The bottom half of the screen was filled with pictures of her with her friends and Francis.
It was the most boring photo scroll in the history of time.
“So, that’s him,” she said, her chest tightening again. “That’s Francis.”
Francis’s flat, pale eyes and his dorky, frizzy hair that stuck out like yellow-orange spikes were evident in every photo. His skin on his thin frame was so milky white that it looked like he’d never seen the sun, which is hard to do in Arizona. He slathered fifty SPF sunscreen on every day because sunlight made his freckles worse. He always looked like he’d been dunked in baby powder and smelled like cheap paint.
She said, “I was so stupid.” It was all her own fault. She might as well admit it. “You ready for this? This is how stupid I was. I thought Francis was going to propose to me on this trip.”
“Francis?” Augustine asked.
“Yeah, Francis Senft. It’s a stupid name—too many consonants. I’m better off staying with Clark. So, two months ago, Francis asked me about what I wanted a marriage proposal to be like, ‘in case he did something.’ He measured my ring finger with a piece of string. So, I believed him because I’m an idiot, and I bought us two tickets to Paris for a romantic vacation together because I thought he was The One.”
She wanted to smash then-Dree over the head for being so stupid.
So very, very stupid.
Instead, hot tears filled her eyes again, and she looked down from Augustine and stared at the half-eaten croissant on the white kitchen counter. “How stupid was I, that I believed him, that I fell for everything he said, hook, line, and sinker? I bought the plane tickets. I gave him access to everything I owned. I thought we were going to get married. I always thought I was savvy, that I could take care of myself, but I’m just someone who’s dumb enough to get swindled.”
A hot, wet drip drew a line down her cheek. Then another.
Dree covered her stupid face with her hands, trying to stop crying. She shouldn’t be crying. She’d gotten what she’d deserved for being so stupid.
Warmth touched her hand. Augustine’s fingers slowly slipped around hers.
She clutched his hand but kept her other one over her face. “Don’t be nice to me. Don’t encourage this. I’m not a crier. I’m tough. Ranchers don’t cry,” she ground out through clenched teeth.
God, she was even madder at herself for crying.
She couldn’t open her eyes, but she heard Augustine say, “You loved him.”
She nodded and sucked in a gasp. She tried to steady her voice, but it came out as a stupid croak anyway. “I did. I loved him. I was stupid, and I loved him. I told him I loved him every night before we went to sleep. He said it back. I believed him, and I’m an idiot for believing him.”
Augustine’s hand tightened around hers. “It’s not stupid to believe in love.”
“I should have been smarter. I should have looked for the red flags that he was actually a grifter and just trying to get money because he totally blindsided me. I still don’t see anything. I still don’t understand why he did it, other than because he wanted money and he didn’t want me.”
“I know what it’s like not to be wanted and not to understand why.”
She squinted at him through her fingers. “You? No way. Anybody who likes dudes would hand you their panties.”
He smiled a little on one side of his mouth. “Not all of them. Go ahead. Finish telling me your lies about Francis.”
“This is too hard.”
“Then it’s okay. We’ll put it on hold for a while.”
She started talking again because she couldn’t stop. “And then, after all that happened, I didn’t know what to do. There was this police car hanging around outside my apartment, and they told me to get in. I thought they were going to take me to the police station to give my statement or whatever I was supposed to do to report a crime, but they drove me around and asked me a bunch of questions. Finally, at a stoplight, I opened the car door and got out of their car and called a rideshare. Typical useless civil servants, ya know? Show up too late afterward, ask a bunch of stupid questions, and then nothing happens.”
“That’s odd,” Augustine said, frowning. “Is that how your police investigate a crime?”
“I still don’t know what to do,” she said. “I still had one credit card from before I’d met Francis, so I went to where I work, took out five hundred dollars as a cash advance, and got on the plane to Paris, because what the hell. I had a gym bag in my locker with a change or two of clothes, and I had my passport in my purse because I’d wanted to show it off to my friends at work. Most of them had never seen one in real life.”
Augustine rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, and she clutched his hand more tightly.
“I didn’t realize that I’d have to pay the FlyBNB lady a lot of money because my credit card got declined, because now it’s over its limit. So, here I am, broke in Paris and trying not to be an idiot, but somehow, I’m the same old Dree. I wanted to be different, ya know? I wanted to be someone else. But I’m just as stupid as I’ve always been.”
He caressed the back of her hand with his thumb. “You’re not stupid. Don’t stop believing in love. When you do that, you get desperate, and you can’t stop yourself from doing foolish, self-destructive things.”
That sounded like personal experience.
She opened her fingers a little more and peered at him between them. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He chuckled and pulled back a little, looking down. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did someone hold your hand and tell you not to give up on love?”
He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. “No.”
At the very least, no matter what else was going on in her life, Dree would trip over her own feet trying to be helpful. She was a sucker like that, too.
So, she took her hand off her snotty nose and bleary eyes, wiped it carefully on her shirt a couple of times to make sure it was dry, and held Augustine’s hand. She looked straight into his dark, fathomless eyes. “Don’t give up on love. You’re a great guy. You rescued me from a mob of creepers, and now you’re sitting here and listening to me blather on about how I screwed up my life. There’s someone out there waiting for a guy like you.”
He didn’t look away, but there was something in the slight bow of his lips and creases at the corners of his eyes that looked wounded. He said, “I don’t think anyone is coming for me.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shrugged and broke their eye contact. “It’s just a feeling, but I’ve had it for a long time. But we’re talking about you.”
“I’m kind of done talking. I’ve reached the end of this stupid, stupid tale. I got conned, and now I’m broke. I probably should be a prostitute, but I don’t think I’m smart enough. Guys would be like, ‘I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a blow job today,’ and I’d be like, ‘Okay, sure!’ Because I’m just that dumb.”
“You’re not dumb.”
“I’m hoping I am. If I’m dumb, I can get smarter.”
“You’ve had some bad breaks.”
She huffed a laugh. “Ya think?”
Augustine tugged his wallet out of his hip pocket again. He grasped all the cash inside and laid it on the counter. “This will get you started.”
Dree glanced at the stack of green and yellow bills. There was even more there than he’d tried to pay her. “Just put that money back in your wallet. I haven’t done anything to earn it.”
“You don’t have to.”
She had been raised not to take charity. Others needed it more. “Yes, I do.”
“I don’t need it. You do.”
“I’ll be fine. I always land on my feet.” She had no idea how she was going to do that.
Augustine said, “It’s nothing but pieces of paper.”
She snorted. “That sounds like someone who’s always had plenty of it. When you haven’t had enough, you know
money is precious. It determines what you can eat and how safe the place is where you sleep. You’re rich, aren’t you?”
“I’m comfortable,” he admitted.
“Yeah, that’s something a rich person would say.”
“I was going to pay you for last night. Let’s pretend you didn’t say no.”
He was a nice guy, but Dree was getting a little pissed at him. “I am not a prostitute.”
“As you said, Jesus hung out with prostitutes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Does that make you Jesus Christ?”
Augustine laughed out loud at that, looking up at the stained ceiling. “Now, there’s something no one who knows me has ever accused me of. Some people have called me the very Devil in disguise or an incubus, but no one has ever confused me with the Savior.”
“There are some lines I’m not going to cross, Augustine.”
Yet.
She was going to get more desperate, she knew. When the end of the month came, even beside the fact that she needed money to eat and pay rent and buy a sleeping bag or something, Mandi would need a thousand dollars to cover Victor’s therapy costs again. That was her usual shortfall unless something made it worse. Dree wasn’t sure how much Vic was improving with language skills, but when he went to daily therapy, he was a whole heck of a lot less violent. When Mandi had tried to stop his therapy once, he’d nearly beaten the crap out of her even though he had been only eight at the time.
And then there was Christmas. She wasn’t sure how much Victor understood about Christmas, but her nieces and nephews from her other siblings did. Her brothers and sisters were going to need the gift cards she gave them as presents to make it through the very expensive month of December, too.
“I understand you’re not a prostitute,” Augustine said. “You’ve made that abundantly clear. I am entirely certain you’re not. It shall never cross my mind again.”
“Okay, then,” Dree muttered. “I’m glad we’ve got that settled.”
“But you need money.”
“I’ll figure it out. I’m resourceful. Maybe I’ll get a box and be one of those living statues in a park or something. People just give you money if you stand there and do that.”
“Have you ever done that before?” he asked her.
“That doesn’t matter. Seems like it would be on-the-job training, to be honest. Or maybe I’ll go to a bank and get a loan.”
“Do you have collateral?” he asked.
“No, but I’m good for it.”
“I’ve heard banks don’t have a sense of humor about that,” Augustine said.
Tears were stinging her eyes again as she realized that she had no options. “Or maybe I’ll dance on tables and give blow jobs like my friends in college did when they didn’t have enough money to eat.”
Augustine asked, “What did you do in college when you didn’t have enough money to eat?”
She looked down at her half-eaten croissant. “I didn’t eat.”
He sighed. “You’re driving me insane. I’m trying to help you, and you won’t let me. I’ve never had such a problem giving money away before.”
She chuckled and squeezed her eyes closed to make the tears go back in. “Sorry.”
He took her hand again. “I don’t want you to miss meals in Paris, of all places. I want you to see Paris in all its splendor. It’s your first trip. Let me help you.”
“I don’t need help. I’ll be all right,” she lied.
“I’m going to eat every meal while I’m here. I’m going to eat croissants like this every morning.”
Dree’s stomach growled.
“Let me assuage my guilt at having too much money because I assure you, I do,” he said.
Dree flipped her hand at him. “Other people need it more. Give it to charity.”
“There are too many strings attached if I do it that way. You’re a nice person. You’re giving your sister money, and you were taken advantage of by someone you loved.”
“So? Happens to people every day. I am so naïve. I was practically asking for someone to take advantage of me.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I probably will end up doing something I don’t want to. The world is a terrible place.”
He took both of her hands in his. “What if, just this one time, I paid you to spend four days with me, and you didn’t say no?”
“This is like some sort of an indecent proposal, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Call it what you like.”
She pulled her hands away. “I’m not a prostitute, and you just want to feel like Jesus.”
His laugh was dark and sent shivers down her spine, but she wasn’t scared at all. “I assure you, what I want from you would not be Christ-like. I’m going to have to do penance for a year when I’m through with you.”
A wiggle of desire formed in her stomach, and lower, at the thought of what he would do to her that would need confession and penance. She admitted, “I would do that for free.”
“Since you won’t just take my money as some sort of a formal arrangement, then I’m just asking you to stay with me for four days. My friends who I was here with left Paris last night. I’m stuck here for four more days with little to keep me occupied. We’ll check a few things off your bucket list on that napkin. The museums and restaurants, anyway. I’m not finding two other male strangers with whom to share you. That’s my line I will not cross. I’ll buy you anything you want and give you enough money to get back on your feet.”
She retorted, “I’m not a—”
“Yes, yes, I know. You may have mentioned it. If you think I am determined to be like Jesus and hang around people of ill repute, consider yourself a tax collector instead.”
She laughed at that. “Fine, if I’m going to do this, then I’ll do it right. I guess we already know what I am, so let’s haggle over price. How much are you going to pay me?”
He named a sum greater than Dree made in a year as a nurse and far more than Francis had been able to milk her for.
She stared at him with her mouth hanging open. “Are you serious? That’s way too much! I can’t take that! How about half?”
“Your negotiating skills need work,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“No, no. When you negotiate, you should start high and then reduce services when the other person wants a lower price.”
“I wouldn’t dare take even half of that!”
“That’s not quite it. Try again.”
“Not even a quarter or ten percent! There is nothing I could do that would make me worth that!”
His slow smile turned kind again. “I think you’re worth it.”
Then, he looked her up and down and a devilish twinkle lit in his eyes, completely ruining the sweet effect.
He said, “As a matter of fact, if you will do anything I want, anything at all, I’ll double my offer.”
Double it?
Dree had never even thought of having that much money in her life. She was pretty sure her parents’ entire ranch, their livestock, and five generations of her family’s labor weren’t worth that much.
She could get better therapy for Victor for years.
And even after helping Mandi and Victor, Dree could get a new, better apartment, furniture, clothes, and a car, replacing all the things that Francis had stolen from her.
And pay back her 401(k).
She was still aghast. “What would I have to do for that?” A thought came to her. “Butt stuff. It’s butt stuff, isn’t it? You want butt stuff.”
He raised one eyebrow and smiled a little wider.
“Oh, my God. You freaky rich people are all alike. You can’t be satisfied with what normal people like, and so you want butt stuff.”
“You seem to like that term, ‘butt stuff.’ You keep repeating it.”
“You do, don’t you?”
“And what if I do? I promise not to damage you.”
“How do I know
you’ve even got that much money? You could be lying to me, and then I’ll still be broke and have a sore butt.”
“You seem fixated on anal sex. I suspect a secret desire for the forbidden. But here.” He turned his hand over and unlatched his watchband.
Thick calluses covered his palm and fingers like a farmhand, which Dree noticed even though she was still freaking out a little.
He took off his watch and handed it to her.
The watch was an analog type with a steel case, and it had a blue face and band. Under the silver hands, there were three little dials, showing the day of the week, the date, and the phase of the moon.
Dree squinted at it. “What, you don’t have an Apple Watch?”
“That’s a Patek Philippe Grand Complications, and it’s worth about ninety thousand dollars, American.”
Dree dropped it like it burned her fingers.
The watch clattered on the counter.
“Oh, my God. I didn’t break it. It’s fine. It’s fine!”
He laughed. “I would hope it could take a fall better than that.”
She gingerly poked at the watch, pushing it across the counter toward him. She finally grabbed a clean napkin and shoved it at him because she worried that her fingerprints would decrease its value. “No. Take it back. I don’t want it. I might hurt it.”
He laughed again, even leaning over. “It’s your insurance that I’ll pay you for services rendered.”
She did not touch that overpriced watch. “Well, then what’s your insurance that I won’t run off with it, and you’ll never get butt stuff?”
He picked up another croissant and buttered it. “Because I’ll pay you more than twice that amount if you stick around until Thursday.”
She considered it. “Okay, but you don’t have to give me your watch. I’m fine without it.”
“No,” he said. “You keep it until I pay up.”
She carefully buckled the leather strap around her wrist on the tightest hole, but it still slipped up her arm. “I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”
A Billionaire for Christmas Page 25