The Billionaire's Convenient Lie

Thirty-two dollars and forty cents. Mia counted it twice on the bench outside the facility, because she had nothing else to do and nowhere to be. The coins were warm from sitting in the paper envelope all morning. One of the quarters had a dent in it. The guard who'd processed her out had said good luck with the tone of someone who didn't mean it, and she'd said thank you with the tone of someone who knew that, and that had been the end of three years. She took the 47 bus into the city because it was the cheapest option and got off four stops early because she didn't want to sit anymore. The city was loud. She'd forgotten how loud — not dramatically loud, just the constant low-grade noise of people who had places to go and weren't thinking about it. Car horns. Someone's music leaking from their headphones. A food cart guy arguing with a supplier on the phone. She stood on the sidewalk outside a dry cleaner's for a minute and let it settle over her. Okay. She was out. Now what. She started walking. She'd figure out accommodation when she had to — a shelter on Ninth that a woman in her block had mentioned, or the church on Delaney that apparently didn't ask questions. Thirty-two dollars wouldn't last more than a day or two regardless. She was thinking about this, not watching where she was going, when she walked into someone. Not a gentle brush — face-first into a suit jacket that smelled like cedar and dry cleaning. She stumbled back and her bag went sideways and the coins went everywhere, a small humiliating rain of them across the hotel steps. "Sorry, I wasn't—" she started. "It's fine." He was already crouching to collect them, which she hadn't expected. She grabbed a few off the step. He handed her the rest in a small pile, no expression on his face, like this was a perfectly ordinary thing to do with a stranger's loose change. She looked at him properly then. Tall, dark suit, late twenties. The kind of good-looking that came from expensive things — not warm, just correct. Behind him the hotel doors kept swinging as people moved in and out in formal wear, and he was standing just to the side of the entrance, which struck her as odd. She stood and put the coins in her bag. Glanced at the doors, then back at him. He was still standing there. Not going in. Not leaving. "You're not going in," she said. "I'm deciding." "Okay." She shifted her bag. "Sorry again." "You don't have to keep apologizing." There was something flat about the way he said it — not unkind, just like the word meant very little to him. Like he heard it too often to register it anymore. "Force of habit," she said. Through the glass she could see a packed room, chandeliers, women in floor-length dresses. A banner she couldn't fully read. And one woman in particular — red dress, champagne flute, watching the entrance with the focused attention of someone waiting for something specific. She started to leave. "Wait." She stopped, mostly out of reflex. "How much," he said, "would it take for you to come inside with me." She turned around slowly. "Excuse me?" "As my date." He said it the way someone might propose splitting a cab. "One evening. My family is expecting me to announce an engagement tonight. I'm not interested in the woman they've chosen. If I walk in there with someone else, it buys me time." Mia looked at him. She'd met men like this before — men who made decisions the way other people breathed, without pausing to consider whether they should. Under different circumstances it would have irritated her. Right now she was more interested in what had made him choose her specifically, out of everyone on this street. "Why me," she said. "You don't know anything about me." "No." He glanced briefly toward the woman in red. "That's part of why I'm asking you. Everyone in that room has an angle. You walked into me by accident and you're still standing here having a conversation instead of taking a photo. That's enough for now." It wasn't a compliment exactly. More like an observation. She found that she didn't mind. "Fifty thousand," he said. The number landed in her chest and sat there. "Sixty," she said. He considered this for approximately two seconds. "Fine." "And I'm not pretending to be in love with you. I'll be friendly. That's it." "That's more than enough." "What's your name?" "Adrian Blackwell." The name did something small and cold at the back of her mind. Blackwell. Her father had said it once at dinner, years ago — Blackwell's a good partner, we're lucky to have them — and then at some point had stopped saying it entirely, and she'd never learned why. The partnership had dissolved quietly around the time everything else had, and in the chaos of the trial she hadn't thought to ask. She filed it away. Later. "I'm Mia," she said. "And I need five minutes to find a bathroom and look like I belong in there." Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "Third floor. Take the elevator on the left, it's quieter." She nodded and went inside. The woman in red watched her cross the lobby. Mia didn't look back, but she felt it — that particular quality of attention that meant someone was already deciding what to do about her. Good, she thought, pressing the elevator button. Let her worry. She had sixty thousand reasons to make tonight convincing. And underneath that, quieter and sharper, something that had nothing to do with money at all.