The man I’d gone out with last night was none other than one of the wealthiest men in the city. Hell, the whole country. Hell, the entire world!
It was beyond surreal. Faye cooed and plopped her hand down onto the screen, clicking Justin’s picture and making it bigger. She clapped her hands at the sight of him and turned back to look at me as if to make sure I’d seen him.
I sat back, still processing everything. I’d slept with Justin Donovan.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt…okay with everything that had happened. I was surprised by my reaction, but it made sense. Sure, it was rough that he’d left like that, but look who he was!
There was simply no way a man who lived a life like his and a woman who lived a life like mine could ever be compatible. We came from two completely different worlds. Our evening last night was a total fluke, a chance intersection of the lives of who people who’d normally never be around one another.
It was fine. We’d had fun, and that was that. I felt better about the whole thing instantly, now ready to think of it all as a fond memory.
“You’re my life now, princess,” I said, bouncing Faye on my lap.
But still, part of me couldn’t help but wonder…what if?
Chapter 8
Justin
Cocktail in hand, I gazed out onto the sweep of the city. Mendel’s was by far one of my favorite lounges in New York, with its incredible view of the lower half of Manhattan, mellow atmosphere, and great drinks. Not to mention it tended to be frequented by some of the most beautiful women in the city.
Sure, a few of them were likely here not for the ambiance, but for the wealthy elite who frequented the place, but that didn’t matter much to me. Typically, all it took was a wink and a nod in the direction of whatever beauty happened to catch my eye. Once they noticed that one of the wealthiest men in the city was giving them attention, the work was already half done. From there, it was usually only a matter of chatting them up and inviting them back to my West Village penthouse. We’d have our fun, and in the morning I’d send them on their way.
That’s how it usually worked, anyway. And currently there was a gorgeous redhead in a skintight dress seated a little way down the bar, the look on her face making it very clear that she’d love if I came to talk to her. And likely do more than talking a little later on.
Today, however, as I sat with my Sazerac in front of me, the drink blood-red and delicious, I found myself not in the mood for anything like that.
Days had passed since my night with Heather, but she was stuck in my head. I kept picturing her face and her smile, and hearing her lovely, chiming laugh—complete with the adorable snort. There was something about her, something different than the other girls with whom I tended to spend my time. And it was something that went beyond her obvious beauty.
But whatever—I’d made my decision. Heather was a mom, and I couldn’t be with a woman with a kid. And that was that. Even if I changed my mind, she’d probably tell me to screw off.
Besides, I wasn’t here at Mendel’s to pick up anyone. I was here to meet with Andrew, a good friend of mine back from business grad school who was in town from LA and wanted to catch up. Andrew was a producer for one of the larger production companies in the city, one that specialized in reality TV. And I wanted to bounce some ideas off him about my latest business venture—the line of baby clothes and accessories that I’d begun.
I’d gone into my new line with high hopes. After all, babies were born every day—how hard could it be to sell to the fresh crop of new mothers eager to outfit their babies in the best stuff? But I was finding it a harder market to crack than I’d anticipated. Sales were down, and some of my execs were even beginning to suggest that I cut my losses and close down the line.
Giving up that easily wasn’t my style, however. If my new line was failing, there was a reason why. I was going to find out what that reason was and solve it. Sure, it was stubborn. But being stubborn was how I’d gotten to where I was.
“What’s up, big man?”
Before I could turn in the direction of the voice, I felt the firm clap of a hand on my shoulder. Into the seat next to me slid Andrew Neely. He was dressed in a sharp outfit of dark blue slacks, a white button-down—the top three buttons undone—and light brown loafers without socks.
It was all very, very LA.
“That how you Californians greet people?” I asked with a grin.
He shot me a huge, toothy smile, his eyes hidden behind a pair of designer sunglasses.
“Sure as shit is,” he said, slipping off the sunglasses and revealing a pair of bright green eyes. He hung the sunglasses from his shirt and flagged down the nearest waitress. “Can I get something with vodka, darling?” he asked.
The waitress, a pretty young blonde, blushed a bit.
“We have lots of drinks with vodka,” she said with a smile. “You’re going to have to narrow it down.”
“Something…sweet,” he said. “I’ll trust your taste.”
He gave her a wink.
“You got it,” she said.
As she left, Andrew’s eyes locked onto her backside.
“Damn,” he said. “You know, I can’t ever figure out which city has the more beautiful women. I mean, LA’s got the beautiful blondes who all think they’re the next leading lady. But the girls in New York…”
Normally, this would’ve been my cue to jump in with my own thoughts on the matter. From there, Andrew and I would swap stories about our recent conquests, each of us trying to one-up the other.
Today, however, I wasn’t in the mood. Something about it even seemed…distasteful. I couldn’t figure out why.
Was it because of Heather?
I shook my head, bringing myself back to the moment. No, it was because I had more important things to talk about than women. I had my business on my mind.
“Uh-oh,” said Andrew. “I’m with Serious Justin today, aren’t I?”
I took a sip of my drink as I tried to figure out where to begin.
“It’s the babies.”
Andrew raised his eyebrows.
“‘The babies’?” he asked. “Buddy, please don’t tell me you’ve gone and settled down without telling me.”
Despite how focused my thoughts were, a dry chuckle escaped my lips at the ridiculousness of what he’d suggested. It was one of the reasons I liked Andrew so much—he could be a little immature, but he always knew how to pull me out of it whenever I started to take myself too seriously.
“No, jackass,” I said with a smirk. “The line of baby stuff.”
“Ahh,” he said, tilting his head back in understanding. “That bad?”
“That bad,” I said. “And I don’t get it. I put so much money into getting this all designed. I hired the top up-and-comers from the fashion institute and put the best designers on the models for the accessories. But they’re not selling.”
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, then stopped himself as if realizing something. “Let me guess—the plan is you keep beating your head against the wall until you win.”
I nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
“You know, J,” Andrew said. “One of the first things you learn in my business is that they can’t all be winners. Who the hell knows why TV shows fail and why some don’t even make it past the pilot.”
The waitress returned with Andrew’s drink, placing it on a napkin in front of him. And on the napkin was a note that read “Off now, but call me?” along with a number. Andrew chuckled and tucked the napkin into the front pocket of his shirt.
“You know American House Movers?” he asked. “That show where we take condemned houses and turn them into primo places and then physically ship them to the best neighborhoods in the country?”
“You kidding?” I asked. “It’s all the women at my office talk about.”
“Well, that was one hit, but before we got to that, we had two dozen shows that didn’t even make it ou
t of focus testing. And one of those shows was about pretty much the same damn thing, believe it or not.”
“And that has to do with baby clothes…how?” I asked.
“Because baby clothes and TV shows and all that, they’re products. And sometimes bad products succeed, and sometimes good products fail. The house-movers show was one of the ones I hated in that batch, but it’s the one that worked. And who the hell knows why?”
He sipped his drink.
“Come on, J,” he said. “You should know as well as anyone that sometimes you’ve just got to cut your losses and move on. So you’re not cut out for the cutthroat world of baby gear—so what? Not like you don’t have a dozen other departments that are bringing in the billions.”
Andrew knew what he was talking about, but it wasn’t good enough for me. Not today.
“No,” I said. “There’s something I’m missing. It’s like there’s a piece to this machine that I need to find that’ll make all this work.”
“Or…a piece that needs to be fixed.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “What do you mean?”
Andrew sighed and shook his head. “Hey, if you want to go in on your sunk cost fallacy, I won’t stop you. But you want my advice, here it is.”
He reached into the leather messenger bag strapped over his shoulder and took out a tablet—the latest, most expensive model, of course. A few swipes later, he turned the face to me. It was the website for our baby clothes line, “Le Petit Bébé.” And there I was, dressed in casual jeans and a button-up, my arms crossed and a smile on my face.
“Who is that charming man standing next to all that stylish gear?” Andrew asked with a smirk.
“Go on,” I said.
“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, J. You’re a handsome guy—everyone knows that. Not many CEOs can do double-time as models for their own stuff.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“And normally, putting a melt-in-your-mouth gorgeous face like yours front and center would be a no-brainer.”
“If this is leading to you asking me out, let me just say now that I don’t think I like you that way.” I flashed him a smirk, and he gave me a playful jab on the arm.
“But for this baby stuff,” he went on, “it just doesn’t work.”
“Really?” I asked. “And why’s that?”
“Well,” he said, turning off his tablet and slipping it back into his bag. “You’ve got…let’s just say, a little bit of a reputation.”
My eyes flicked over to the redhead, who was still giving me very obvious signals. I turned my attention back to Andrew.
“It’s women who are buying this stuff, right?” he said. “Women with kids, women who are ready to put their party days behind them and focus on their kiddos.”
“Sure, sure.”
“And the last thing they want to be thinking about when they’re in this frame of mind is a guy like you.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re not the father of their kid—you’re the guy who banged them back in college and didn’t call them again. As oh-so-charming as you look with that big smile on your face, you’re not exactly putting them in the mothering mood. Or the buying one.”
It made a certain kind of sense. I’d just assumed me being in the ad and giving my guarantee of quality would be enough. I wasn’t even thinking that the same women who would be buying my clothes would be the same ones who’d read about my exploits in the tabloids.
“So, what, I have to go have a kid or something?”
“You could always let some girl make an honest man out of you, sure,” he said. “Or you could rehabilitate your image. But that would take time, and you want this stuff to move now.” He looked down, an expression of deep thought on his face. Then his features lit up. “Holy shit,” he said. “I’ve got it.”
“Tell me.”
“How would you, Justin Donovan, like to be the star of your very own reality show?”
I didn’t say anything at first, half-convinced that he was screwing with me. “You’re…kidding, right?” I asked.
“Not even a little,” he said. “I want to you to be on TVs across the nation, the talk around every water cooler in every office.”
I let out a dry laugh. “You’re screwing with me. I knew it. Look, I know I have kind of an ego, but you’re going to have to be more subtle than that if you want to give me crap about it.”
Andrew leaned in, a serious expression on his face. “J, I like to bust your balls, but I never screw around when it comes to TV.”
He was right about that. I still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t a long-con prank, but I decided to indulge him.
“Okay, go ahead.”
“Picture this,” he said, making a frame shape with his thumbs and forefingers in an “L” shape—the man was LA to the core, no doubt about that. “Justin Donovan, playboy billionaire. When he’s not playing master of the universe from the top floor of his company’s skyscraper, he’s living a life of carefree fun—chasing beautiful women, eating at the finest restaurants, and getting buzzed off the best booze.
“You’re the kind of guy that guys want to be, and that girls act like they don’t like but are secretly crazy about. And what we do is…ready? Pair you up with a baby.”
I scoffed. “Like what, get some sexy girl to hang out with me?”
“No, not a ‘babe’—a ‘baby.’”
“What?”
“Think about it—the viewers get to watch a guy like you learn how to take care of a kid. It’ll be you and the baby, you know, getting into wacky hijinks, and then you learn how to take care of the kid. You bond. You hit it off, all that.”
It was insane. Insane, but intriguing.
“And in the process, everyone in the country gets to see me play nice with a baby, be a good dad. Kind of,” I said.
Andrew snapped his fingers.
“That’s right. Then when moms are looking at the ads for your baby stuff, seeing that oh-so-handsome face smiling back at them, they’re not thinking about Justin Donovan the playboy heartbreaker. They’re thinking of Justin Donovan, doting daddy.”
I sat back in my chair and took a slow sip of my drink.
“It’s totally insane,” I said. “But…it could work.”
“I get a hit show—you get some killer publicity, and we all come out smiling in the end.”
Before either of us could say another word, Andrew’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the screen, his eyebrows shooting up.
“And as if on cue, here’s the boss himself. I’m going to pitch this to him, see what he thinks. But you ask me, we got a winner.”
With that, he answered and hurried off.
Me on a TV show. It sounded completely crazy. But damn, it could be just the thing to get women buying my baby line. But…could I actually do it?
I thought about Heather. She had a kid and was still living a carefree, party-girl lifestyle.
It couldn’t be that hard.
Right?
Chapter 9
Heather
The heat blasted down on me as I stood in the parking lot of the dealership in Queens, my stomach roiling with anxiety as I waited for the mechanic to come out and tell me exactly what the damage would be. It didn’t really matter how much I was going to have to pay to get my car fixed—any cost would be too much. My administrative job paid barely anything as it was, and I’d been clinging for dear life to what little savings I had.
I took a glance inside the garage where a pair of mechanics stood in front of the open hood of my car, their hands on their hips. Owning a car in New York was impractical at the best of times, but it was the only way I could easily get to work, which was all the way in Great Neck, east down Long Island. Going without a car wasn’t an option. Whatever the guys said I had to pay, that was that.
I was pacing back and forth, thinking about how I was already going to have to pay extra to the daycare for being late to
pick up Faye.
Faye had been another problem—she’d been fussier than usual over these last few days, and I had no idea what could be the cause of it.
But I couldn’t think about that now. All I could do was get my car situation sorted out, go get her, and take it from there.
The thud of a car hood shutting cut through the air. I turned to see one of the mechanics, a big, barrel-chested guy with a gleaming bald head, coming over to talk to me. More tension tightened in my stomach.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, shifting my weight from one foot to another.
“Catalytic converter,” he said.
I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded expensive.
“How much?”
He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and looked off into the distance, his eyes squinting from the sun.
“Good news is an older car like yours is easier and cheaper to repair. Bad news is that a part like that’s going to be pricey no matter what. You’re looking at a little under a thousand after labor.”
My stomach sank. A thousand dollars would very nearly wipe out my savings.
“A thousand?” I repeated.
He nodded. “If that’s too much, I can look into selling it to one of local parts places. Might get you a couple G’s for it.”
A couple thousand sounded like the best thing ever, but I needed that car.
“No,” I said. “I want to have it fixed. How soon can you have it done?”
“The work itself is only a couple of hours, but we’re backed up as hell around here.” Then he took another look over me, apparently seeing how stressed out I was. “But…I think I can move some stuff around, get it back to you the day after tomorrow.”
Two days without a car. That meant taking the G up through Brooklyn, then taking the seven to Grand Central, then taking the Long Island Rail out to Great Neck. I’d had to do it before, and the process was almost two hours, one way.
A Baby, Quick! Page 5