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“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’snumber 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.