six grand for a girl to go over to his place. I have to suppress my desire to reach over and slap Thalia upside the head. She can’t be this stupid. She just can’t . “You have plenty of money. Why the hell are you getting caught up in this kind of shit?”

  Thalia doesn’t bat an eyelid. “Look, just because I have money doesn’t mean I can’t have a job. You’re beginning to sound like my mother. I provide a legitimate service to lonely investment bankers who work too much to have a social life. I get to hang out in nice apartments, drink fine wine and eat gourmet meals, and I get paid to do it. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “It was beer and pizza a minute ago.”

  “Sometimes it’s Budweiser. Sometimes it’s Moët. I’m not fussy. Look, this isn’t just some guy, Bee. This guy is—”

  “No. I’m not doing it, Thalia. I have too much on my plate already, and so do you. You realize we’re only months away from taking the bar exam, right? We’ve been studying for years for this moment. If I drop the ball now, it’ll all have been for nothing. I wanna be a lawyer, not a chess buddy for some socially awkward rich boy.”

  Thalia winks. “Can’t be a lawyer if you can’t pay your tuition fees.”

  She has a point there. Working part time at the library hasn’t exactly been bringing in a monster paycheck every week. I spent a while tutoring freshmen at the beginning of the year, but the pay was abysmal, and half the time the little shits didn’t even show up, let alone settle their bills. Thalia snaps off a piece of the biscotti we’re sharing and pops it into her mouth. “So what if this guy’s social skills aren’t the very best New York has to offer? He’s harmless. And he owns an entire floor of the Osiris Building on Park Avenue. The top floor. That’s the motherfucking penthouse, Beth ,” she stresses, as if I might have misunderstood her. “Unless you wanna move into your brother’s dingy basement apartment and sleep on his couch, or worse, move back to Kansas,” she says, delicately wrinkling her nose. “This offer is too good to be true. You should be snatching this folder out of my hand and thanking the gods that this chess-playing weirdo has come along, Bee. Seriously.”

  I eye the folder once more, my brows pulling together, holding my breath. Thalia leans across the table and touches her fingers to the scar on the right side of my temple, making a pensive hmm ing sound. “How long have you had that?” she asks.

  I brush her hand away, scooting back into my chair, out of her reach. My heart is slamming around inside my chest cavity like a goddamn pinball. I can’t bear people pointing out my scar. Can’t bear them even looking at it, let alone touching it. “Always. Since I was a little kid.” I shake out my hair, making sure it’s covered up.

  “Huh. I’ve never noticed it before. I know a guy,” my friend tells me nonchalantly. “He could have that fixed for you in no time. You’d never even know it was there to begin with.”

  I feel sic
k to my stomach as I pick up Thalia’s file and slip it into my purse. She has no idea what she’s talking about. I’ll always know it’s there. The scar on the side of my head is small—barely visible, really. A tiny seven-millimetre line that only rears its ugly head when I get flushed and hot, or I scowl. It might as well be a mile wide and a mile deep, though. I see it every time I look in the mirror, and I’m transported back to the barn. I see my mother on the floor. I see that evil motherfucker with the snake tattoos groping around between her legs. And I feel the weight of my guilt crushing down on me from all sides, oppressive and inescapable. I should have helped her. I should have acted. I should have rescued her. I should have saved her.

  “Hey! C’mon, girl. Stay with me!” Thalia snaps her fingers in front of my face. She’s laughing, her gaze locked on the file that’s now sticking out of my purse. “Don’t you even want to look inside it?” she asks.

  “Oh…” I wasn’t even thinking just now. I picked up the file and put it away automatically, ready to get up and run if Thalia asked any further questions about my scar. I’ve inadvertently accepted her offer by collecting the file. Or at least that’s what she thinks. I should give it back to her right now, but honestly, I can do without the argument.

  “I should at least tell you the guy’s name,” Thalia says, dumping a healthy stream of sugar into her refilled coffee. The guy’s name in the file could be Prince Fucking William. It could be Brad Pitt, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t spend time with strange men. I don’t spend time with men, period. Not after what happened to my mom.

  Thalia lets out a frustrated groan when I don’t play into her game. You’d think she’d be used to my total disinterest in guys by now. I’ve never told her about that day at the farm, though, so she doesn’t realize she’s wasting her breath. She looks like the cat that got the cream as she sends me a mischievous sideways glance.

  “The guy’s name is Raph,” she says slowly. “Raphael North.”

  Two

  Beth

  T he name Raphael North is synonymous with many things.

  But first, let me clarify something: when Thalia spoke that name, I didn’t react the way she obviously expected me to—like a star struck teenager who’s just been told they’re about to meet One Direction live and in person. I kept my cool, blinked a bunch of times to make it look like I wasn’t in shock, then I downed the rest of my coffee, doing an admirable job of not choking on the biscotti mush at the bottom of the cup. With watering eyes, I told Thalia I’d see what I thought once I’d read her precious file and I would call her later on tonight to discuss the matter. Then, cool as you like, I got up, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then turned around and walked away.

  Now, sitting on the subway, almost home, I’ve allowed myself a moment of…what? Alarm? Yeah, I guess you could call this alarm. I’m trying really hard not to sneak the envelope out of my bag and start reading the information inside.

  Back to the name.

  If I said the name Raphael North to someone on the street in New York, their eyes would light up with recognition. If I asked them what they knew about him, their responses would be varied.

  “He’s a philanthropist.”

  “He’s a womanizer.”

  “He died on the stroke of midnight back on New Year’s Eve, 2014.”

  “He’s the guy who crashed his car into the side of the Waldorf Hotel.”

  “He’s this year’s most eligible bachelor, according to New City Style Magazine.”

  “He’s ranked fifth richest man in America.”

  “He lost his vision when he was sixteen. Now he has robotic retinal implants so he can see.”

  The exhaustive list would grow more and more ridiculous by the second. There are a few rumors that contain an element of truth to them, though. He was, and still is, a philanthropist and businessman. He’s responsible for the design and construction of numerous tech devices over the last ten years, from the automated one-man air ambulances that can navigate treacherously narrow spaces even regular helicopters just couldn’t dream of approaching, to AV headsets so convincing and lifelike that it feels like you really are five miles beneath the surface of the ocean, or walking suit-less on the surface of Mars. He’s behind a number of medical breakthroughs, too. An MRI imaging scanner so precise it can detect pre-cancerous cells in unborn fetuses. An EPI-pen designed from recycled materials, so easy and cheap to make that it almost bankrupted a number of big pharma companies.

  He gifted the patent and trademark of that last one to the American Hospital and Emergency Care Association, who were then able to produce thousands upon thousands of the pens to distribute to children of low-income households completely free of charge.

  And, yes. By all accounts, he is a womanizer. He sure as hell did crash his car into the side of the Waldorf on New Year’s Eve, 2014, and last but not least, he really is one of the richest men in the country.

  He might not have been papped by photographers in a restaurant or seen driving a fancy sports car through the city recently, but every so often an elusive shot will appear in the society pages of a newspaper, showing a grainy image of him from a distance. There really are those who believe he’s dead, and a lookalike is used to attend his board meetings in order to prevent share prices in North Industries from plummeting, but the people who spread rumors like that are the same people who are trying to convince people the Earth is flat. So…

  I get off the subway at my stop and I practically jog home. The elevator in my building is notoriously slow; I can’t possibly wait for it today, so I take the five flights of stairs up to my small apartment three steps at a time. As soon as I’m through the door, I throw my keys on the dining table and tip my bag upside down, scrambling through my college books and papers, hunting down the envelope.

  And there it is.

  I wonder what People Magazine would pay for this envelope? The National Enquirer would give me at least a couple of hundred thousand and that’s low-balling it. I could sell the contents of this envelope for a small fortune and pay off my entire student debt in one fell swoop. The sensation that rushes through me when I consider that is dizzying. No debt whatsoever? Even if I do pass the bar exam, and even if I do become a partner in some high-powered law firm some day, it will still be a decade before I earn enough to demolish the debt hanging over my head. It’s almost too much to bear. I almost take my cell phone out and start Googling contact numbers, but then I remember Thalia’s words when she said goodbye to me just now: “I’m trusting you with this, Beth. Please…don’t do anything stupid.”

  I stop short, shaking my head. If Thalia thought selling the information she has on Raphael North was a good idea, she would have done it herself. And I can just imagine how angry and hurt she would be if she found out…

  No, it’s not worth it.

  I tear open the folder, removing the papers from inside, and I sit myself down at the table, still wearing my jacket, and I read. The photograph that’s been included in the pack isn’t one of the infamous ones that have been plastered all over the news for years. It’s not the grim, severe, handsome picture of him in a suit, body angled to the left, chin slightly raised, giving him an imperious, cool, sort of imposing appearance—the one that’s used on all of his business related materials. And it’s not the one of him smiling politely, his eyes flashing with anger as he talked to a Hannah Albright, CRS’s anchor, in the infamous interview he gave before his accident. Nor is it the tired, haunted mug shot that was plastered all over the internet on January 1, 2015.

  This is a brand new photo altogether. He’s looking directly into the camera, and it feels, weirdly, as if he has his hand around my damn throat. His eyes… I take a moment, placing the picture down on the scuffed wood in front of me. His eyes are so arresting. Not just green. They’re the palest, brightest of greens. The color of spring and sea grass, the visual embodiment of what I imagine the smell of fresh cut grass would look like. They’re so bright, they a
lmost look inhuman. His thick, jet-black hair is wavy, longer than the close-cropped cut he always used to sport back when he was frequently spotted out in public. Full mouth, with a perfect cupid’s bow. Narrow-bridged, straight nose. High cheekbones. Slightly crooked jawline. Huh. I never noticed that before. The left side is slightly less square than the right. Barely worth commenting on, but it gives his face a unique character that wouldn’t exist if his features were perfectly symmetrical.

  He’s wearing a Yankees t-shirt and a pair of black, faded jeans—completely at odds with the immaculately tailored suits that come to mind when I think of him. His hands are in his pockets, and he looks…wow. He looks kind of nervous . Over his shoulder: a wall of glass. New York City in its entirety stands at his back, the view from the impressive floor to ceiling windows behind him casting a striking backdrop.

  I’m not going to lie; I stare at the photograph for well over a minute, a little stunned. He is not what I expected. Not what I expected at all. Way more casual. Not relaxed, per se. But definitely…different. Women all over New York have been daydreaming and fantasizing about this man for years. I’ve shared a city with him ever since I moved here to study at Columbia, but Raphael North might as well reside on the dark side of the moon. He’s that unreachable. He’s that unobtainable. And now, here I am, flicking through a dossier on him, potentially about to meet him.

  How fucking strange.

  When I eventually look at the rest of the papers, I find most of it is the questionnaire Thalia was talking about. The bottom sheet is a criminal record check, which states that Raphael North, 05/05/1983, has no current recorded convictions or outstanding warrants. I set that to one side, and then I begin to read. The first items on the questionnaire are fairly straightforward.

  H ow old are you ? 33

  Where are you from? New York, born and raised

  Do you have any siblings? No

  A nd then , the lying begins. Or at least I think he’s lying.