The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

by Annika Martin

  I pull it back.

  “There! Now I want you to add something,” she says. “Think of gummy bears while looking at my nose. Never my eyes, just my nose. It’ll make you seem distant and a little stupid.”

  “Wow, Mia, if you decide to quit your day gig, you could try for a career as a makeover expert.” Mia holds down different jobs during the day, but by night she’s an actress. Her career hasn’t really gone anywhere, but it’s just a matter of time. I think she’s amazing.

  “It’s totally effective. Check it out.” She puts on a pleasant face and talks to my nose. “Don’t I seem dull now? Who even does this?”

  “Oh my god! It’s like you’re barely there!”

  I practice talking to her nose. We talk to each other’s noses and laugh in the store. Then Mia gets really serious. “You must avoid looking into his eyes at all times, just in case your pupils grow large and Sasha picks up on it as a sign of sexual attraction. Or worse, if Mr. Drummond does.”

  “I am not and will not be attracted to that asshole,” I say.

  “You did say he was gorgeous.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m sexually attracted to him. I think the Taj Mahal is gorgeous, but I’m not going to stand in front of a picture of it and masturbate.”

  “Okay, now, that’s just disturbing.”

  “I’m seriously not attracted to him,” I say, even as my traitorous mind conjures up his pillowy bad-boy lips. “I’m off guys, and if for some bizarre reason I wanted a new relationship, it would not be with somebody who’s more of a controlling asshole than Mason ever was. And what a jerk! Keep your eyes to yourself, jackass!”

  We buy three sack-like dresses and head up 46th Street. It’s a bright, springy March day, so everybody has emerged from their hovels, walking and lingering. It’s the lingering that sets people apart; the natives linger in the zones behind fire hydrants and trees so as not to block the sidewalk, while the tourists plant themselves wherever.

  “From now on, if you ever have contact with Mr. Drummond, you must do the opposite of what you did before. For example, you guys had that conflict about photos and you told him why he was wrong, right? You challenged him.”

  “Yeah, but I was nice about it,” I grumble. “Unlike him.”

  “Still, you challenged him, and a guy like that isn’t used to being challenged, so it made you stand out, because clearly everyone there kisses his ass. So if you interact with him again, you have to act impressed. Like he’s so amazing.”

  I groan.

  “Hold up.” Mia slows in front of a street corner vendor selling knock-off Chanel stuff. “I know it’s hard for you,” she says, kneeling to examine a bag. She holds up a black quilted purse for me to inspect. “You like?”

  “Way too Kate Middleton,” I say.

  She puts it back and picks up a huge red one.

  “Kylie Jenner. No, no, no.” I make her put it down and drag her away. “I don’t know if I have it in me to kiss Mr. Drummond’s ass. It’s a lot harder than wearing an ugly dress. I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “I know, but just remind yourself he’s not Mason. He’s controlling and jerky like Mason, but he is not Mason, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You will act impressed and amazed whenever he comes around. You just have to last tomorrow, you get the weekend to rest, and then it’s one more week. You can do it.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You can.” She pulls me to the curb to avoid a guy with a pastry cart. “We’re in this together.”

  I squeeze her arm. “It hugely helps that you would say that.”

  “I’m always with you. Even when you move back to Fargo. I’ll be the devil on your shoulder telling you to have that extra dessert.”

  I sigh.

  “But I think you won’t move,” she continues. “I think you’ll find a gorgeous, dirt-cheap space to rent for your new bakery that you can’t pass up.”

  I look at her sadly. “A gorgeous, dirt-cheap place that they are dying to rent to me with my shitty credit.”

  “There are still lucky finds out there.”

  “Not in this city,” I say.

  She’s silent. She knows it’s true. Moving out of the city and back with my parents in Fargo is the fastest way to deal with my Mason debt. I could live there rent-free, renegotiate my credit card debt, and run catering out of our family pizzeria for a year and a half. I’d save money like a boss. Come back to the city with the funds to rebuild.

  “Don’t worry, though. I’ll get you such a good subletter,” I say. “I’m going to find somebody with a boyfriend or girlfriend who has their own place. And eighteen months later, boo-yah.”

  “Friends don’t let friends say boo-yah,” she says.

  I give her a fake frown.

  “I wonder what Mr. Drummond’s like in bed,” she muses. “Is he just as much of a control freak in bed?”

  “Oh my god! Is this a good question to be asking me? Is this what I want in my mind as I struggle to gaze at his nose while channeling my love of gummy bears?”

  “You know you’ve been wondering it.”

  “He’s probably a deadbeat. His most effusive praise is a grunt,” I say. “What does that tell you?”

  She gives me a long, hard look. Solemnly, she whispers, “It tells me, caveman.”

  “Fuck the fuck off! Seriously? That’s what you put in my head?” I say. “How can I control my pupils now?”

  But control my pupils I must.

  Three

  Lizzie

  * * *

  The next morning I’m standing in the coolly elegant Vossameer lobby waiting for the elevator alongside a group of well-dressed professionals, and I’m pretty sure they’re all trying really hard not to stare at me in my deranged Holly Hobbie outfit. A few lose the battle and do the “room scan” but you know they’re really looking at me.

  I’d put a belt on it this morning at the last minute to make it look less weird, and I left the Crocs at home. Still.

  I text Mia.

  Me: Having second thoughts. Did we go too far?

  Mia: noooooooo! Just work it.

  Me: :/

  Mia: Hold your head high, like you think it’s hot. Pull it off.

  Me: It’s a freak dress, not a flubbed line!

  Mia: <3

  Mia is big on not letting little things throw you. But this dress is not a little thing. It’s a tent.

  I suck in a breath. I last through today and it’s one more week.

  I get off on the fifth floor and head down the hall and on to the communications area. Betsy’s on the phone. She smiles, and I smile back, heartened.

  I head back past Sasha’s workspace, braced for the disapproving brows of madness, but she simply glances up, nods, and goes back to work, which I take as approval.

  I text Mia as soon as I reach my desk.

  She approves of the dress! LOL

  Mia texts me back a smiley face, then a cavemen image, and I threaten to put soap on her toothbrush when she least expects it.

  But really the dress was the right move. Nothing will stop me from getting my bonus and paying those loan sharks.

  I always thought that loan sharks who come to your door and threaten you existed only in movies, but no, they are real, a fact I learned in the month after Mason disappeared, when an actual loan shark got into our building and came to our door to collect the first payment.

  I couldn’t have been more surprised. Up until the loan shark appearance, the most sketchy characters in my life in the largely gentrified neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen were certain Starbucks baristas and maybe the occasional creepy Uber driver.

  The loan shark had a huge moon face and he showed me a paper that Mason had signed, and my name was on there, too, though clearly it was forged. I told him so, told him I didn’t sign it, but he didn’t care. I told him that I cared, and that’s when he showed me the gun.

  Mia had come to the door by then, and we both j
ust stared at it. Neither of us had ever seen an actual gun up close that wasn’t attached to a police officer’s belt. He also had a pinky ring, which made everything slightly surreal.

  “Are you literally threatening us with a gun?” Mia asked.

  “What the hell does it look like?” He aimed it at my head, and I nearly fainted. “You’ll bring Lenny six thousand dollars to Carson’s on Third Ave in Murray Hill or this shit gets serious.”

  “Please,” I said, shaking deeply. “First installment, six thousand. Carson’s. Got it.”

  With that, he left. I was still trembling an hour later.

  I pulled together two thousand—it was all I had. My parents back home lent me two thousand, and I know that was hard for them—our family pizzeria really struggles post-holidays.

  Like a champ, Mia scraped together two thousand dollars, her entire savings.

  She’s been amazing. She even knew the exact perfect amount of time to wait to point out that the loan shark’s name was Lenny. “Lenny? Seriously?” she’d said over wine that night. “Can that be more of a cliché?”

  “I know!” I’d whispered.

  Another payment is coming due soon—fourteen thousand. An insane sum for twenty-seven-year-old women struggling to pay Manhattan-sized rent.

  I’m in other money trouble thanks to Mason, but banks and credit card companies don’t go around wearing pinky rings and showing you guns.

  That’s why Vossameer’s sign-on bonus looked so good: a big wad of cash in thirty days—twelve thousand, plus what I earn in my paycheck—deposited into my account. The thirty days hits on Friday, and the rest of the money—fourteen thousand—is due on Sunday.

  Perfect.

  I pictured myself getting off work Friday and rushing down to my bank, pulling it all out in cash, and paying Lenny bright and early Sunday morning.

  Will this enforcer guy really shoot me if I don’t come through with it? I kind of can’t believe it, but it’s not the sort of theory I want to test.

  Once Lenny’s paid off, I’ll quit Vossameer. Then at the end of the month, I move back to Fargo.

  I want to cry when I think about that part of my plan, but there’s no way around it, though I do miss my parents. I’m an only child, and the three of us were such a fierce unit.

  Once things are at their worst, you get to start repairing, isn’t that what they say? I started from nothing before. I can start from nothing again.

  I work on new images for Facebook posts for Vossameer. Mostly I’ll be using the logo in different sizes and shots of the box that Vossameer’s gel products come in.

  I eat my scentless roast beef and Swiss cheese sandwich at my desk and think about how it’s just seven sleeps until I’m free.

  The trouble starts after lunch. That’s when I’m summoned to Sasha’s cubicle. I smooth my dress, which has not improved with the passing hours, and head across the endless rows of cubicles toward Sasha’s cubicle.

  I round a corner and my belly flips upside down.

  He’s there.

  Mr. Drummond.

  I only see the back of his dark hair over the cubicle tops, and sure, there are other guys here that are Mr. Drummond’s height with dark hair, but the air around Mr. Drummond seems charged somehow. As if he operates at a higher frequency than mere mortals.

  I get this flash of annoyance, but at the same time, excitement.

  A couple of guys from design are there, too, and Bertie the design intern. Sasha is standing, leaning fetchingly on the cubicle wall. But it’s Mr. Drummond I see. He’s wearing a regular suit. No lab coat.

  I stroll up to stand on the other side of Bertie, farthest from Mr. Drummond. Then I take a breath and imagine gummy bears. I plaster on a vague smile. I stare at his nose.

  He looks right at me. His look is direct. Honest. Blunt, even. His gaze sears. It sets my heart pounding. Still I stare at his nose.

  You can’t see me, I think. Stop looking, because you can’t see me.

  Except my evil, evil brain likes having his attention on me. Because he’s beautiful. And glorious. Up close I can see there’s a small scar on his bottom lip, and that’s what creates the pillowy-and-hot-in-a-dangerous-way effect that his lips have. Like he got in a really horrible fistfight with a guy who landed a vicious punch perfectly placed for male beauty.

  Uh.

  I turn to Sasha.

  Still I can feel his eyes on me. His gaze has weight, pressing on my skin, melting something in me. I catch his scent, the same as before. Melon and pepper.

  I want to glare at him, but I’m the opposite of that today. I’m obsequious and dim-witted.

  “Okay,” Sasha says. “Everyone’s finally present and accounted for.”

  I stare down at Sasha’s barren desk instead of Mr. Drummond, even as he begins to speak. “I’ve been reading up on things,” he says. “I wanted to do an Instagram strategy. What do you think about it?”

  I intensify my daffy gaze. Because, Instagram?

  The gothically arrogant chemist has come down from the castle and uttered the word Instagram. Does he even have an internet connection?

  I kind of want to look back over at him just to ensure those words were actually being formed by his lips and not a practical joker in the office with mad ventriloquist skills.

  I don’t.

  There’s a long silence.

  Behold, I think, the sound of five minds boggling.

  “Opinions?” Sasha says. She wants everyone else to go first, so that she can monitor Mr. Drummond’s expressions when people say their answers and figure out what answer he’ll hate the least. Unfortunately, that’s everybody’s plan.

  Bert the intern takes the plunge. “That’s something we should definitely be looking into vis-à-vis the Locke Foundation partnership,” he says, which loosely translates into, I want to say something relevant that won’t get me fired. Please don’t fire me!

  I’m staring at Sasha’s desk thinking of the travesty of Instagram for Vossameer, considering we can’t mention the word families or show people.

  What exactly is this guy imagining? Photos of bandages on a dirty sidewalk next to some dirty pebbles?

  I think wistfully of the Instagram feed from my bakery. People loved coming in and doing goofy shots of the random-occasion frosted cookies I’d sell. Every day was a different theme.

  One of the design guys agrees it’s something to look into. He suggests we “go to school” on the competition.

  I feel the attention turn to me.

  I turn my vacant eyes to Mr. Drummond’s nose, channeling gummy bears. I act like I’m pondering his nose. Like it’s so amazing, I can’t wrap my mind around it. “Excellent idea. We should look into it and make a proposal. Could be amazing.”

  Something changes in his expression. I’m only looking at his nose but I can totally tell. Is he surprised? I direct my gaze of daffy admiration to the far wall. Like the wall is so impressive.

  If he’s looking for traces of annoyance, he won’t find any. If he’s looking for that woman who has ideas of her own and thinks he’s the biggest jerk ever, he won’t find her.

  She’s gone. Hidden.

  I stare and stare at the wall. Take that!

  Sasha proposes a timeline.

  I look over at Sasha, nodding my head at everything she says. Like I’m hanging on her every word.

  Eventually Mr. Drummond’s gaze is on Sasha, too. Sasha thinks his Instagram idea is amazing, too. We all think it’s amazing, because Mr. Drummond is amazing and every word from his lips is a diamond.

  Four

  Theo

  * * *

  I have a love-hate relationship with uncompleted puzzles. Unanswered questions. Unsolved problems. I find them compelling, yet utterly tormenting.

  People say I’m a brilliant chemist, but honestly, I just can’t stand when problems that clearly have solutions go unsolved.

  I happen to be working on the most important problem of my career: how to create a dehydr
ated hemostatic agent with vascular repair properties or, in layperson’s terms, a dehydrated version of my original Vossameer gel, which helps stave off blood loss. I know it’s technically possible. It has to be.

  This new formula could save a lot of lives. It would be light and portable, perfect for small first-aid kits. It could be issued to soldiers. Shared with aid workers. Kept in remote villages where medical transport can take days.

  It would be my most important breakthrough ever. And with Locke’s reach into nongovernmental and refugee organizations around the world, it would instantly go where it’s needed the most.

  Meanwhile, people die from car crashes, gunshots, farm accidents when they might have been saved by the ready availability of the new formula.

  It torments me that I can’t work faster, and really, how has nobody else figured this out? The chemistry of it should be so doable. I can feel it right there in the air, waiting for somebody to pluck it out.

  But nobody has. So I have to.

  I know it’s possible.

  Needless to say, I’m fixated on the dehydrated Vossameer problem. I eat, breathe, and sleep it. I agonize over it. Sometimes I feel like I’m running a hellish race where, the moment I think I’m nearing the end, the finish line vanishes and reappears in the distance. And then I speed up, trying desperately to reach it, only to have it move again. Forever out of my reach.

  Some of my most brilliant solutions come to me in the middle of the night; I wake up in the dark with my mind spinning on the answer, and I’ll switch on the light and scribble down a chemical structure. Even that hasn’t been happening. But I live in hope, carefully working through the problem as I fall asleep.

  But what did I wake up in the middle of last night focusing on?

  Her. The new assistant. Ms. Cooper.

  The people who apply to join the Vossameer team typically understand and admire the work I do. They’re highly driven professionals who crave the opportunity to work in a no-nonsense environment where they help bring lifesaving products to market at a fair price.

  Yet Ms. Cooper practically trembled with disrespect toward me—possibly even irritation. I kept looking at her, thinking I was misreading her.