Auctioned to Him 7: The Contract

by Charlotte Byrd

  “What is this?” I ask.

  The inside of the card also has a few kind words from Cynthia in her elegant handwriting, but I can’t focus on that right now.

  “Well, I was thinking about what to get you for this very important birthday. I was sort of reflecting on your life, and I was thinking that despite what happened a few years ago with your parents, you have a lot to be thankful for. Your business is very busy, much busier than you ever thought it would be, you have amazing friends, mainly me, and there’s really only one thing missing.”

  I wait for her to finish her thought.

  “A man! And not just some guy, a real man.”

  “So you got me a consultation with a matchmaker?” I ask. “Can’t I just go online to get a date?”

  “Yes, you can. But I don’t want you to just find some guy. I want to help you find the one. And a little birdie told me that this woman, Dolly Monroe, well, she’s the best!”

  I look at the card again. It is very thick stock and a rich color of ivory. As someone who recently spent a little money on designing and ordering business cards, I know that this one cost a pretty penny.

  “Does she have a website?” I ask. I want to look her up right away.

  “No,” Cynthia says with a coy smile. “That’s the thing about her. She’s very exclusive. She doesn’t advertise to the public. It’s all word of mouth.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “I don’t know either. But there’s a phone number on the card. You have to call it and make an appointment. Then she’ll tell you her address. A friend of mine used it.”

  “Did she find someone?”

  “She found her husband,” Cynthia says.

  “Oh, you mean Isabel?” I ask. Cynthia nods. I don’t know Isabel personally. She’s a friend of Cynthia’s from this place in Belize where her parents have a vacation condo. Isabel is from Texas, and her claim to fame is that she married a very rich rancher in West Texas. And they are apparently insanely happy.

  “I didn’t know this then, but Dolly apparently set them up. It’s part of the contract that the couple isn’t supposed to talk about her until after some time passes. Not sure why.”

  “So this Dolly, she’s a matchmaker? And that’s all she does?” I ask.

  “Yes. But not just some matchmaker. A billionaire matchmaker.”

  “But I don’t want to meet a billionaire,” I say.

  “You don’t want to meet a billionaire? Are you crazy?”

  “No, I don’t really want to meet anyone right now. Let alone, some rich prick with a Hollywood attitude who thinks he is God’s gift to women.”

  Cynthia shakes her head.

  “This is your gift from me. I want you to at least give it a chance. Just meet with her. Will you do that?”

  I sigh. I don’t want to. Cynthia should know better. The thing is that my resistance doesn’t even have anything to do with Dolly or the men she would match me with. It’s all me.

  “I don’t think I’m ready,” I say.

  “You’re ready. I know you are.”

  I don’t have to tell Cynthia what I’m thinking. She knows it all too well. Cal, my ex, and I broke up almost five months ago, but he still won’t leave me alone. I met him through Cynthia – they work at the same restaurant. We dated for three months, and then things got too intense for me. He always wanted to know what I was doing and where I was going. He went as far as putting a tracker on my phone to check up on my whereabouts. Real stalker. When I finally decided that enough was enough, he choked me until I passed out and just left me there. I could’ve died. I would’ve if my neighbor didn’t invite herself over without knocking and ask to borrow some eggs. It was she who found me and called an ambulance.

  It was over for us after that. Or so I had thought. I took out a restraining order. The judge ordered him to stay away from me. So far he has, but I still get the sneaking suspicion that, though I haven’t actually seen him, he’s around and watching me.

  “This is going to be good for you,” Cynthia says, taking my hand into hers. “Something positive in your life. Who knows, maybe you’ll even have fun.”

  “You know, not everyone can be as happy as you and Todd,” I say. Cynthia has been with her boyfriend, Todd, since we were all freshmen at USC. They are two peas in a pod – best friends. I haven’t even seen them fight, once! My parents were like that too.

  “Maybe not everyone. But I know you can. You deserve it. And I want to help you to find him.”

  “And you think that this billionaire matchmaker can help me?” I ask.

  “I know it’s silly. But what if she can? She has a great track record. She used to set up regular people way before she set up billionaires.”

  I look at the card once again.

  “Okay,” I finally say. “I guess I’ll give it a shot. About time that I moved on, right?”

  Chapter 6 - Avery

  My appointment with Dolly Monroe is three days later. Her assistant gives me an address to a pop up office in Malibu. I don’t really know what a pop up office is, but her assistant fills me in. Apparently, they are offices that are used occasionally, on as needed basis.

  “Why doesn’t she have a permanent place?” I ask.

  “Because she mainly conducts business from her home, but she does not give out her address to just anyone.”

  I guess that makes sense. Though, a Starbucks would do just as well.

  I pull into a small shopping center just off Pacific Coast Highway. There are many little boutique shops with overpriced clothes and jewelry on the bottom. I go upstairs and knock on the corner door.

  A tall, slender woman with bored eyes and sky-high heels opens the door.

  “Hi, Avery Lewis?” she asks without taking off her sunglasses.

  I nod. She shows me inside. I’m wearing flats and this girl is about eight inches taller than I am. I think almost every guy I’ve ever dated is shorter than she is, and they were not short.

  “Dolly will be with you in a minute.”

  The assistant sits back down at the desk and disappears behind her Mac laptop. Just as I’m about to sit down in one of the chairs against the wall, a petite blonde woman with too much makeup comes out and invites me in.

  “Hi there! I’m Dolly, pleased to meet you,” she says in a thick Texas accent.

  “Hello, I’m Avery,” I shake her hand.

  She leads me into a large space with floor to ceiling windows. There’s a large white desk facing the entrance near the window with nothing on it except an iPad, a small pink notebook and a pen. Dolly sits down across from me and motions for me to take the seat in front of the desk. Behind her, all I see is the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and a blue sky without a single cloud.

  “So, tell me about yourself Avery,” Dolly says. She’s wearing a professional linen blouse, but because her breasts are so big, she looks more like someone playing a businesswoman in a porn film. Her waist is also small enough to look like it belongs to the impossibly tiny Audrey Hepburn.

  I tell her that I grew up in Calabasas and attended USC, majoring in communication. I briefly mention my parents’ untimely death and my blooming business, The Flower Patch (no pun intended).

  “Oh my God, I know your place. There’s this little restaurant in Topanga Canyon that I absolutely adore – The Inn of the Seventh Ray! They have the best brunches on weekends.”

  “Yeah that place is one of my favorites.”

  “I always see your place on my drive up, and I’ve been meaning to pop in for some time now. I love your signage,” Dolly says.

  “Thank you, I really appreciate it. It took a while to get just the right design.”

  “It’s surprisingly difficult to capture ‘rural chic,’ as my assistant Cynthia calls it,” I say. “It took us almost a month to come up with just the right typography and color scheme to portray the feeling of farm-fresh flowers and high-end, elegant and contemporary designs.”

  “Well, you’ve captu
red it perfectly! That’s exactly what your sign says.”

  I really appreciate her saying this. I may not know anything about Dolly, but I do know that she did not get where she is right now knowing nothing about business. Any business, especially ones as personal as hers and mine, require a lot of attention to detail and sending out just the right message to your clients.

  “Can I ask you something?” I ask. “How did you get into the matchmaking business?”

  “I actually discovered that I’ve a knack for this when I was in my teens. A long, long time ago. I set up a few kids in my high school, and they really hit it off. I grew up on a ranch in West Texas. There were a lot of wealthy people around, but our ranch was barely making ends meet. So after I married my high school sweetheart at 19, he got a job in the oil industry, and we moved east to Dallas. That’s when I decided to start doing matchmaking professionally. And it grew from there.”

  “Oh wow, that’s impressive. Is your husband still in the oil industry?”

  “Oh no,” she laughs, getting up from behind the desk. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  I nod. Dolly walks over to one side of the room where there’s a large Starbucks-style coffee machine.

  “I’m having a cappuccino. You?” she asks.

  “That sounds perfect,” I say.

  “I know my assistant can do this, but making my own coffee is one of those pleasures in life that I don’t delegate to others. When I was really young, growing up on a dusty mesa where canned beans made up the majority of any meal, I read in Time magazine that people in Paris and Rome sit around coffee shops all day drinking their cappuccinos and espressos. I didn’t know what those things were, but to me that was the height of sophistication. I dreamed of one day going there and getting a job at one of those coffee shops. Now, I own a coffee shop in the Latin Quarter of Paris and in Trastevere in Rome, but I still don’t do too much sitting around in coffee shops. Ah, childhood dreams die hard, huh?”

  The more I talk to Dolly, the more I like her. I love how straightforward she is. She doesn’t seem to have any pretenses. Yet, she’s something of an enigma. For one, she looks like a total bimbo, even a trophy wife for some really old and wealthy man. Her tight black pencil skirt accentuates every curve, showing off quite an impressive butt for a woman of her age. Speaking as a girl who hardly ever wears heels, I’m in awe at how easily she maneuvers around the office in her five-inch Louboutin pumps with the signature red lacquered sole. It’s as if she’s wearing sneakers.

  “Oh yes, you asked me about my husband,” Dolly says sitting down. “No, he quit the oil industry in his early thirties. The matchmaking business was making so much by then it didn’t make any sense for him to be out on the rig for a month at a time anymore. He got into real estate.”

  “And you two are still together?” I ask. And then I catch myself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.”

  Dolly throws her head back and laughs with her whole body. “Oh no, that’s quite alright. Yes, we’re together. We’ve been together since we were in high school. Many, many happy years.”

  “Wow, that’s…amazing. Especially, in this town.”

  “Eh, people say that marriage requires work, but if you ask me, if you find the right person, it doesn’t. It’s easy if you marry your best friend,” she says.

  “I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”

  “I know. It’s not the right thing to say. But in my experience, marriage should be fun. It’s an optional experience. If it’s not fun, why do it?” she shrugs. “Trust me, if it required work, my husband and I wouldn’t be together anymore. I’m a hard worker, but I limit my work exclusively to my business. I say, you wouldn’t work hard at being friends with someone, so why would you at love?”

  I nod.

  “Of course, there is one rule that both people should abide by,” she adds.

  “What is it?”

  “Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty.”

  I take a sip of my cappuccino, letting all that set in. I don’t know if she’s right or wrong, but whatever she’s doing it’s working for her.

  “So, tell me a little bit about your dating history,” she says.

  I shrug. It’s hard to know where to start.

  “I’ve had a few boyfriends in college. One lasted a year, the other a couple of months. Then I dated this guy, Cal, for a bit last year. He asked me to marry him. I said yes at first, but called off the wedding soon after.”

  These are definitely the highlights over what happened.

  “Any reason in particular?” she asks.

  “It wasn’t a very healthy relationship. He was…too controlling. Always wanted to know where I was,” I say. I pause for a moment. I don’t want to go into more details. “I’m sorry. It’s a little bit hard to talk about that. Let’s just say that I’m glad that I’m out of that relationship for good.”

  “Okay, I understand,” she nods, sympathetically. From her demeanor, I get the sense that she actually does get it.

  “So, how does this work?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “Well, I have a roster of possible men. I talk to you, get to know you a little bit. Ask you what kind of guy you’re looking for. And then I use my judgment. Sometimes I match you with someone exactly to your specifications, but that’s not always the case.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “I listen to what both parties want, but I also rely on my own judgment. For instance, I find that men often rely too much on physical attributes. They think that they want one type of woman, but when they meet someone completely different, that’s a great match for them based on their personality, they fall for her.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Since we’re on the subject. I have one important question to ask you,” Dolly says. I nod and wait.

  “What kind of net worth are you looking for?”

  “Excuse me?” I ask.

  “In your date? In other words, how low of a net worth are you willing to consider? This is important because I have a lot of clients and it gives me a ballpark of where to start.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask. My blood starts to boil. My face gets flushed and my fingers grow ice-cold.

  “Is this really the operation that you’re running here? Setting up sleazy old men who are only after looks with gold diggers who are only after money?”

  “Avery—” she tries to interrupt me, but I’m on a roll. I grab my purse and head toward the door.

  “You know, you really had me going. I actually liked you. I thought it was so sweet that you and your husband have been together since you were both in high school. I really fell for your whole rags to riches story. But now I see that this, this whole thing, is nothing but a front for some sugar daddy business. You don’t care about love. You want to know what net worth I’m looking for? I don’t give a fuck. How about that for a net worth?”

  I walk out steaming. Luckily, there’s no elevator to wait for. I’m parked right next to a personalized parking spot that belongs to Dolly Monroe. The car in the spot is a Maserati. It confirms everything I just said up there.

  “Avery, please,” Dolly catches up to me when I’m already in my Prius, about to pull out. She knocks on my window. Against my better judgment, I roll the window down.

  “That was a test. You passed the test,” she says, trying to catch her breath.

  “What?”

  “I ask all the women that to make sure that they’re not just looking for a sugar daddy. That’s exactly what I don’t want. You passed the test. And given that little display in my office, I think I know just the right guy for you.”

  Chapter 7 - Logan

  Stephanie doesn’t know how to sail, but none of them do. What she does know is how to be impressed with my sailboat and my sailing abilities. We don’t go out too far, just around the harbor, not far from Marina del Rey, but it’s enough to get Stephanie’s panties wet. She has had herself draped around my neck for close to an
hour now, acting very impressed with everything as I let her steer. Stephanie is my perfect date. She’s blonde, tan, vapid and polished. She knows almost every beauty product at Sephora and how to expertly use it, and she knows barely anything else about anything else.

  Stephanie is from Orange County. And though I usually don’t like to date girls that far away – the commute is awful – Stephanie loves driving the new Beamer, she got as her college graduation present from her daddy, and she is always game to party. As much as I wish it were, today is not a Netflix and chill kind of night. It’s not a hookup. Stephanie is my date. I’m having dinner with my younger brother and his girlfriend. They have something very important to tell me, and apparently, it can’t be done over the phone.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love my brother. Liam is a great guy, but we’re completely different. Liam loves the nine to five lifestyle, which in his profession is more like the nine to seven grind. After college, whilst I bummed around, backpacked through Central America and Europe and started my company, he went to law school and focused on getting the right internships. Liam has always been very career-oriented, rather than entrepreneurial, and that’s what makes my dad get him more. My father isn’t someone who really understands my lifestyle. He knows that I no longer need to work, but he doesn’t really get why I don’t. Liam and my dad are two peas in a pod. Honestly, I think Liam would probably say no to all my money if that meant that he still had a job.

  As you can probably guess, when I hang out with Liam, I need a buffer. That’s where Stephanie comes in. His girlfriend, Kora, is an okay buffer, but I’ve known her for so long that she’s practically family now. Liam met Kora in Oberlin, the small liberal arts college in Ohio where he studied Economics. After graduation, he took an internship at Citibank in New York City, until he realized that he didn’t want to go into finance after all. He switched to law, which my father had been harping on him to pursue for years. He’s been singing the same song to me, but I was wise to ignore him even after I grew up. But Liam’s a natural. He graduated from University of Michigan and then came back to the LA area to practice law. Kora followed him all around the country. She completed her Master’s degree in Education and supported them working as a middle school teacher while he was in law school. Now, he supports her. They’re a nice couple, really. I don’t have anything against them. Except that we have hardly anything in common.