by Sierra Rose
Marcus glanced back at the wall. “No, that was me when I was seven. The Degas is the one hanging beside it.”
Smartass.
With a rueful grin, I followed him out a set of glass-paneled doors to a tiny balcony nestled against the side of the house. We leaned against the curved stone and clinked glasses under the stars, toasting our great deception as the befuddled masses scurried below.
After a few moments of peaceful silence, punctuated by occasional sips of champagne, he spoke in a low murmur. “Do you know why I hate coming to these parties?”
“I thought you would love mingling with the über wealthy socialites of the world,” I said.
Or he had a Gatsby complex. I’d ask about that at a later time.
He shot me a look, but his face softened into a smile as he fixed his eyes on the people below. “Because they’re dull and boring.” The smile lingered, relaxing the lines of his face into something I could only describe as stroke-able. “Not tonight.”
For whatever reason, I warmed to hear it. It was like those two words, not tonight, carried us through—exempting us from all blame and putting a perfectly fitted cap on a crazy evening.
I leaned down against the stone beside him, bringing my arms even with his as I peered over the edge. “I’m glad to hear it.”
He cocked an eyebrow and tilted my way, offering me a hand. “I’m Marcus, by the way.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I accepted. “Yeah, the agency told me who was hosting the party.”
“Ah, you’re with the agency. Model or actress?”
I smiled. “Isn’t it obvious?”
He laughed. “Actress.”
“Yes. I’m Rebecca.”
He shot me that movie star smile. “Rebecca is a beautiful name.”
“Thank you.”
He gave me a quirky half-smile. “So my girlfriend’s name is Rebecca.”
I shook my head, still grinning. “All three of them? That’s quite a coincidence indeed.”
“You can’t listen to Mr. Takahari or the rumors floating around. I’m not always surrounded by two or three women.”
I took a sip of my champagne. “I’ll try to remember that.”
For a moment, a shadow passed over his face. When he looked at me again, it was sharper, appraising—but still with a hint of a grin. “Mr. Takahari was certainly taken with you.”
“He seems like a sweet old man.”
“He’s never been called that before. Not ever. And he’s never been taken with anyone.”
I shrugged, shivering slightly in my thin dress. “I’m glad he liked me. Who is he?”
“He’s a very important client of mine.”
He shrugged off his jacket and placed it around my shoulders in a single, fluid motion. An intoxicating smell rushed up around me, and I pulled the jacket a little tighter as I sipped my champagne. Who in the world would ever believe this story, were I to tell them? Perched with a billionaire at the top of the world. Surreal didn’t begin to cover it.
“Rebecca?”
I turned to see him studying me closely. He bit his lip, as if he was debating something. A second later, he eased the champagne flute from my hand and set it on the balcony. I stared with frozen curiosity as he slid his hands up my wrists and leaned in to whisper in my ear...
“I have a proposition for you.”
Chapter 7
“You’re propositioning me like a hooker?” I shouted. I was livid and kicked him in the balls. “I might not be rich or belong here, but that’s no reason to treat me like a prostitute!”
“That’s not what I meant!” he gasped.
I ran, Marcus hot on my trail—wincing occasionally and doubling over in pain. I felt like Cinderella running home from the ball. It was time to change back into my rags.
“Rebecca, please—you didn’t even give me the chance to say anything! Hear me out!”
“Get away from me!” I sped up, bypassing a pair of entangled Jamaican love birds and yanking open the door to the first limo I could find.
“Rebecca—”
The driver jumped and twisted around, eyeing me like maybe I was drunk. “Hey, lady, this isn’t your car.”
“Look,” I panted, “I guarantee your keepers are still in there getting shitfaced. Can you do me a solid favor and drop me off at the Taco Bell at the base of the hill?”
His eyes went from me—shivering in my dress, to Marcus—gasping in his disheveled tuxedo as he ran up behind me. His chin jutted up as the muscles in his chest swelled.
“Yeah, girl, I got you.”
“You’re a gem.”
I jumped inside and slammed the door shut just as Marcus reached me. He put his hands on the windows and leaned onto the car as his hair spilled messily into his face.
“Rebecca, that’s not what I meant at all. Just give me a chance to explain.”
I rolled down the window a fraction of an inch. “I don’t give a damn what you meant, and I don’t give a damn what you’re used to getting from people. I’m not that kind of girl.”
He hit the side of the car in frustration. “Would you just listen to—”
“You best step away from the car, son.” My driver rose slowly from his seat and stepped out of the limo, biceps bursting out the arms of his suit as he eyed Marcus dangerously. “The lady asked you to leave. We wouldn’t want somebody to get real fucked up, now would we?”
Still panting from our sprint, Marcus threw up his hands and took an exaggerated step away. It looked like his retreat was mostly rooted in exasperation, but the fact that my driver was coming up on seven feet couldn’t have hurt either.
“S’what I thought.” The driver smirked and slid back into the car, gunning the engine as I rolled down my window triumphantly and gestured at Marcus’ pants.
“You should really ice that, by the way.”
We roared away from the curb in a cloud of dust, high on success. But by the time we rounded the wide lawn and proceeded down the hill, the high was already wearing off, and we stared at each other curiously through the open partition.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking...where’s your actual ride?” he asked.
I looped the straps of my heels around my wrist and tugged off my earrings as the night officially came to a close. “I left it for my roommate. And she has the keys in her purse. I can’t leave her here stranded with no way home. And I don’t want to come back later to pick her up. Because I don’t want to run into Marcus Taylor. Believe it or not, I was sent by a talent agency with my friend to ‘make a good impression.’ Whatever that means.”
He glanced back at Marcus’ vanishing form in the rear view mirror. “Well, he’s the host, isn’t he? You’ve definitely left a lasting impression.”
I snorted at his pragmatism. “Yeah, probably.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence until he pulled into a corner of the fast food parking lot to let me out. “You gonna be okay here?” He glanced up the quiet street.
“Yeah, I’ll call a cab.”
He nodded. “Wait inside, okay?”
“Will do.” I smiled gratefully, then handed him all the money in my purse. “Thanks again. Seriously, thank you.”
He turned up a hand at the cash and slid back inside the car. “Naw, girl, you’re good. Just stay away from all them unsavory characters. You feel me?” He drove off with a wink and left me standing in the parking lot feeling rather deflated.
“Yeah, I feel you.”
With a tired sigh, I hung my head and trudged into Taco Bell to call a taxi.
Thirty minutes and four tacos later, I was back in my dingy apartment cuddled up next to Deevus and waiting for Amanda to get home. I didn’t have to wait very long. My departure must have caused a little bit of a commotion, and when she couldn’t find me at the party, she came straight back.
“Rebecca?” she called as soon as she yanked open the door.
She must have been truly worried. Rebecca only made an appearance
when she was really angry, really concerned, or really drunk.
“I’m in here,” I called quickly, watching as Deevus bolted for the door.
Amanda appeared a second later, disheveled and flushed. “What the hell happened?”
I prepared for the grand wind-up to launch into my story—the one I’d been rehearsing since the second taco. But before I knew what was happening, my eyes welled up in sudden tears. “I had the most amazing...and most terrible time.”
Just like that, I collapsed in a fit of child-weeping. Amanda’s jaw fell open as she watched, then rushed to comfort me on the floor.
“We’re...we’re crying about this?” she asked incredulously. My hand flailed toward a bottle on the table, and she ducked in time to save herself a black eye. “Oh—yep—we’re going for the tequila. Okay.” She tried to smooth down my hair but found herself as stymied by the pounds of hairspray as I had. In the end, she just patted my back sympathetically. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“That guy, M-Marcus,” I was blubbering, barely able to get the words out, “he took me to the middle of the floor, and uh, we started d-dancing!”
“Oh,” she soothed, steadying the bottle before it could slop down my dress. “I know you hate dancing.”
“I loved it!” I cried viciously.
Her eyes dilated slightly in the dim light as she tried to follow along. “I...okay. Well, honey, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
“He’s the rich guy from the coffee shop.”
“The one you’ve been talking about? The one with the most beautiful eyes in the entire world?”
“Yeah. It was him.”
“That was Marcus Taylor!”
“The one and only. Trust me. Nobody was more shocked than me.”
“And you danced with him? What’s it like dancing with a billionaire?”
“I didn’t think of him as that way. I mean, dollar signs weren’t flashing over his head or anything. His money was the last thing on my mind. You know I’m not like that.”
“I would’ve loved to dance with that guy! I never even got a chance to meet him because I had to find you!”
“I’m so sorry about that. Marcus is a great dancer. Me, not so much.”
I went on to tell her about those rich snobs, and how I said I was Marcus’s girlfriend, and how it all played out. She listened patiently and didn’t judge me.
“Can I ask you one more thing?” she said.
“Sure. Anything.”
“What’s it like to be a billionaire’s girlfriend? I know it was pretend. But just for that one glorious moment, what was it like to be on his arm?”
“I was so shocked he was going along with it that I’m not sure. But it felt wonderful. It didn’t last too long. But I enjoyed being on his arm. This beautiful music was playing, and it felt like I was living in a real-life fairy tale. I mean, I felt like Cinderella at the ball. He was my handsome prince who swept me off my feet. But instead of the clock striking twelve, he propositioned me, and I kicked him in the nuts and ran. What a twisted fairy tale, huh? I bet Fate is looking down and having a good laugh.”
“So this one fairy tale didn’t work out. Don’t worry. There will be more. Just don’t pretend to be dating the prince of the castle.”
“I’m an idiot!”
I sniffed self-righteously as thick trails of mascara started pouring down my cheeks. With the skill of a veteran, Amanda pulled out a tissue and wiped them clean.
“Th-thanks,” I choked, taking another swig from the bottle. “Well, then, he took me upstairs and—”
All at once, her face got disturbingly grave. “Bex, tell me he didn’t try anything.” Her eyes flashed before I could say a word, and she made this jerking movement like she was about to storm back right then and there and choke him with his necktie. “I should have known the little prick was up to something. I swear, if he even touched—”
I shook my head quickly back and forth. “No, no. We went up to this balcony, and we had some champagne. And it was really nice—” My voice cut off in a fit of sobbing, and she stared at me in a total loss. Finally, she pried the bottle from my sweaty hands and placed it firmly back on the table.
“Okay, Bex, you’ve got to work with me a little here. What happened that was so bad?”
I jutted up my chin. “I was just coming to that. We were toasting champagne, when all of a sudden he set down our glasses, and leaned in really close, and put his hands on my arms—and his hands were really hot, Mandi—and then he said, ‘I have a proposition for you.’”
I finished with a grand relish and picked up the bottle again. Her eyes flickered disapprovingly, but she made no move to stop me. In fact, she was on the edge of her seat.
“So...what was it?”
I realized with a start that I hadn’t for one second paused to consider that question.
“I...I don’t know,” I confessed shakily. “I kneed him in the groin and ran.”
Her mouth fell open as her expression lightened to one of complete amusement and utter exasperation all at the same time. “Bex...” Her eyebrows pulled up in the middle, and I couldn’t tell whether she was going to laugh or sigh.
“What?” I asked, severely unbalanced. “They say, I have a proposition for you,” inflected like the love child of Tony Montana and Jafar, “and that’s when we run, right?”
“Well...typically, yes.” She gave me that look she got when I was testing out a lipstick that I thought made me look “modern,” and she thought it made me look like a fish. “It’s just...you don’t really know what he was going to say—it could have been anything.”
I scoffed drunkenly. “Like what?”
“Like...how about we swear to never tell anyone about the massive lie we perpetuated tonight in front of all my guests and business associates?”
It seems plausible...but at this point, irrelevant.
“I already ran,” I reiterated with intoxicated simplicity. “And kicked him...”
She snorted and grabbed the bottle from my hand, taking a massive swig herself. “Yeah, of course, you also had to kick him. The host of the party. Marcus freaking Taylor.”
“Yeah, what the hell kind of pretentious name is that?” I made a grab for the tequila, but she held on, looking at me doubtfully.
“Oh come on—you have to have heard of him.”
I thought about it. “Not until today. I’ve heard of...Bard Taylor.”
“That’s his father. He died last year.”
Whether it was the influence of the booze or just my over-emotional state, I found this profoundly sad. I thought back to the huge otherwise empty house, the endless grounds, and suddenly wondered if he found them as lonely as I would.
“Oh.”
She looked up sharply at my abrupt change of tone. “No, no. I know that face.” She got to her feet as I stared up at her obliviously.
“What face?”
“You’re sinking into swamps of sadness.”
I screwed up my forehead. “I am not.”
“The chasm of regret and despair.”
“Are these actual places to you? Do you go to these places when I’m not here?”
She took my wrists and pulled me to my feet. “Come on, shower, then bed. You’ve had quite enough excitement for one night.”
I swayed slightly as she capped the bottle. “Don’t limit me. You can never have too much excitement.”
She patted me sympathetically on the cheek. “You have a delicate system when it comes to these sorts of things. Now, come on. Into the shower.”
My eyes grew abruptly heavy with fatigue, and I glanced longingly at my room. “No, bed first. I’ll shower in the morning.”
She gave me a calculating stare. “If you breathe in all those chemicals in your hair overnight, it’ll give your kids gills.”
My eyes widened for a moment at the wondrous possibilities. Then I decided she was right and trudged off obediently to the bathroom. I flicked on the water and st
ared into the mirror as it slowly clouded with steam. A pale, teary face stared back at me. Following a weird compulsion, I forced my features into a watery smile.
I did have an amazing time tonight. Scary, breathless, precarious, amazing. Everything traumatizing was due one hundred percent to me. And everything good was due one hundred percent to Marcus.
I remembered the look on his face as he tossed me up into the air. A carefree delight that grew heated when he lowered me slowly to the floor.
A belated shiver ran up my calves, and I suddenly wondered if Amanda was right. Did my “single girl in the big city” programming kick in too fast and I jumped the gun?
What was he going to propose? Would I forever be haunted by the question?
A thick cloud of steam wafted over the glass, and the girl vanished from sight. My shoulders fell with a little sigh as I climbed into the warm water. No point in wondering about that now. The boy, the girl, the night of fantastical impossibilities...all that was over.
It was time to wake up.
Chapter 8
“It’s time to wake up!”
I opened my eyes to see a strange creature hovering over me. Half of Amanda’s hair was set in foam curlers while the other half hung limply to the side. In one hand, she held a long wooden spoon dripping with runny eggs, and in the other she brandished my alarm clock.
“You are going to be late again. You silly, irresponsible girl. You are going to be late.”
It sounded tired. I wondered how long it had been chanting.
She smacked it silent, a manic look on her face. “Guess what, dumbass, you’re late for work.”
“You definitely have anger management issues, missy,” I said.
She glared. “Get up! C’mon. You need to get out of here!”
I dodged a droplet of yolk, not quite understanding her frenzy as I rolled to my feet. “You know, you’re supposed to cook that. Not just carry it around with you.”
“Oh, thank you, genius. Well, I would be cooking it if you hadn’t overslept and forced me to abandon my post.” She scurried down the hall to the kitchen. “Barry’s coming for breakfast.”
Barry. The latest in a series of one-woman emasculations by Amanda Gates.
I pulled on my scrubs with a frown. “I thought that was one of those things you offered to be charming but it was never actually going to happen.”