Icy Pretty Love

by L. A. Rose

  “If I’m engaged, you think that will change his mind.” Cohen spits derision.

  “LeCrue is a family man with family values. If he sees you with a lady on your arm, as evidence that you’ve turned your life around, that you’re settling down…it will be enough for him. I guarantee it. He wants evidence that your hands are steady now.”

  I have no idea what they’re talking about. I disobey my strict order to remain in the chair and meander over to the high glass windows, pressing my hand against the cold glass. This has to be the best view in Paris. The city is spread out, buildings outlined in the day’s dying light. There, in the distance, the Eiffel Tower reaches upwards toward the gauzy half-moon.

  “And she’s under contract,” Ashworth Sr. adds. “I’m paying her one hundred thousand dollars for this. If it works, it’ll be well worth the investment.”

  “I won’t do it. This is idiotic.”

  I peek over my shoulder. Cohen is rigid.

  “You’ll do it, and you won’t argue.” Ashworth Sr.’s voice is suddenly steel-hard. At least some of Cohen’s intensity is genetic, it seems. “I could have had you put in a recovery facility. I still could. Instead I sent you to Paris and gave you this chance, this one chance, to redeem yourself. If you fail, you’ll only prove to me that you’re not as stable as you claim. And I will have to take the necessary, if drastic, steps.”

  Cohen has the silence of the sky before a lightning storm. I can only hope he won’t take this anger out on me when the call ends.

  “She will live with you in your apartment,” Ashworth Sr. continues. “The place is more than big enough for the two of you. The ruse must look convincing. You will be seen with her in public. You will take her out to dinner with Mr. LeCrue and his wife. You will cite her as inspiration for your new lease on life. You will say you are planning a family. In short, you will do everything, and anything, you need to.”

  Endless silence. Ashworth Sr. turns to me. “I hope you had an enjoyable flight.”

  No wonder Cohen’s giving off the general aura of an Arctic wolf. This man tricked me into flying across the world for someone who hadn’t agreed to it, and now he’s expecting me to exchange pleasantries.

  “You should have told him I was coming,” I say.

  For the first time since we got to the apartment, Cohen looks at me.

  Ashworth Sr.’s smile hardens. I was supposed to be on his side. “Ms. Grove, you’ve been in my son’s presence for more than half a second now. Do you really think he would have agreed to this in advance?”

  I hate it when crappy people make good points.

  “I have a dinner with the Sinclairs in twenty minutes.” His gaze slides past me again and settles on Cohen, a sardonic smile raising the corner of his mouth. “See this as a peacemaking gift from you to me. Have some fun. I’m certainly paying her enough.”

  I stare at my hands. I’ve always had small hands. A child’s hands. Whenever I feel too adult, too ancient and sick, I can look at them and feel innocent again. At least for a second.

  The screen switches off, leaving smooth black. The room is humming. Cohen has an odd ability to project his displeasure, to fill the room with it like a murky soup. I want to open a window and fly away like a bird.

  I look up and he’s standing with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, a terrible expression distorting his handsome features. He turns sharply toward me and I flinch. Hard.

  It catches him off guard.

  “Did you think I was going to hit you?” he asks with the first glint of humanity I’ve seen in him.

  “No,” I say, but it’s an obvious lie.

  “You’ve been hit before.”

  “No,” I lie again.

  Something stirs in his ice blue eyes, something worse than rage or hatred. Pity. The spoiled rich man looking down at the poor street girl. Pity makes me feel more like a shredded thing than anything else that’s been done to me.

  I stand up straight. “Sympathy doesn’t suit you. Hurts your whole jerk aesthetic.”

  His eyebrow twitches in what I realize, for him, is the equivalent to a mouth open wide with shock. “Why would I pity you? You’re coming out of this rich. How long did it take to get him to agree to your price?”

  My fear of him rapidly darkens to dislike. “He came to me. He named the price. He showed up at the end of an honest day’s work.”

  “Interesting what passes for an honest day’s work now.”

  “It’s more honest than withdrawing from a bank account your daddy set up,” I flare back. Then I bite my tongue.

  What are you doing, Rae? You should have trampled your temper into the dirt by now. If there’s a lesson you should have learned a thousand times over, it’s that safety is worth more than your damn pride. He’s got nearly a foot on you.

  “So you’re just his pawn. Even better.” He rubs his forehead, exhaustion tinting his brow. “What was the deal? A hundred thousand to be my fiancé, a hundred thousand to spy on me?”

  “I’m no spy,” I snap.

  “No. Just a hooker with a fake name.”

  That’s it. I don’t care if it means making a bed on the street tonight, if it means setting a match to my glowing new future, I can’t spend another second in this asshole’s presence. I turn on my heel, but then he’s leaning against the door with one hand, shutting it.

  “You’ll stay in the guest bedroom. Assuming my father hasn’t already given you one, you’ll have an allowance for food and necessities. When I’m here, I expect to see you as little as possible. You’ll speak to me even less, and make appearances at events with me whenever I request it. Do you understand?”

  I stare at his smooth, strong hand on the dark wood. One month. One month is all. If I don’t have to speak to him, I might just survive it.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “Yes, I understand,” he corrects. “If anyone’s going to believe I’d deign to ask you to marry me, you’ll have to work on the way you talk.”

  This guy is a knife especially designed to get under my skin. “Should I call you sir too?” I ask, painting my voice with false sincerity.

  “Cohen will do,” he says, missing the sarcasm by a mile.

  “Okay, Cohen Will Do. I’m going to go take a bath now, if you’d be so kind to point me toward the restroom. Or, if that’s not fancy enough for you, powder room.”

  “Naturally he’d find the mouthiest call girl in the country,” he mutters, mostly to himself, and points toward a door at the far end of the living room. “That will be your bedroom. Bathroom is attached. I expect you to remain silent and clean.”

  He’s acting like I’m some unruly pet he’s been forced to babysit. Halfway to the door, I can’t help but stop and turn around. “You know, I realize now why he’s paying me so much. It’s the fee for your personality.”

  “Then he’s gouging you,” he says, an ironic smile playing around his lips. “If that were it, you’d be a millionaire in the making.”

  I’ve always liked baths.

  There’s nothing like a long soak in some hot water to make you feel like a human being again. Except I haven’t had a bath in ages. The tub in my LA apartment had too many suspicious stains and too many roaches using it for a pool party for me to let my bare ass anywhere near it. But the bathtub here is like no tub I’ve ever seen. It’s the Holy Grail of tubs. The Shangri-La of personal cleanliness.

  It goes on for miles, snow-white sparkling ceramic. There are—dear sweet mother of God—jets, as well as a waterproof LCD panel to set the temperature, lighting color, jet pressure and pulse, and whether you’d prefer to have angels or fairies massaging your shoulders. I’ll have no trouble ignoring Cohen for the next month because I’ll be spending all my time inside this tub.

  I soak for years, using up every single one of the tiny soaps and bottles of cream and shampoo that have presumably been here since Cohen moved in. The labels are in French, so it’s possible that I just used foot cream as hair conditioner, but
it smells so good that I don’t even care.

  The water soaks off all my annoyance until I’m left with nothing but mild self-flagellation. Enough with the sass, Rae. That could be meant to put you off your guard. Letting a client see your sarcastic side is an implicit sign that you trust him not to revenge himself with his fists. And you should never trust a client. Ever.

  I exhale, sinking into the bubbles. Everything’s still on track. One month with a rich dirtbag and I’m free to remake my life. A hundred thousand dollars. Maybe I’ll move back to Virginia. Get my GED and then take classes at the community college.

  Finally I get out, put my cutesy Georgette dress back on—it’s the only Georgette outfit I have, I’ll have to scrounge up some money somewhere to go shopping—and peek into the living room. It’s dark. Cohen’s gone out.

  But I soon lose interest in this, because I’ve discovered my bed.

  If the tub was Shangri-La, this bed is Mecca. It’s enormous, the quilt a deep rich red color with endless throw pillows to match, arranged so artfully it could be displayed in a museum. I ruin the arrangement by throwing myself on top of it, sinking inches into the luscious feather mattress. Back in LA, I slept on a blow-up bed.

  Cackling, I shove my face into a scented pillow and breathe in before rolling around, kicking my legs out in all directions until the bed is rumpled enough to be homey.

  A piece of paper flutters off one pillow onto the floor. I snatch it up. There’s a shiny credit card taped to the back.

  Call room service for dinner if you like. Use the card.

  Cohen.

  Maybe he’s not so bad after all. Either way, the fact that I’m ravenous hits me like a freight train. I reach for the cordless phone on the bedside table and dial the number on the little placard.

  “Yes, I’d like some food, please. No, I haven’t looked at a menu. Uh…just bring me the most expensive thing you have. Two of them. And one of the second most expensive thing you have. And some French fries. Thank you.”

  Within twenty minutes, two steaming lobsters, something yellowy-brown to be served on pita bread that bellboy explains is foie gras, and some thick-sliced potato wedges that don’t remotely resemble anything I’ve ever bought at McDonalds are delivered to me. I stuff myself, cracking lobster legs while switching through one kajillion channels on the large TV mounted in my room, most of which are tragically in French. Afterwards I’m so full up with deliciousness, and consequently happiness, that I blast some French pop music and dance around the apartment in nothing but a sheet, which is a bad idea, because I almost puke up all the deliciousness.

  After a second bath to wash away the dance-sweatiness, it’s past midnight and Cohen still isn’t back. Maybe he’s found himself another place uninhabited by a ‘mouthy call-girl’ and he plans on leaving me here alone for a month, which would be just fine by me. If there’s a limit to the number of lobsters I can eat, it’s very high.

  Eventually jetlag catches up to me and I crawl into bed. My cell phone is on the bedside table. I reach toward it out of reflex, wanting to call my old roommate, Nikki, and tell her everything, before I remember that I swore to leave everything about my old life behind. Including friends.

  I do have a text, though, from my grumpy Google Maps savior.

  334-827-3884: *you’re

  I text back:

  RG: Your very particular about grammar. Its a little funny.

  He responds within five minutes.

  334-827-3884: *you’re *it’s

  RG: Im could definately learn a lot from your.

  334-827-3884: I see what you’re doing.

  RG: Do you? Because right now I’m making sweet love to a feather pillow and nobody needs to see that.

  334-827-3884: Goodbye.

  I stare at the word on the screen, and suddenly my chest is crushed by the loneliness of being in a new country where the only person who knows my name hates me. If I don’t have someone to talk to, I’ll explode. Wrong Number and Baldy are my only candidates, and at least there’s a possibility of Wrong Number having hair.

  RG: Wait. Are you a boy or a girl?

  334-827-3884: What, are you doing a survey?

  RG: No, I just was pegging you as a boy and I wanted to see if I’m right.

  334-827-3884: Congratulations.

  Something about the sharp, dead acridity of his tone makes me hesitate. Maybe I’d gotten that number right after all.

  RG: This isn’t Cohen, is it?

  A few beats. Then:

  334-827-3884: Not so lucky with your guessing game the second time. Now leave me alone.

  RG: At least tell me your name.

  RG: If you don’t tell me your name I’ll be forced to call you Elbert.

  334-827-3884: I couldn’t care less what you call me because I will be ignoring your messages from now on.

  RG: Okay, Elbert.

  RG: So Elbert, what do people do for fun in Paris?

  RG: Elbert Elbert Elbert Elbert

  RG: ELBERT ELBERT ELBERT ELBERT

  334-827-3884: Jesus.

  RG: So your name’s Jesus! Guess your parents were religious. Hello, Jesus.

  334-827-3884: Call me Sam if you feel the need to call me something.

  RG: Sure thing, Sammy boy.

  RG: So you’re a pretty grumpy person, right?

  Sam: I’m having a somewhat shitty day. There’s a stranger who won’t stop texting me.

  RG: I’m sure this beautiful and charming stranger would leave you alone if you gave her some advice, from a grumpy person’s perspective.

  Sam: I don’t understand why we’re still talking.

  RG: Say you lived alone and then suddenly someone new had to live with you for a month, and there was nothing you could do about it.

  Sam: I’d move.

  RG: Say you couldn’t move.

  Sam: I’d make them move.

  RG: Not on the table.

  Sam: I’d call the police.

  RG: Just play along! How would you want this new person to act? You know, to make things easier for you, as a grumpy and obviously antisocial person who is not used to this kind of thing?

  Sam: Easier?

  RG: Yeah, easier. Because say maybe this new person feels a little bad about busting in and changing your life all unexpectedly. What would you want them to do?

  Sam: Leave me alone.

  RG: Is that what you’d want the person to do or what you want me to do?

  Sam: Both.

  RG: Just leave you alone? That’s it?

  Sam: It sounds like the person you’re talking about is used to being alone. Maybe they want to keep it that way.

  RG: But that sounds depressing.

  Sam: You obviously don’t know much about them if you’re asking a stranger for advice, so I doubt you know what’s depressing for them and what isn’t.

  RG: So what you’re saying is that I should try to break him out of his shell a little, so I can get to know him better and figure out what’s depressing for him and what isn’t?

  Sam: No.

  RG: Thanks for the advice! <3

  Sam: Ugh.

  ~3~

  There’s something about waking up in a bed that probably cost more than you spent on rent in the last year that gives you a new lease on life. Or at least a new lease on Cohen Ashworth.

  No matter what trash can the universe scraped his personality out of, I’m living with him for a month. So we got off on the wrong foot—so what? This guy seems like he gets off on the wrong foot with everyone. And if there’s anything I’ve learned from my job, it’s that first impressions can be deceiving.

  After all, this Sam guy is also a giant jerk, but without him, I’d probably still be wandering the streets of Paris. Maybe Cohen has the same kind of compassion, all wrapped up in a spiky ball of jerkface.

  So, at five a.m., when jetlag snaps open my eyes like an alarm clock going off, I get to work.

  Cohen’s still not home, which means I can blast more clubby Fre
nch pop as I clean the whole place. This mostly involves stacking papers. I peek, but they make as much sense to me as the French newspapers strewn on the couch. Business stuff, numbers and accounts. I make four neat piles on the coffee table.

  Then I search the kitchen. No food. Nada. The fridge makes a little poofing sound when I pull it open, like it hasn’t been touched in the last century. Either Cohen orders room service for every meal or he survives on air and the blood of his enemies. Neither tastes as good as my home cooking, so when it seems late enough that grocery stores might be open, I head out in the same dress I wore yesterday.

  “Bonsoir, Baldy!” I call to the doorman on my way out.

  “That’s good evening, miss. You want to say bonjour,” he says crisply. There’s a lot of judgment in his little tweedy eyes. He’s the only one besides Cohen and Assworth Sr. who knows what I’ve been hired for. I wonder if Cohen will order a hit on him, like a mob boss. I could come back to marble floors splattered with blood.

  “If they come for you, claim ignorance!” I shout behind me as the doors close.