“It’s eight carats, in case you’re wondering.” says Callum, reaching for an oyster.
I look up in time to watch him lift the shell to his mouth, suck the oyster out, and swallow. He licks his lips and makes a small sound of pleasure low in his throat, then sets the empty shell back onto the platter. He picks up another one and holds it aloft.
“Oyster?”
“Hang on a sec. I’m trying to locate my brain.”
He repeats the ritual with the second oyster, then says, “Kumamoto is an excellent variety. Quite sweet. They’re flown in fresh from British Columbia every morning.”
The little black box in my hand weighs ten thousand pounds. The light all around us is searingly bright. My heart throbs, my stomach churns, and all the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Meanwhile, Callum makes casual conversation about seafood.
“The lobster here is incredible too. Do you like lobster? I love it, myself. There’s an island named Anegada in the Caribbean that has an unusual type. Very briny and delicious. The locals barbecue it on top of cut-open oil drums. I visit the British Virgin Islands every May. It’s one of my favorite places to sail.”
“Sounds fab.”
“It is.”
Exasperated with his composure, I say, “Can we please return from vacation to talk about this rock I’m holding?”
“That rock is your engagement ring, darling. Care for a bite of foie gras?”
I blink for a few moments, trying to reconcile the absurdity of the situation with Callum’s offhand use of “darling,” as if he’s been saying it to me over lunch every day for years.
Then my temper kicks in.
I snap shut the box and place it atop an empty oyster shell. Looking him dead in the eye, I say, “Okay. This is where I get off the crazy train. Great to meet you. Have a nice life.”
I stand, grab my purse, and stalk off toward the entrance of the restaurant, passing by Sophie on the way.
“Remember what I said about that raise, girlfriend,” I say as I stride by.
Out at the valet stand, I stop to order an Uber. The app says the driver is two minutes away. I pace until the car arrives, then jump into the back, half expecting a big beautiful madman in a gray suit to jump in behind me.
But the car pulls away from the curb with me as its only passenger.
I call Dani first thing. She answers, demanding, “Seriously, what the fuck?”
“Ha! You’re asking me? I have no idea what just happened.”
“Start with how you met Callum McCord, you lucky bitch!”
“He came into the shop.”
“Your shop? The little bohemian bookstore with all the stray cats and shabby furniture? Why the hell would a billionaire go in there?”
“Oh my God. Thanks for the support. Why are we even friends?”
“Listen, just tell me the damn story, starting from the beginning and ending at the part where you’re on your knees somewhere with his big billionaire dick down your throat.”
The driver’s gaze meets mine in the rearview mirror. He looks eager for a juicy story.
I say to both of them, “That didn’t happen.”
Looking disappointed, the driver glances away.
Dani demands, “So what did happen? Tell me everything!”
I heave out a heavy breath, then start from the beginning. When I’m finished, there’s silence on the other end of the line.
“Are you still there?”
“Still here. Except I think my brain is broken.”
“Yeah, join the club.”
After another moment, she says, “So we’ve got a few possibilities. The first is that you were being filmed for a reality show.”
“That’s what I thought!”
“Except the producers would’ve given you a release to sign. I don’t think you can be on TV without your consent.”
I ponder it. “Maybe they were going to approach me with the release afterwards. To make my reactions more realistic in the moment.”
“I mean, I guess? But what’s the show about?”
“Maybe like The Bachelor meets Married at First Sight?”
“Hmm. Maybe. But with a total opposites-attract trope. Billionaire and the beast.”
I’d be insulted that she’s saying I’m the beast in this scenario, but unfortunately, I agree with her. I’m hardly Frankenstein’s monster, but compared to Callum, I might as well be.
“Did you see any cameras?”
“No.”
“Okay, so maybe it’s something else.”
“For instance?”
“Well, if he already had an engagement ring ready to go and it wasn’t for television, he must’ve had a fiancée at some point, right?”
“Makes sense.”
“So maybe they split up. Maybe it was a bad breakup. Maybe she broke his heart.” I can tell by her excited tone that she’s warming up to the idea. “So now he wants to get back at her and make her jealous by getting engaged to you!”
“If he was engaged to anyone, she’d be a supermodel. How the hell would I make a supermodel jealous?”
She pauses, then says, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady left you for, say, Hermione Granger, wouldn’t that drive you absolutely batty?”
She has a point, the witch.
“Your logic is flawed, Einstein, because he didn’t leave anyone for me. I never laid eyes on the man before this morning.”
“You know what I mean. He’s trying to drive her nuts figuring out what you have that she doesn’t.”
I laugh at that. “Gisele wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over me. She’d just assume Tom had been hit one too many times in the head and move on with her glamorous life.”
“Hey, give yourself some credit. Gisele doesn’t have your body.”
I snort. “Which is why she’s a supermodel and I’m not.”
“I meant your curves, idiot.”
“You’re still losing this argument. We both know that I’m five-feet-two inches of bad attitude, high anxiety, and no filter. Nobody’s jealous of that. And by the way, why can’t we come up with another word than ‘curves’? I’m not a mountain road, for fuck’s sake.”
“Lady lumps?”
The driver snickers. I’d like to give that eavesdropper a proper smack, but I’m only violent on the inside. Plus, I don’t want to go to jail for assault.
Not all of us have the chief of police on speed dial.
Just then, a siren blares out from behind us.
“Fuck,” mutters the driver, glancing in the rearview mirror. I turn around, look out the back window, and see the pair of motorcycle cops following us with their lights flashing.
Then I spot the sleek black sedan following behind them and start to panic. “Oh no.”
Dani says, “What’s wrong?”
“I think Callum called the cops on me.”
“What? Did you steal his watch or something?”
“Just because I’m broke doesn’t mean I’m a thief!”
Except now that I think of it, he was wearing a very expensive-looking watch. It’s actually not a bad idea.
“Then why would he call the cops on you?”
“Maybe running out on a billionaire in the middle of lunch is against the law.”
“You ran out on him? You didn’t tell me that part! What the hell is the matter with you?”
I groan. “Literally everything.”
The driver pulls to the side of the road and kills the engine. The motorcycle cops park behind us, and behind them parks the black sedan. One of the cops swings his leg over his bike and walks toward us. I take the opportunity to slide down low in the seat and hyperventilate.
Dani says, “Why are you quiet? What’s happening? I’m dying over here.”
“I’m gonna FaceTime you so you can see everything. If I get arrested, call that attorney friend of yours.”
“He’s an immigration attorney. Are you being deported?”
I don’t bother answering her sarcastic question before disconnecting, then calling her back on FaceTime. When she answers, I tell her to shut up and point the screen toward the driver’s window.
The police officer taps on the window. The driver rolls it down. The officer looks at the driver, then looks at me hiding in the back seat like a fugitive. “Miss?”
“Um. Yes?”
“Are you Emery Eastwood?”
After swallowing around the rock in my throat, I nod.
“Step out of the car, please.”
Though tinny because it’s coming over the phone, Dani’s voice is still perfectly audible. “Ask him why he pulled you over! He can’t pull you over without cause!”
The officer removes his mirrored sunglasses and stares at me. I slide a little lower in the seat.
“Miss Eastwood, step out of the vehicle. Now.”
The way he says those words sends a chill straight down my spine. I imagine years of orange jumpsuits, bad food, and communal showers in my future and whimper.
He opens the back door of the car and stands aside. The driver cranes his neck around and looks at me with obvious fear, as if he just recognized me from the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Dani shouts over the phone, “This is the United States of America! She has rights!”
The officer leans down and pins me in a ferocious glare. “I’ll give you five seconds, Miss Eastwood. Then I’m coming in to get you.”
With Dani shouting at the top of her lungs and the driver staring at me in horror, I slide across the bench seat and climb out of the car.
The officer gestures toward the black sedan. “Mr. McCord would like a word with you.”
We gaze at each other as the midday traffic zooms past on Santa Monica Boulevard until I regain the power of speech. “So…he called you to come get me?”
He glances at the phone in my hand, which I’m holding beside my head so Dani has a front-row seat to my imminent arrest. Then he says, “You can’t film me.”
Dani hollers, “Oh, yes, she can! The Constitution guarantees it, buddy!”
The officer sighs heavily and looks up at the sky like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth doing anything else but this. Against my better judgment, I feel sorry for him.
“Okay, fine. I’ll talk to him. But if I wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, it’s your fault.”
Without waiting for a response, I march over to Callum’s car, purse slung over my shoulder and phone in hand.
Callum’s driver opens the back door for me. I can’t tell for sure because his sunglasses hide his eyes and he’s got a good poker face, but I think he’s trying not to laugh.
I sit next to Callum. The driver shuts the door behind me, then strolls over to the police officers and lights a cigarette. I watch through the windshield as the three of them start to chat and laugh like they’re having an impromptu get-together of fraternity bros.
“Hello again,” says Callum.
Pretending I’m accustomed to having billionaires use the local police force to kidnap me from taxis, I smile blandly at him. “Hello. Are you going to tell me why the cops snatched me from the back of my Uber?”
“You left before you got your salad.”
He gestures to the brown paper bag on the floor beside his feet, then laces his fingers together and rests his hands in his lap, right over a big bulge that I am definitely not looking at.
Then he says, “What’s that shouting?”
“That would be my girlfriend Dani. I’ve got her on FaceTime on my phone.”
He glances at the phone in my right hand, which I’m hiding next to my thigh.
Dani chooses that moment to holler, “I can’t see anything! Emery, what the fuck is happening? Are you riding his dick or what?”
If a person could die of embarrassment, I’d already be six feet under.
I lift the phone and point the screen in Callum’s direction. When he smiles, Dani inhales sharply.
“Hello, Dani.”
“Uh, er…hi.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Um…uh-huh.”
Honestly, the power this man has to render women speechless is astonishing.
I turn the screen toward me so I’m looking at Dani’s slack-jawed face. “I’ll call you back in a minute, okay?”
With her eyes wide and her nose pressed to the screen, she mouths Holy shit.
“Indeed.” I disconnect and turn back to Callum.
Somehow, he’s grown even more handsome in the short interim since I last saw him. I’m tempted to ask him about his skincare routine but get distracted by the way he’s looking at my mouth.
Why is he looking at my mouth?
Now I’m a cliché, because butterflies explode in an ecstatic, fluttering burst in my stomach. I’d give myself a bracing slap across the cheek, but don’t want to look like a lunatic.
“Your face is red again.”
“And you’ve got more spinach stuck in your gums.”
“You also forgot your engagement ring.”
“If you reach into your suit pocket right now, I can guarantee I’ll draw blood.”
His intense gaze drifts up from my mouth to my eyes, where it electrocutes me. He murmurs, “Are you threatening your fiancé, darling?”
“Yes. And if you call me darling one more time, you can say goodbye to your two front teeth.”
Amused by my attitude, he breaks into a smile so dazzling, I nearly suffer a heart attack on the spot. I stare at him breathlessly, my pulse pounding, at a loss for words.
“What would you like me to call you?”
“My first name will do just fine, thanks.” I can’t remember it at the moment, but hopefully, he does.
“How about…” He pauses to moisten his lips. His voice drops an octave. “Baby?”
When I only stare at him in disbelief, he chuckles.
“We can leave that for the wedding night.”
“I am not marrying you.”
“So you don’t want to save your business?”
I glare at him. Unflinchingly cool, he gazes right back at me.
“And you don’t care that all your employees will be left jobless? Or that you have no other work experience that might interest an employer? Or that your father’s dream of a generational family bookshop will go up in smoke?”
I demand, “What do you know about my father’s dreams?”
“There’s a whole page devoted to the subject on your company website.”
That deflates me. “Oh. Right.”
He examines me for a moment, then says, “What are your primary concerns?”
“About what?”
“About marrying me.”
Fighting the urge to break out into hysterical laughter, I huff out a breath instead and say sarcastically, “I’ll mail you a list.”
“No, tell me right now.”
Groaning, I cover my face with my hands. “Can someone sane please tell me what’s going on?”
Callum pries my hands away from my face and holds my wrists firmly as he stares into my eyes.
With quiet intensity, he says, “It’s very simple. Listen carefully, because I don’t like to repeat myself. I need a wife. You need money. I’m offering you a business arrangement that will solve both our problems. Say yes and you’ll never want for anything again. You can open a chain of bookstores all over the country if you like. You can have whatever you desire, whatever you can imagine. The world will open up for you beyond your wildest dreams.”
I topple headfirst into the endless abyss of his dark, powerful eyes and float there for what seems like an eternity. Eventually, I manage to pull myself out of the depths and back to reality.
“Callum?”
He leans closer. His eyes start to burn. “Yes, Emery?”
“Let go of my wrists.”
For the longest moment, he remains still, staring at me with a crackling-hot concentration that sends a thrill through my blood.
Then something in his eyes changes. All his heat and intensity vanishes, as if a cage door has been slammed shut. He abruptly releases me and sits back.
Looking out the front windshield, he says stiffly, “I apologize. Sometimes my…”
In his unfinished sentence, a dangerous ocean of secrets churns. Resting on his thighs, his big hands curl to fists. He inhales a slow, controlled breath, closing his eyes and clenching his molars as he exhales.
It’s like watching a T-Rex trying to convince itself it’s vegan. I’ve never seen anything so unnerving in my life.
Time to run.
“I’m getting out of the car now and going back to my Uber. I’m just telling you that so you don’t order the cops to tackle me on the way. Okay?”
He looks at me. Pressing his lips together, he remains silent.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Bye now, Mr. McCord. Good luck finding your wife.”
I lean across his legs, grab the brown bag containing my chicken salad, climb out of the sedan, and head back to the Uber.
Callum’s gaze burns into my back every step of the way.
