How to Belong with a Billionaire

by Alexis Hall

  “Anyway.” Nathaniel dabbed at the red stains on the tablecloth, the closest to flustered I’d ever seen him. “I take it, Arden, from your reliance on literary allusions, you read English at university?”

  “Yes, but I’ll have you know I’m quite allusively promiscuous.”

  “And,” he asked, “you went to Oxford, like Caspian?”

  I stopped trying to be cute, and just nodded.

  “How did you find it?”

  “Horrible. Basically flunked out. Got a two-two.”

  “That seems”—he paused, and for once, I didn’t think he was trying to get at me—“rather a wasted opportunity.”

  I finished my last bite of lamb. Shame I was at the Dinner Party of the Damned, because it deserved my appreciation—it was melt-in-the-mouth soft, and touched with a musky sweetness from the saffron. Depressingly delicious. “Yes and no. I spent three years nebulously miserable and confused because Oxford is supposed to be this dream, you know? If nothing else, it taught me to be damn sure your dreams are your own.”

  “It could never even have been a dream for me.” Nathaniel nudged at his couscous. “With my background, it would have been impossible.”

  “It’s not all Russian heiresses and the landed gentry. You’d have done okay.”

  “I got two B’s and a C from an inner-city state school, which was more than anyone expected of me, and better than most of my classmates. Neither I nor anyone I knew aspired to read old books in a city of old stone. We did whatever we thought would help us get jobs so we could support ourselves instead of sponging off our parents or the state.”

  As much as I hated him taking potshots at me and being good at everything, I hated it even more when he showed me glimpses of who he was. Because that made it hard to keep hating him. “Okay, I get it. I mean, for the record, I’m not a Eton posh boy either, but I know I was lucky in a lot of ways: My school was small, and big on encouraging people to flourish, and my mum used to be a poet and all that. And I get it must suck to have me sitting here whining about how I pissed away something you never had a shot at. If it helps, I spent a really long time feeling rubbish at the thought I’d taken a place from somebody who deserved it more.”

  “My philosophy is that if you have something you don’t think you deserve, you should strive to deserve it.”

  Welp. Now I hated him again. “Kinda missed the boat on that one.”

  “I just meant you shouldn’t feel bad about what you did or didn’t do at university. Opportunity isn’t a moment. It’s a path. Anytime you want, you can start being the person you think you should have been.”

  “Um…I’m think I’m good.”

  “Oh really?” He blinked. “I believe it’s time for pudding.”

  The fact he said “pudding” was a little bit endearing. Despite his many other manifestly unendearing qualities.

  Caspian picked at the edge of his nicotine patch. “So, Arden. How are you?”

  “Since the last two times you asked me that question tonight? Still fine, Caspian.”

  “‘Fine’ is a rather nonspecific answer.”

  “Well, I stubbed my toe against the floor when I got out of bed this morning, and I think it’s catching in a hole in my sock. Specific enough for you?”

  “I just”—he paused, foot jiggling under the table—“I want to know about your life.”

  “My life is also fine.”

  “Do you have plans for Christmas?”

  “I’m going to Boston to see Nik. He’s still in rehab out there—I mean, can’t walk rehab. Not drugs rehab.” I wrinkled my nose thoughtfully. “Maybe I shouldn’t call it rehab.”

  “I expected you would spend the holiday with your family.”

  “I wanted to, but Nik doesn’t have anyone. So”—wild grin and jazz hands—“he gets me.”

  Caspian was watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. “That’s very generous of you. Do you need the jet?”

  My mouth fell open.

  “I won’t be using it, if that’s your concern.”

  “You…you can’t just lend me your plane.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too much.”

  “It’s nothing to me,” he murmured. “You know that. Let me do this for you, Arden.”

  “No way. We’re not in any sort of place where I would feel comfortable owing you.”

  He bowed his head. “That…is troubling to me. But I understand.”

  “Besides”—I did a Scarlett O’Hara head toss—“I paid for that shitty economy ticket on a shitty economy airline out of money I made for myself. At the proper grown-up job I do. So there.”

  “And how is your work going?”

  “Really well, actually.” I plonked my elbows on the table and leaned forward, continuing in a stagey whisper. “Believe it or not, I managed to bag an interview with an elusive gay billionaire and his husband-to-be. It’s a big deal.”

  Caspian suddenly couldn’t look at me. “I’m glad it was helpful to you. You’re living with El—Elean—Ellery, is that correct?”

  “Yep. In a disused biscuit factory we share with a stuffed walrus called Broderick. There are a lot of drugs and we party late into the night like the no-fucks-given twenty-somethings we are.”

  “I hope my sister isn’t being a bad influence on you.”

  “She hasn’t broken my heart yet, so I think that puts her well ahead of the family average.”

  “I’m sorry. But”—and here Caspian’s icescape eyes caught mine again—“you will thank me for it one day.”

  Only the fact that I was in Nathaniel’s house stopped me from throwing the furniture at Caspian’s head. “You are so so wrong.”

  There was a long silence.

  “How is Eleanor?” asked Caspian, apparently deciding to just ignore everything.

  “Ellery.”

  “Yes. How is Ellery?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Because she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Then I’m not going to tell you either.” I folded my arms. “You want to know about Ellery, put the work in.”

  He swallowed. “She would never…that is, she knows what…what I did.”

  “She knows what Lancaster Steyne did. But he didn’t take her brother from her. That was you.”

  “Arden, please.” Caspian pushed away from the table, the legs of his chair rasping against the wooden floor, and surged to his feet. “Must you do this now?”

  “No, but…”

  He strode across the room to the French windows and stood, caged by their shadows, staring out at what I’m sure was a beautifully kept Nathaniel garden.

  “I just think,” I told him, “like most things in your life, your relationship with Ellery isn’t nearly as irretrievably damaged as you think it is. She’s still your sister and she still loves you. That’s all still there. It’s just hidden. Like the stars in London.”

  “Stars are dead light.”

  “Okay then”—my voice exploded out of me at a frankly socially inappropriate volume—“I chose a bad fucking analogy.”

  At which point, Nathaniel, gliding in from the kitchen, announced, “Île Flottante with pistachios.”

  And we had to calm down, sit down, and pretend to give a damn about dessert. I’d seen enough BBC cooking shows to recognise that floating islands demonstrated some hard-core cheffing. But whatever. I smashed those smug meringue bastards with my spoon and drowned them in the crème anglaise.

  “Y’know what I don’t get?” I heard myself say, when it was too late to shut me up again. “If you’re so big on this personal responsibility, be your best self, nobody holds you back but you thing, why do you work for an organisation that gives out free money?”

  “Arden.” That was Caspian, in much the same tone he’d said “Nathaniel” earlier. Guess that put us 1:1 on diners behaving badly.

  “No, it’s all right.” Nathaniel cast a sweet smile across the table. Evidently he was into Ca
spian defending his honour. “I’m happy to discuss this, although I’m not sure that’s an entirely fair characterisation of my position.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t my intent.”

  “Please don’t worry. Misunderstandings happen. But frankly, I’m not sure what you think the contradiction is.”

  “Ten minutes ago, you were lecturing me on how I had this duty to better myself in order to deserve the opportunities I’d been given. But isn’t your entire job all about giving opportunities to people who, by definition, haven’t”—I threw sarcasm tongs—“earned them?”

  Nathaniel gave me a sanctimonious look. “I’m not sure if you have a poorer opinion of me or the causes I support.”

  “Hey now. I’m not the one going around saying people have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to be worthy of the nice things that happen to them.”

  “I wasn’t talking about people in general, Arden, I was talking about you.”

  “Wow. You’re not even going to pretend this isn’t personal.”

  “You freely admit that you squandered an opportunity that most of us can’t even imagine, but you clearly think that this is some kind of charming foible instead of a character defect that you could correct if you wanted to.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Caspian, “we should change the subject.”

  “No.” I tossed my spoon into my sunken island and stood up. “Let’s not change the subject. This is not a change-the-subject situation. Your fiancé insisted I come to dinner, has been a dick to me the whole evening, and has spent dessert trashing my character and my life choices.”

  Caspian attempted to glare at us both simultaneously, which didn’t entirely work. “Arden, be quiet. Nathaniel, apologise.”

  “I will not,” we said in unison.

  “For God’s sake.” He dropped his head into his hands. And then, to Nathaniel, “I told you this was a bad idea.”

  Nathaniel made a sound like his cat being stood on. “Forgive me for trying to be hospitable to your friends.”

  “Stop saying that.” Oh fuck me. I was yelling. “I’m not his friend. I loved him. I still do. And I’m going home.”

  Reader, I got the fuck out.

  Chapter 18

  I’d honestly never been so glad to be leaving the country. The run-up to Christmas was fun at work—lots of events, many of them fancy, some of them fabulous—but I couldn’t stop thinking about what had gone down at Nathaniel’s. Like I was Jack Nicholson, only instead of Chinatown, it was a dinner party. I mean, was what had happened my fault? Given how long I’d spent feeling about myself pretty much the way Nathaniel had said I should, it had been rough having him slap me in the face with it all over again. Not because I believed he was right anymore. But because I shouldn’t have to defend my choices to dickhead concern trolls. And what had Caspian meant, at the end, when he said it had been a bad idea to invite me? Hadn’t he wanted to see me? Or had he known I’d find a way to fuck everything up?

  Also: I’d told him I was still in love with him. In response to which he’d told me precisely fuck all. But what had I been expecting? That Caspian would show up on my doorstep with declarations spilling from between his lips like rose petals? Probably I should have sent him a text to apologise for being the worst dinner guest in history. Except he hadn’t apologised to me for having to be a guest at the worst dinner in history. So there were no texts and no apologies, and soon there’d be an ocean between us, and I fucking needed that ocean to be there. Maybe I’d miraculously learn how to transmute physical distance into emotional distance. But even if I didn’t, I’d be far away from Caspian, which would hopefully curtail my capacity to make a fool of myself in front of him.

  The day of my departure—part of the reason the flight was so cheap was it left England at five in the afternoon and got into Boston at eight o’clock at night, which was a time zone headfuck and a half—I bullied my wheelie case down from the mezzanine and found Ellery slumped on the sofa. This wasn’t unusual, but it was unusually early for her, since she normally didn’t get out of bed before dark.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  I’d told her a bunch of times I was spending Christmas with Nik. I’d even left a note on the fridge that went, 22nd December: Ardy Going to Boston, and included a stick drawing of me in a plane flying over an ocean along with my actual ticket because it was the only way I knew I wouldn’t lose it. “America.”

  “Oh, right.” A pause. “Can I come?”

  “I’m going, like, right now.”

  “So?”

  I gaped at her. “Well, you don’t have any luggage or—”

  “Yeah, because they don’t have shops in Boston.”

  “I got my ticket weeks ago.”

  “There’s still some left.” She waved her phone at me. “Look, I just bought one.”

  “Ellery.” I think, given the pitch of my voice, her name qualified as a legit exclamation. “Nik’s in hospital. It’s not exactly going to be the Christmas of anyone’s dreams.”

  She shrugged. “What’s the alternative? Having to spend it at Mum’s with Caspian and Nathaniel playing Happy Fucking Families?”

  “I thought you liked Nathaniel.”

  “He was only interested in me because I’m Caspian’s sister.” Her lip curled into its customary sneer. “Couldn’t drop me fast enough when Caspian dropped him.”

  “It must have been hard for him when they broke up. He probably didn’t want to be…reminded of everything he’d lost.”

  Her eyes flicked to mine briefly, their gaze too sharp. “You stuck around.”

  Why the fuck was I defending Nathaniel anyway? “Good point. Clearly I’m amazing and Nathaniel sucks.”

  “Well then. I want to spend my Christmas with people who don’t suck.”

  This already had the potential to be a disaster. But the Ardy Friendship Code was clear: No Ellery left behind. “I guess that means we’re going to Boston.” I did my best to sound stern—not exactly my forte. “You’ve got to be nice to Nik, though.”

  “Why do I have to be nice to Nik?”

  “Because he’s got a spinal cord injury. He’s in a wheelchair.”

  “I’m not going to be nice to someone just because they’re in a wheelchair.” Ellery subjected me to her most withering stare. “That would be ableist.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again. “Okay, but you really should take something with you.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I guess you’re right.” Vanishing into her room, she emerged a minute or so later with something tucked under her arm.

  “What’s that?”

  “Book for the plane.”

  “Passport?”

  She patted her hoodie. “In my pocket.”

  “Come on, then. We’re going to be late.”

  “Sheesh, Ardy. You are, like, the unchillest traveller. We’ve got ages.”

  “It’s an hour to Stanstead and we have to check in at least two hours before we fly.”

  “Two hours?” Ellery looked genuinely confused. “Can’t you just turn up?”

  “Oh my God. You’ve never been on a commercial flight, have you?”

  She glared.

  “You little princess.”

  “I’m a death princess of darkness. Which you’ll learn firsthand if you ever call me princess again.”

  Laughing, I grabbed her hand and pulled her—along with my equally rebellious wheelie—out the door. We made it to Stanstead in good time, although our flight was already listed as delayed, so that was, well, what it is.

  “Okay. So,” said Ellery, once we’d checked in, “what do we do for the next, like, four hours?”

  “We explore the airport. Very carefully, and slowly, and thoroughly. Relishing every moment. Because there is shit all else to do.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Yep. Yep. We go into every shop. We look at every pair of designer sunglasses. Every intensive repair anti-a
ging pot of moisturiser. We buy a drink or a snack at every eatery.”

  “And then what?”

  “We sit around in uncomfortable chairs feeling unspeakably depressed because we are stuck in this glass nowhere for an indefinite period.”

  Ellery pulled her Audrey Hepburn shades out of her hoodie and settled them on her nose. “Let’s do it.”

  We took on that airport like Richard Burton seeking the source of the Nile, and Ellery was a surprisingly good sport about it, joining in my obsessive classification of the WHSmith and the Sock Shop and the Sunglasses Boutique. She even managed to kill nearly twenty minutes in the Swarovski outlet by convincing the salesperson she was on the brink of buying an unspeakably heinous piece of jewellery. A manor necklace, apparently, which looked like one of those cones you put dogs in to stop them from scratching, except it was a web of black and clear Swarovski crystal pendants hanging on rose gold chains.

  Between our shop visits we had smoothies from the juice bar, bad coffee from Starbucks, random glasses of champagne (which Ellery paid for) from a pretentious café, edamame from Itsu, sarnies from Pret, and sundaes from Burger King. After which we had to concede defeat—and there was still no news of our plane.

  “Shit.” I collapsed into one of the crappy waiting area chairs.

  Ellery peered at me over her glasses. “What now?”

  A glance towards the departures board confirmed we were not departing. “We’re down to our last hope.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep.” I pointed with a shaky hand towards the arcade. “Air hockey.”

  Ellery had never played before and was, at first, inclined to think she was too good for air hockey. Nobody, trapped at an airport, is too good for air hockey.

  And within about two minutes, Ellery’s sunglasses were off, her hoodie was tied around her waist, and she was making up for lack of experience with sheer, balls out viciousness. It was like the puck had personally wronged her or something, the way she was slamming the poor thing off the sides, into my fingers, and—far too consistently—into the goal. I guess insane competitiveness ran in the Hart family. Although to the best of my remembrance, Caspian had never yelled “Mother-fucking-fucker” during Carcassonne.