Auctioned to Him 7: The Contract

by Charlotte Byrd

  My own recovery is going pretty well. My leg has healed completely. The scar on my stomach is almost entirely gone. I only occasionally feel some pain around my stomach if I move too fast on my surfboard. I’m not sure that my injuries would’ve been enough to get me out of work for more than a month or two, but thanks to Avery and her big mouth, I’m out of the CIA. (She told Dolly that I was an agent and that I was dead and Dolly in turn told practically everyone else in my family). So, I’m finally a free man.

  We surf most of the morning and then head back exhausted, but rejuvenated. Avery jumps into the shower while I chitchat with Marilyn in the kitchen. Sanchez is dead, and the elected president has returned from exile and is running the country again. After Sanchez’s death, after the prisoners from all those illegal prison camps were released, the world learned about all the atrocities that he committed against his people. We didn’t even know half of them. Marilyn couldn’t be happier – she’s practically skipping. She’s no longer worried night and day about her family members, and it makes me feel good that I’ve done something to put that smile on her face again.

  “So, are you ready?” Marilyn asks. She knows what I’m up to.

  “Nervous,” I say.

  “Oh don’t be. That girl loves you!” she waves her hand dismissively.

  I go into the bedroom and change into a pair of linen pants. I dig through the top drawer for the box that I’ve hidden there and put it in my front pocket.

  “Hey,” Avery says coming out of the bathroom. She’s dressed in a light summer dress. Her hair is dripping onto the floor and she looks radiant.

  “Ready for breakfast?” I ask as casually as possible. She nods and follows me out onto the patio. As we walk, I finger the delicate clasp of the leather of the box in my pocket.

  On the patio, we are greeted by a beautiful set table with a white tablecloth and a platter of cut up fruit. Another platter has toasted bagels, pastries and danishes.

  “Wow, this looks amazing, Marilyn!” Avery yells back to the kitchen.

  “I know,” I mumble.

  “What’s the special occasion?” she asks rhetorically, sitting down. “A white table cloth even. Marilyn’s definitely in a mood, isn’t she?”

  Avery flashes a smile and reaches for the cut up watermelon. I place my hand on her hand and stop her.

  “Before we start, I want to say something to you.”

  “Okay,” she says carefully.

  “I was just reflecting the other day on how wonderful this year has been for us. I never thought that I would ever want to have anyone sleep in my bedroom night after night, let alone move in with me. Until I met you.”

  Avery’s eyes twinkle in the sunlight.

  “And then, after you moved in, I kept waiting for this bliss to wear off. It couldn’t last, I said to myself. People can’t actually be this happy all the time.”

  She smiles with her whole face. The sun wraps her in a warm glow, placing a halo around her head.

  “I know, I’m pretty happy too,” she says.

  “But time passed. I kept waiting for things to get worse – for you to tire of me, for me to get bored with you – but it never happened. I love you, Avery. And now I know that I always will love you.”

  “I love you, too, Logan.”

  I get the box out of my pocket and get down on one knee in front of her. Her eyes get round and she gasps.

  “Will you marry me?” I ask, opening the ring box before her.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” she screams out. I barely get the ring on her ring finger before she wraps her arms around me.

  When she pulls away, I see that she’s crying. Happy tears.

  “Well?” Marilyn asks, peaking around from the corner. “I can’t wait any longer. Oh my God, Avery! Why are you crying, honey?”

  “I’m not crying,” she says through the tears. “I said yes!”

  Marilyn pulls her into her bosom and when they pull away, I see that now they’re both crying.

  “For crying out loud,” I joke. “This is supposed to be a happy time.”

  “Oh, men!” Marilyn shakes her hand at me, dismissively.

  When the tears finally dry, Marilyn asks to see the ring. Avery extends her hand proudly like a proper bride-to-be.

  “Oh wow,” Marilyn gawks at the ring. It has a halo three-carat diamond with a diamond band.

  “This ring is beautiful. But it’s too big,” Avery says shyly.

  I shrug.

  “That is what happens when you take Dolly to pick jewelry with you,” I add.

  “Oh nonsense! This ring is perfect! He did good. Real good!” Marilyn pipes in.

  Avery and I both laugh.

  When Marilyn disappears back inside, I look into Avery’s eyes. She has never been so beautiful or happy as she is at this very moment. I pull her close to me and close my eyes. Pressing my lips onto hers, I know that my life will never be the same again. And that is exactly how I want it.

  * * *

  The End

  Hollywood Anaconda (Bill. Matchmaker 2)

  When Chloe get her first wardrobe stylist job, she meets an arrogant and self-absorbed movie star, Finn Dalton. Finn is People’s Sexiest Man Alive and everyone thinks he’s a God, but Chloe doesn’t get it. He’s hot. His body looks like it had been chiseled from stone. But his attitude definitely needs an adjustment.

  Finn is a famous and gorgeous playboy. He’s surrounded by women, but not the kind you can bring as a date to the Governor’s Ball. When he reaches out to Dolly Monroe, a billionaire matchmaker, she sets him up with the one girl who seems to be impervious to his charms.

  Quickly, Chloe and Finn get locked in a game of seduction. But games of love are dangerous games to play…

  **WARNING: Steamy scenes, NO Cheating, HEA!

  Prologue

  My name is Dolly Monroe and I’m a billionaire matchmaker.

  I am 5’10’’ when I’m awake and 5’5’’ when I’m asleep. I’m suspicious of women who don’t wear heels, just as I’m suspicious of people who call me out of the blue asking for favors.

  I have a strict policy when it comes to my hair, one which I’ve abided by since I was a little girl in West Texas – the bigger the hair, the closer to God. My hair is as platinum as some of my client’s records, and it perfectly offsets the 10-carat diamond ring on my left hand.

  I never let my waist get bigger than 22 inches, and I do not have the same restrictions on my breast size. The girls were 36 DD three years ago, and now they’re 36 EE. Who the hell knows how big they’re going to get in another decade?

  I like my men the way I like my purses: in a variety of colors and styles and with a high price tag. My husband, who’s also my high school sweetheart, doesn’t mind, of course. Because my little business makes more than a hefty penny and keeps him in a 20,000 square foot Malibu beachfront house and allows him to spend his days surfing and golfing.

  You see, I’ve been at this for a very long time. I was 13 the first time I did my first set up: my second cousin with my best friend from middle school. They dated through 10th grade, married in 11th, and celebrated their 40-year wedding anniversary last year.

  I started my matchmaking business when I was 20 and, at first, I set up average folk like my cousins, then wealthy folk, then millionaires and now billionaires. This is the only thing I’ve ever done, and I’m pretty damn good at it. People aren’t that different, you know. Of course, billionaires come with their attitudes and highfalutin opinions of their own importance, but at their core, they want the same thing everyone else wants: for someone to give a damn about them, not just their money or power. What typically ends up being the problem, however, is that the billionaire (both men and women) think they’re going to get this thing from some 20-year-old, 5’11” bimbo, but that’s rarely the case. And that’s where I come in.

  Why do I do this?

  I’m a sucker for a happily ever after. I believe everyone deserves one, and I can get it for them, if they jus
t get out of their own way and let me.

  How can I be so sure?

  I have a great track record. I have successfully set up 3,988 couples. That’s more than 130 couples per year over 30 years of matchmaking. Not all of them were billionaires, but over the last five years a huge portion of them were. Close to four thousand couples now are living their happy ending because of me. It feels damn good to say that.

  Then I made a mistake. I told my publisher friend about this, and she went wild.

  “You have to write down some of your favorite stories, you absolutely must. People will go crazy over it!” she said.

  So, that’s how we got here. This series depicts some of my favorite couples from the last few years. Their names have been changed to protect their privacy, but everything else is as true as it happened from my clients’ perspectives. Though each couple eventually found their happily ever after, the road to get there was often difficult and treacherous. But what would life be without a little intrigue and turmoil, right?

  Chapter 1 - Chloe

  It’s the first of the month and the rent is due. I walk into my sister’s bedroom and push her awake. Lila is a sound sleeper and not someone who is easy to wake up. She’s a waitress who works at a popular bar/restaurant on Melrose, and she almost always works the closing shift. It’s not uncommon for her to get home at 4 am, which means that she sleeps until at least noon. It’s only ten a.m. right now. I know that she’s going to be moody, to say the least.

  “Lila. Lila!” I shake her.

  “What?” she mumbles, burying her hear deeper into the pillow.

  “Where are your tips?”

  “Go away.”

  “The rent’s due. I have to take all your cash to the bank so I can write a check and it doesn’t bounce.”

  I’m sure that the details of the whole situation are lost on her. Honestly, I don’t know how she ever lived on her own and didn’t get evicted. I’m the one who takes care of all the bills – actually, pays them. She works and brings in good money, more than I do most months, but she never bothers to deposit any of her cash on time and constantly forgets to pay her credit card bills.

  “Lila,” I say again. I can see that she’s not sleeping anymore, just refusing to engage me.

  “Lila. I’m going to stop bothering you if you just tell me where you put your tips from last night. They’re not in your purse.”

  “Check my coat,” she says after a beat. “Inside pocket.”

  I look around for her coat on the coat rack, but it’s filled with four jackets that she rarely wears. The one she was wearing last night is on the floor at the bottom of her closet. I search the pockets and finally find a wad of cash. I count the money.

  “You made over three hundred dollars last night?” I ask, astonished.

  “There was this old guy who really had the hots for me,” she says, finally flipping around to face me.

  Her makeup is all smeared, with half of it rubbed into her pillow. I know that all the dirt on her pillow is new because I just did the laundry yesterday afternoon.

  “Still, $300 is really good.”

  “Well, I told you that you need to find yourself a job at some place that stays open past eleven. Nothing good happens between 11 and 2, except the tips. People drink a lot and they tend to tip a lot too.”

  I roll my eyes. I’ve heard this spiel a number of times before, and frankly, I’m pretty sick of it. I like my job at Fat Dog, just fine. I like the fact that they close at 11 so that I can actually get a full night’s rest. Though the tips do leave a lot to be desired for.

  “All I need is another $150 from you,” I say. “Where do you want me to leave the rest?”

  “Wherever,” Lila says, rolling away from me.

  I put the rest of her money on her makeup table. It’s wide and expansive and filled with all sorts of eyebrow kits, lotions and tiny bottles of liquid. It’s like a whole Sephora there, without any of the organization. How she can find anything there is beyond me.

  “Can you pull those shades closed?” she mumbles.

  I pull them down and walk out.

  I don’t have much time to eat and put on my makeup. I usually shower at night, which means that my hair is a little bit of a mess in the morning. I head to the bathroom and spray about half a can of dry shampoo onto it. I really should’ve taken a shower this morning, given the important meeting, but it’s a little too late for regrets now. I’m lucky that my hair is straight and relatively easy to handle. I flip my head over, running my fingers through it. When I flip my head over, it’s magically filled with body. Both Lila and I have light brown hair, but she has been dying her hair platinum blonde for as long as I can remember. She goes to the salon every six weeks like clockwork, leaving behind about $150 each time. I don’t have that luxury. I tried coloring with box dyes a few years back, but gave up and grew out my natural color. A few weeks ago, for my birthday, Lila got me a gift certificate so I got some highlights put in. They looked amazing for about a week. Now, they are clearly growing out and I have a decision to make. Do I keep growing them out or go back to shelling out $70 every two months on new highlights? The decision to this question will have to be made later.

  I pour milk over my cereal and chow it down without sitting down. I look out of the window at the cloudless Los Angeles sky and the tall palm trees reaching for the sky. Today has to go well, I say to myself. Just be yourself, and it will. Then I run back to the bathroom and apply some eyeliner, mascara, eye shadow and lipstick. I put on a tiny amount of foundation, and I’m ready. I look in the mirror. Something is off. Oh yes, I have to fix my eyebrows! I almost forgot. I get out the eyebrow liner and quickly fill in some spots. Apparently, lush eyebrows are back in. I didn’t get the memo until a month ago when Lila suddenly stared at me and said that I looked sick.

  “Oh wait, no,” she had added. “Your eyebrows are just natural. You really need to do something about that.”

  Later that night, she showed me how to fix them. Her process had about a million steps, so I cut it down to two. A few brushes of the pencil and then a few smudges of the brush. Perfect. Well, probably not perfect, but fine.

  I look at my phone for the time. Dammit. I’m running late.

  I pop back into Lila’s room.

  “Lila, can you take the money to the bank?” I ask. She’s asleep again so I say it extra loud. She jumps up a little as I startle her.

  “What?” she asks.

  “I’m running late to my meeting, but I won’t have time afterwards. I’m afraid it won’t deposit in time.”

  “I can’t. I have an audition,” Lila says into the pillow.

  I roll my eyes. Lila always has auditions. I decide not to rely on her. She will probably forget. She isn’t much of a stickler for deadlines. Nothing bad happens when she misses them, but the fact that there is a deadline makes me super nervous. Besides, we’ve been late on the rent before, and the landlord was none too pleased. We got this long email about how he could get way more than $2000 for our two-bedroom apartment, and he’s doing us a favor for renting it to us for so cheap in this area. And that if we’re late again, he going to start proceedings to find new tenants after our lease runs out. Lila got mad and was going to write him back something mean and colorful, if I hadn’t stopped her. The thing is that the landlord is right. Despite the fact that the rent is astronomical, it is underpriced for West Hollywood. It should cost at least $2500, and he’d have it rented in a day if he listed it for $2300. I’m going to go to the bank myself. I have time.

  Chapter 2 - Chloe

  After depositing Lila’s money into my bank account, I head to my meeting. I have an hour to get to Studio City, which should be enough time even if there’s traffic (there almost always is). Driving my 2002 red Dodge Neon with a smashed in driver’s door, I do mental mathematics of the money that I currently have in my account. With Lila’s money, I have just enough to cover the rent for the month. Plus, I have an additional $200 and change to pay
for groceries and whatever else. I let out a deep sigh. Okay, there’s just enough there. As long as the landlord waits until tomorrow to deposit the check that I wrote today. He usually waits about a week or two, which actually screws up my accounting even more. I assume the money is gone, and then it’s not and I splurge and get something at Whole Foods.

  “Okay,” I say to myself out loud. “Enough about money. You have a very important meeting ahead of you. Focus on that.”

  I turn up the radio and try to get into a happier and more upbeat mood. I’m excited about this, and my level of peppiness needs to reflect that. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about Los Angeles, it’s that it’s important to always be happy. It’s almost like bad days aren’t allowed here. At least, not in the entertainment industry. When I first moved here, I thought that everyone was faking it, but then I realized that it was something like a self-realization thing. If you think happy thoughts and put out positive vibes, those things will come back to you. Lila’s a natural at it. Me, on the other hand, I have to try a little bit harder. It’s hard to be upbeat all the time. Especially if you’re broke most of the time. And have no idea how you’re going to pay for your student loans.

  Though there’s a large parking lot in front of the office building, I park outside on the street. I’m not sure if they validate parking for this, and I don’t want to waste $5. I check my makeup in the rearview mirror and walk confidently toward the entrance. The security guard in the front tells me to head to the fifth floor and there will be signs for auditions there. The producers are holding auditions today, and they’re squeezing me in the middle. When I get out of the elevator, I’m greeted by a line of women standing along the wall of a narrow hallway waiting for their turn. Most fit this impossible LA look: over 5’7” tall, less than 130 pounds with long hair, even longer legs and large breasts. Everyone turns to look at me as I walk by, measuring me up. I head straight to the front. Most limit their scorn to giving me dirty looks as I dare to cut in line, but one even says,