Wildest Dreams: Chapter 8

“You, my friend, are fucked. And not in the way that makes you want a cigarette and a stiff drink afterward.” Tate Blackthorn—billionaire pseudo mobster, corporate shark, and a royal pain in the ass—sat across from me at the Grand Regent’s rooftop bar. He tossed my business plan across the low concrete table between us, sitting back and taking a drag of his cigar.

He wore a black button-down shirt to match his black button-down heart. Nothing could pierce through that fucker’s chest, I was sure—not even a 5.56 mm bullet. A sculpted arm was slung over the low, upholstered leather couch, his hand toying with the hem of the minidress of the woman he’d brought with him: a barely legal Norwegian supermodel who’d just made her Victoria’s Secret debut. He didn’t look like the CEO of GS Properties, the largest real-estate company in America and Europe combined; he looked like David Gandy trying to sell a megayacht.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” I demanded, thumbing through the pages. I’d written the business plan myself. The first time I’d put my business management degree to use since I graduated.

“Nothing. I’d give it a B-plus, and I’ve never graded a business plan higher than a C.” His aloof, frigid eyes found mine across the thick smoke of his cigar. “But it’s useless. Bruce Marshall won’t work with you. Asshat acts as if he’s running a mom-and-pop shop in bumfuck Montana, not a company as big as Google.” The amusement in his voice told me he considered any emotion or moral beyond greed and power a weakness and that he’d found Bruce’s. “He notoriously doesn’t get into business with young, unattached people. Worst small-dick symptom I’ve ever encountered.”

“That must be an exaggeration,” I insisted, ignoring the way his fingers trailed between the woman’s thighs beneath her dress. He remained completely stoic, as though he were popping a clam, not (possibly) a cherry, with his fingers.

“It’s not.” Smoke skulked out of Tate’s mouth. “The Caufield family once shorted one of his companies to strong-arm him into business. I was the one to handle the nitty-gritty details of it. It dove sixty-three percent on one stock market after he refused to sell them dead-ass lots in the swamps of Florida. Marshall didn’t even flinch when he took a four-billion-dollar hit.”

“Maybe he just hates you,” I offered. “You are uniquely unlovable.”

“It was a good deal for everyone involved,” Tate said stoically, withdrawing his hand from between the woman’s thighs just as she began to pant, the sadist. “Then he found out I’m thrice divorced.”

“Thrice? Je-sus, man. You’re in your early thirties.”

“When you know, you know.”

“You obviously didn’t know since none of the marriages lasted.” I tucked my business plan back inside my briefcase. But the truth was I couldn’t picture Tate committing to anything as altruistic as marriage. There was probably a bigger picture to all this. “Anyway, Marshall doesn’t know how single I am.”

“He’ll figure it out once he invites you and your wife over for dinner and you show up with a half-deflated sex doll,” Tate assured me, reaching for his whiskey and knocking it back in one go.

“He thinks Dylan Casablancas is my fiancée.”

Tate choked on his whiskey, coughing into his fist. “He what?”

“Long story.” I took a pull of my beer. “He walked in on what he thought was a lovers’ quarrel but was actually Dylan trying to stab me for helping her with her prehistoric car.”

“I forgot the little train wreck moved to New York,” he snarled. “That’s exactly what this city needs. More wannabes.”

The words “train wreck” and “wannabe” made me want to punch his facial organs into the back of his head, and I found myself clenching and unclenching my fist. Dylan was a lot of things I didn’t like, but she was the realest person I knew.

“She actually agreed to help me by pretending to be my fiancée for a little while.”

“Row’s gonna love that,” Tate muttered sarcastically into the fresh glass of whiskey that had been placed directly where the empty one was seconds ago. There was a little note with the waitress’s number underneath the tumbler, crumpled and damp. “What does she get out of the arrangement?”

My dick, if she has her way.

“I’m paying her week to week while she job-hunts.”

“In what currency are you paying her, exactly? Potatoes?” He stroked his fingers under his chin, reaching for the woman’s number and tossing it into the blue fire that danced on the table between us. The model giggled, but he wasn’t acknowledging her presence anymore. “You’re broke as hell.”

“Well, if you give me a loan—”

“I only give loans to people who can pay them back.” Tate sliced into my speech. “And I have no confidence you’ll seal the deal with Marshall. At any rate, I charge a forty-two percent monthly interest rate.”

“Christ, Tatum. That’s a fucking loan shark’s rate.”

He stared at me, steadfast.

Huh. Guess he dabbled in that too.

Tate was as nocturnal as a viper and twice as venomous, a cold-blooded creature best suited to dark places. I’d yet to find one redeemable quality about him, save for the fact that he was (probably) mortal and would eventually relieve this earth of his toxic existence. I’d found myself friends with him on account of him being one, a corporate genius who saw any event or catastrophe as a fiscal opportunity, and two, well-connected to anyone worth knowing. I needed that right now. I was not the kind of rich he, Row, or Kieran were. I didn’t have a special talent like them. I didn’t know how to cook, play ball, or spin shit into gold. All I had was my looks and my charm, and at thirty, I knew I was fast approaching the day my bulging biceps and piercing green-blue eyes would no longer open doors or smash ceilings for me. I needed my app to launch and for it to do well, fast.

I’d made good money from being a gigolo. Great money. My penthouse was a gift from a former client, paid up front and in cash. But up until three months ago, I’d never made one good financial decision. I’d burned through money like it was fucking s’mores. Fast cars, designer clothes, and private charters. So once I decided to retire abruptly after a client tried to cop a feel—no, not cop a feel: sexually assault me—my funds began to dwindle at stunning speed.

This app was a last-ditch effort before I sized down, sold the condo, and admitted defeat.

“Admitted defeat” meaning going back to selling my time, my body, my charm, my fucking being. I didn’t want to do that. But I couldn’t afford not to.

I just really wanted to be more than a pretty face and a stunning dick.

“Are you going through some sort of brain aneurysm?” Tate swirled the amber liquid in his tumbler stoically. “Because if you think I’m driving you to the hospital, you’ve got another thing coming. I have a ten o’clock conference with Hong Kong.”

“No.” I shook my head, disoriented. What the fuck was I thinking, agreeing to pay Dylan $10K a week? Tate was right. I didn’t have that kind of money. Though for a reason beyond my grasp, I wanted her to think I did. “I’m fine.”

“Bet you won’t be in the next five minutes,” Tate sneered, standing up and glancing over my shoulder.

I whipped my head back to see what had caught his attention. Row slid past the bouncers of the trendy bar, wearing a ball cap and a biker jacket. He shouldered through a sea of socialites and finance bros in suits.

“Oh, this should be good.” Tate buttoned his shirt. “I love blood sport. I’ll watch from the bar while getting head. Come, Branka.”

“It’s Brina.”

He ignored her. “Hey, whatever you do?” He squeezed my shoulder on his way out. “Make sure this deal with Marshall happens. You’re working on an app. He all but owns the fucking App Store. He’s formulaic as shit, but whatever he does works. His PR, engineers, creative team—everything is top-notch. Don’t let this opportunity slip by.”

I wasn’t going to fuck it up.

My entire future was on the line.

Telling Row about my fake engagement to his sister was relatively pain-free. Relatively, because I got to keep my internal organs, but with a warning that he was going to skin and shave me into pastrami slices if I ever touched her.

“This is not a figure of speech,” my best friend insinuated slowly and menacingly, his mouth moving over the rim of his White Russian. His tone, like his expression, his demeanor, his existence, was wry and monotonous. “I know where you live, and I’m very trigger-happy when it comes to my sister. The last thing she needs is another emotionally stunted fuckboy who breaks her heart. If you as much as touch her pinkie, yours gets chopped off. Understand?”

This was probably not the right time to inform him that said sister wanted to fuck me for money. Or that I was tempted to take her up on the offer. My dick was constantly hard. When I fixed her car. When I took business meetings. When I was working on the app. When I went to the gym. Even when I watched the presidential debate. Which, let’s admit, was less sexy than a shit-soaked mop.

“You think I’d ever do you this dirty?” I slid the coin pendant of my neck chain—the one I never took off—from side to side.

“I think you earn your bread making women feel special and good, and Dylan is in a vulnerable position,” Row countered, upturned brown eyes, just like his sister’s, zinging threateningly. “And I think she can’t handle another heartbreak after what happened with Tucker.”

“It’s going to be strictly professional. I just need this deal with Bruce Marshall. And he still lives in the Middle Ages or something.” According to a quick Google search, Marshall and his wife had five children, ten grandchildren, and an entire orphanage they were sponsoring.

Row jerked his chin in a nod. “I know. That’s why I invited him over to the launch of my spice brand in two weeks. He’ll be here in New York. It’ll give you the chance to play a loved-up asexual couple with my sister.”

My jaw goddamn near hit the floor. “Wait—you knew about our arrangement before you walked in here?”

“Dylan told Cal.” He shrugged.

Of course she did. Dylan’s mouth ran faster than Usain Bolt. I should’ve known.

“She also mentioned you were already pissing her off, so maybe I shouldn’t worry so much,” Row noted.

I sniffed, willing my hardened jaw to relax. “Liaising with your sister is like herding cats.”

“Leave any pussy analogy out of this conversation. I’m agitated as it is,” he chided me.

I got out of there before Row had the chance to change his mind about the arrangement and slipped into my custom black McLaren—a splurge I’d made two years ago. A gift to myself after working for four months with a filthy-rich client. She’d needed a fake boyfriend to parade after a nasty divorce that ended with an out-of-wedlock child by her maid and multiple lawsuits.

The engine purred to life, and I closed my eyes, thumping the back of my head against the cool leather. My phone vibrated in the central console, dancing to its own rhythm. I opened my eyes, frowning at the screen.

Mom.

Well, that was an overstatement. I hadn’t spoken to the woman since last Christmas, and not for my lack of trying. I’d hoped to spend last Easter with my parents but found out through Facebook they were in Iceland on a northern lights tour.

Picking up the phone, I stared at it calmly. “What kind of favor do you need from me now, Mother?”

But I didn’t answer the call.

Instead, I killed it by pressing the red icon and floored it back to my apartment.