Page 16 of Chosen By a Billionaire (Rags to Romance #24)

It was much more difficult than she could have ever imagined. It was a small dinner party, with only six couples and Jayda and Harrison, but the few that were there were brutal.

It started in the living room when she and Harrison walked downstairs.

The guests were laughing and talking loudly amongst themselves, but as soon as they saw Jayda on Harrison’s arm, silence overtook the room.

Every couple froze in place. Other than Carter Davenshaw, no other guest in that room had ever seen her before.

She was not someone in the tight-knit, socially-connected, rarified air in which they traveled.

There was no doubt in their minds about that.

And the idea that Harrison Bainbridge would have a woman on his arm of any stripe, and upstairs in his home on top of it, was shocking to all of them except for Carter, who knew she would be there. But for all the others? The actual presence of Big Foot would have been less startling.

“Good evening everyone,” Harrison said to his guests. They all spoke, but their eyes never left the young woman with him. “Please welcome Jayda with a y. She will be joining us this evening.”

“Welcome Jayda,” Carter said with a smile, as he raised his glass to her.

“Thank you,” Jayda said. She remembered him as one of the men by Harrison’s side at Sandhurst, but nobody else looked familiar at all. Nor very friendly either. But she had already expected that.

But when Harrison was pulled away from her side by Carter and a few of the men who needed to discuss a business matter with him, Jayda felt a sudden uptick of nervousness.

She felt so out of her depth that she wasn’t at all surefooted as she usually was.

But she refused to bury her smile as the ladies made their way over to her as if they just knew they had an easy prey.

Although Jayda didn’t know Harrison well enough to assume anything about him, she had assumed he would be her safety net. She thought he would at least stay by her side to help her navigate such rough waters. But he left her to navigate on her own.

Perhaps that was the experiment. Throw her into the ocean and see if she could swim.

Which upset her. Because if she failed whatever the test could be, that would mean he would conclude that other people like her would fail too.

That people like her weren’t capable of being at home in high society, and would be judged that much more harshly because of her. It felt like a burden more than a job.

The women encircled her as if they were sharks and she was their piece of meat.

One woman she would later find out was a socialite named Phyllis Davenshaw was the ringleader.

She was also the wife of Carter Davenshaw, the man who was with Harrison in the breakroom at Sandhurst when she received that big advance.

The other ladies seemed to mimic whatever Phyllis did.

They were her echo chamber. “So who are you exactly?” Phyllis asked her.

Jayda didn’t skip a beat. “I’m Jayda with a y.”

The other women looked at Jayda as if she was dim-witted. “No, but who are you?” Phyllis asked her again.

“I’m Jayda with a y,” Jayda said again.

“That’s your name. I didn’t ask your name. I asked who were you.”

“What do you expect me to say to that? If I ask somebody who are they, I’m asking them their name. Or if they’re so-and-so’s daughter. Something like that. If you want to ask more of me, then you need to be more specific.”

“Okay, let me be break it down to your level,” said Phyllis, which was a blatant putdown that Jayda received, but ignored. “How did you meet Harrison?”

“How did you get from who are you to how did you meet Harrison ? Is that what you call breaking it down to my level?”

“Yes!” Phyllis said frustratingly. “What do you call it?”

“A totally different question!” Jayda responded in her own animated voice that made a couple of the ladies hide their smiles. “Those are two totally different questions,” Jayda added.

Phyllis looked at the ladies as if Jayda was the one toying with them . But before she could launch another attack, the announcement came that dinner was served.

They all entered the dining hall and sat around the dining table, with Harrison at its head.

Carter, along with Phyllis, sat to the right of Harrison.

Jayda was seated further away from him, in the middle of the table with a couple on either side of her.

It wasn’t lost on her that she was the only person of color in the entire group.

But she was being paid to be there. It was admittedly an experiment.

She automatically assumed her skin tone would have something to do with it.

Harrison introduced everyone to Jayda once again, and she was surprised that Carter, who seemed overall a nice man, could be married to such a hard-driving bitch like Phyllis.

Because even as they all were eating, the guests, led by Phyllis again, let her have it.

“So what do you do exactly?” she asked her.

“What do I do?”

“Yes. Or is that question too difficult for you?”

“I work,” said Jayda.

“You don’t say?” Phyllis said to snickers from the others. “Surely I thought you were a lady of leisure. Surely I assumed you were a socialite of the first order who never worked a day in her life.”

The couples’ snickering turned to laughter. Jayda, hurt by their response, glanced over at Harrison. But he was eating and seemed almost disinterested in her takedown. Which made the takedown worse. But his response, or lack thereof, reminded her once again that she was on her own.

“What I meant to say,” Phyllis said, “is what type of work do you do. It is assumed, I’m sure by all of us, that you work. Certainly you work. We wish to know what kind of work do you do.”

Here goes more putdowns, Jayda thought. But she wasn’t lying to those arrogant assholes. “I’m a delivery driver by day,” she said, “and I wait tables at night.”

They all looked at each other as if this had to be some joke. “ A delivery driver ?” said one. “You mean like Door Dash or Fed-Ex?”

“More like Door Dash,” said Jayda.

A few of the guests actually gasped.

“And you wait tables at night? Does that mean you’re a . . . a waitress ?” asked another one.

“Yes, that’s what waiting tables normally means.”

“Surely you jest.”

Harrison noticed how Jayda batted her eyes the way she did, in his estimation, whenever she was getting upset.

“I’m not jesting, no,” said Jayda.

“But . . . what are you doing here?” asked a shocked Phyllis. “We have no answer for such a lowly person. How did you get this highly-coveted invitation?”

Jayda looked at Harrison, expecting him to explain, but he said nothing. And the guests all looked at him too.

“This is a joke, right?” another guest asked him. “Surely this is some sort of prank, Harrison?”

“I don’t joke,” said Harrison, “and I don’t do pranks.”

They all knew it too. They looked at Jayda again. “Where did you come from?” asked one.

Jayda looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean where did you come from?”

He made it sound as if she was an alien. So she answered him accordingly. “I come from the planet Earth,” she said, which immediately got a chuckle from Carter, although his wife didn’t find it funny.

Harrison wasn’t commenting. He was eating and watching it all unfold.

His focus wasn’t on what they were saying to Jayda, but how she was handling what they said.

Because his brother and sister-in-law, he was certain, would say much worse.

They would be more than happy to push her buttons in front of their father and disqualify Harrison in the process. He stared at Jayda.

“I’ll break it down to your level,” said Phyllis. “I’ll make it plain the way you people do. What hole did Harrison dig you out of?” she asked.

Carter was embarrassed by his wife’s question, but Jayda didn’t skip a beat. “The same one he dug you out of,” she responded.

When she responded so easily, Carter laughed. He couldn’t help it. But he was the only one. All the others were floored.

But Harrison was inwardly very pleased. She was holding her own, which was absolutely required for him to consider the next step.

“It is a fact that Harrison keeps his private life very private,” said another guest, “but I would have never in a million years took you to be his type. Not ever.”

Jayda ignored that putdown.

“And your background has to be . . .” The guest wanted to go there, but constrained himself for fear of Harrison. “What is your background?” he asked instead. “Do you have a criminal record?”

Now Jayda was offended. “Do you?” she shot back.

“Of course not!”

“Then why would I have one?” She batted her large eyes in such an angry but sexy way that Harrison went hard. Carter did too.

“Come now, young lady,” said another male guest. “It’s not a gigantic leap to assume you were raised in a ghetto.”

“Why wouldn’t an assumption like that be a gigantic leap?” Jayda asked.

Another guest intervened. “Because seventeen percent of African-Americans live below the poverty line. That’s why!”

“But by your own figure,” said Jayda,” that would mean that eighty-three percent of African-Americans live above the poverty line. And if that’s the case, why would you automatically assume I was raised in the seventeen percent and not the eighty-three percent?”

“Look at you,” said another guest. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Now Carter was offended. He leaned over to Harrison. “When are you going to put an end to this bloodbath?”

“She’s got to be able to take it,” Harrison said as he continued to watch the pile on.

Phyllis didn’t like the way Carter seemed solicitous to that woman.

She knew all about his various mistresses, including the black ones.

The pretty black girl in front of her wasn’t going to become another one.

“You have quite the mouth,” she said to Jayda, “for somebody of your undeniable lowly status.”

Jayda said nothing because Phyllis had hit a nerve.

Lowly status , they called it, which was code for you’re a nobody .

Everything Phyllis and all the other guests were saying about her was what she knew many other people were saying about her.

She was nothing in their eyes. Invisible just like Harrison and his driver had viewed her that day in front of the Bainbridge building.

She was fighting back at that dinner table, but that didn’t mean she wanted to fight.

That didn’t mean their putdowns didn’t hurt.

She knew she was poor and powerless. She knew they had no clue the terror she felt whenever she wondered if her piece of jobs would bring in enough at the end of the month to keep a roof over her head.

They would be oblivious to the loneliness she felt every night when she realized she was all alone in this world.

That even her own family didn’t want to have anything to do with her.

This was a parlor game to them. And to Harrison too.

She was undoubtedly their entertainment.

He was amusing them with her presence. And if she didn’t need that four-thousand-dollar check as badly as she needed it, she would have told him what to do with his game.

She would have walked out of that fancy penthouse and never looked back.

But she was poor. And she was powerless. And she needed every dime of that advance check. She could not afford pride.

They kept throwing all the barbs and arrows they could throw at her, and she kept deflecting some, tossing some aside, and catching the flack of some.

But they were wounding her. No doubt about it.

Every tip of every one of their arrows she had to touch was piercing a little more of her tough shell.

“And speaking of holes,” Phyllis continued when she could tell she had hit a nerve. “You still haven’t told us what hole Harrison dug you out of.”

More snickering. Jayda looked at the older woman.

“Don’t just stare at me,” Phyllis said. “Answer me. What hole did Harrison dig you out of?”

“The same hole he dug your mama out of,” Jayda responded bluntly.

That response, above any other, set off a firestorm. It was a bridge too far for Harrison’s guests. They all were in an uproar. Even Carter, who told Jayda she didn’t have to say something like that to his wife. As if his wife hadn’t said worse than that to Jayda.

But their overreaction drew panic from Jayda.

Was she failing the test? She looked over at Harrison with fear in her heart.

Was this when he sided with them and kicked her out of his house and life forever?

Was this when he got his revenge on her for denting his limo and calling him a pervert?

Was this that moment when he would demand his advance back?

Would all the putdowns she took from these people bent on invalidating her humanity been all for nothing?

Harrison had remained noncommittal for a reason.

But their reaction to that simple response from Jayda was a bridge too far for him too.

“Enough of the pearl clutching,” he said to his guests as they were still complaining about that one comment from Jayda.

“You started it, she finished it,” he added. “She gave as good as she got.”

Jayda could not have felt more relieved. And even as they continued to plead their case as the true victims at that table, she continued to stare at Harrison.

“How can you call it pearl-clutching?” Phyllis asked. “You should be glad we interrogated her. Her true colors coming out is what that was.”

“Your true colors were already out,” Harrison shot back. “You feasted on her. Now feast on the food. Just eat ladies. Gentlemen. Just eat and enjoy the meal.”

When they all stopped with the putdowns disguised as interrogation and began eating again, Jayda looked over at Harrison.

Harrison glanced over at her. And when she saw that look in his eyes, as if he was proud of her, she inwardly smiled.

It was touch and go there for a minute, and their reaction to her putdown made her wonder if she had gone too far.

But just that look he gave to her made it clear that she had not.

And when he winked at her, she smiled. She knew in that moment that she had passed the test.