Accidentally Married to the Billionaire (The Billionaire's Touch, #1) Read online

  “Ouch. Five hours?”

  “Okay, one hour, but it felt like five hours,” Marj grumbled. “Enough of me. How’s my favorite newlyweds?”

  “Fantastic. I mean, I never knew it was possible to be this happy!” she said. “Jack’s got a show in Sonoma tonight, and tomorrow we’re for the boardwalk at Santa Monica!”

  “That’s great. I mean, it makes me want to stick my head in the oven, but it’s great for you,” Marj deadpanned.

  “It won’t do you any good. You just keep your shoes in the oven. I know you. It’s not like you’ve ever turned one on!”

  “I’m not turning on anything or anyone these days. Gosh, I can’t believe everything went south so fast with Luke.”

  “I mean, the secretary? Really? Did he not have a shot with a Swedish airline stewardess? I am profoundly disgusted with him, and I’m sorry I ever considered him a friend,” Britt declared loyally.

  “What does Jack say?”

  “He’s not happy about it at all,” Britt said.

  “What does he say about what his friend Luke did to me? And don’t sugar coat it. I’ll know if you do. Just give me the truth.”

  “He said, they’re both players and one of them was bound to get played,” Britt said with an audible cringe.

  “Hmph. I guess he’s right but it sucks. And tell him he’s never going to get to try my legendary apple pie because I’m not baking for him!”

  “With God as my witness, you have never baked a pie. Why would I threaten him with the lack of an imaginary pie?”

  “Look, for all he knows, I could have won the blue ribbon at the county fair for my superior pies.”

  “Marj, he’s not stupid. If I told him you won an award in Booty Boot Camp or you put together an unbelievably gorgeous outfit for like seven dollars, that he’d believe. He knows your skillset. You worked for his dad the same time I did.”

  “Britt, trust me when I tell you that Jack was not wasting time and awareness on what might or might not be in my wheelhouse of abilities. He was ogling you. Straight up trying to peek down the cleavage ogles. Whenever we were talking down in marketing, and you headed our way, he’d kick his feet up on the desk like he was relaxed, just shooting the shit, but it was his ‘try to act natural’ move.”

  “I think that’s cute,” Britt said.

  “Of course, you do. Because he was smitten with you. I’ve never scored smitten. It’s not a thing in my world. I’m not even getting selfie likes on Facebook anymore. I’m down to like six likes, and I think two of those are pity likes. I may need to redo my roots already. And I’ve been reading about eyebrows, like if you have skinny ones they make you look older.”

  “Your eyebrows are not old, Marj. You’re beautiful, and you’re in terrific shape because you work your ass off, and the only reason you don’t have a man yet is because most men are stupid. Like really stupid. I am fairly sure I got the last one in Manhattan who wouldn’t qualify for medical brain death declaration. I mean, do you remember the guys I used to date?”

  “Yes. I do. I’d rather not mention them by name because I’ll have a post traumatic episode. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had the best luck myself, and since I lack your sunny view of the world, I’m probably doomed to solitude.”

  “In that case, I’ll send you a souvenir vibrator when we get to LA.”

  “Thanks,” Marj said, “try and find one with my name on it. I like to feel special and scream my own name.”

  “I still can’t imagine Creative Consulting without you. I mean I know you didn’t want to work with Luke—”

  “I could not work with him. He humiliated me, and I kept wanting to throw coffee on him whenever I saw him. As a practical woman, I knew that throwing scalding hot coffee on him would cost me my job and a lawsuit. So, to avoid jail time, I quit.”

  “How’s the new workplace?”

  “The salary’s the same, and the benefits are even worse. I may have to sell my spare kidney if I don’t get a tax refund this year.”

  “You don’t exactly have expensive tastes. You’re the most frugal person I know, and I’m an accountant, Marj.”

  “Correction. I do have expensive tastes. I just can’t afford to indulge them.”

  “I don’t think you could overspend if you tried, babe.”

  “Oh, but I’d love a shot at it.”

  Britt laughed, and they hung up.

  All snarking aside, Marj was going to have to go over her budget yet again, and it might mean cutting off the weekly coffee and muffin, as well as the occasional splurge on a manicure or, in this case, an ill-fated and orange-tinted fake tan. Up until recently, she’d had a roommate. Not the illustrious Luke of course, but a nurse called Lisa who worked nights. They shared the rent and utilities and only passed each other in the mornings as Lisa got home and showered while Marj left for work. Lisa, however, had taken a job at another hospital working three twelve-hour day shifts for the same as a forty-hour week. It left her with four days free, and she was starting med school with the on-campus housing to help offset the costs. So Marj was left flying solo on the rent.

  She didn’t exactly live in a penthouse off of Park, but it wasn’t in a bad neighborhood either. She always took the bus, not the subway. Now it looked as if she’d have to get to know the subway system. As a marketing major, she knew the value of rebranding, and she couldn’t face calling it the subway—it sounded so dingy and defeated. She hadn’t decided whether to refer to it as the Tube as in London or the Metro a la Paris.

  Marj loved her apartment, and it would be the last thing she gave up. In extremity, she might move to Brooklyn, but it didn’t appeal to her. Brooklyn would be an admission that she couldn’t make it in Manhattan despite all her education, her bravado. Her skill at using a gaudy K-mart scarf, tied creatively, to make a drab basic outfit into something with style. Marj liked to think she had style, and she did not mean Brooklyn-style.

  She bought a salad at the corporate cafeteria instead of giving into the temptation of the gourmet pasta place down the street. Fine, she thought, as she watched gorgeous girls emerge from the elevator, their fresh blowouts gleaming beneath the atrium skylight—go ahead and eat your expensive pasta. I won’t have credit card debt and a jiggly carb ass from my cheap salad. Still, the dried cranberries and gummy lettuce did little to console her. Marj returned to the training session early and started typing a list on her phone.

  Advertise for new roommate. Put up notice in coffee shop and social media.

  Check references of all applicants. Use HR’s background check software registration to run a thorough...is that illegal? Check on legality of using HR’s id and password to investigate roomies.

  Pack lunch every day. No wasting $ on takeout. Buy and eat high fiber, low sugar cereal.

  Check to see if I could teach a class or two at the gym to offset membership costs. Otherwise purchase cheap stair climber on Craigslist.

  Make effort to look sexy anytime I leave apartment. Could meet a sugar daddy anywhere, even at the Tube? Metro? Might be an eccentric billionaire who rides the Tube? Metro? to keep in touch with common man. Must convince him a Town Car is better.

  The presenter cued up another PowerPoint, and Marj settled in for a long afternoon.

  Chapter 3

  Three weeks into her new job at a new company, Marj found out that her smartass belief that the joint needed a new COO if he was advertising the fact he was being headhunted was accurate. The COO had decamped for greener pastures just ahead of a so-called merger. What it was, was an acquisition by a sweeter name. The company would get to keep its moniker and brand under the umbrella of Power Regions Ltd. Presumably, it would be helmed by a new executive. And almost guaranteed it would be some old, fat, white guy with three ex-wives, not the second coming of Jack Fitzsimmons.

  Here it was, the irony train coming into her station, Marj thought. It was like a bad sequel where the leads from the first movie took their awards and ran while less skilled unknow
ns took over for them in the follow up that no one liked. Like that Keanu Reeves sequel with the cruise ship and no Keanu Reeves, she thought morbidly. If Britt was recast as Marj, she was willing to be that Jack was being recast as a Danny DeVito lookalike. She groaned aloud. Not only was she damn near broke from covering the lease alone, she was about to get a brand new boss. It was not a promising prospect.

  Her work friend, Angelica, gave her the inside scoop.

  “Power Regions is a major player in international business. It was big before the old man died and it’s better now. The son leveraged some serious buyouts, and it’s a legit empire now.”

  “Please tell me that the son is hot, single, and ready to take on a pet project in the form of our marketing department?” Marj suggested hopefully.

  “More like the son’s out of a job. His expiration date is coming and the game is about to change. Word on the street is he failed to meet the terms of the will, so the wicked stepmother takes all. Lena Cates has a team of lawyers circling him like vultures. She’s about to take over,” Angie said.

  “So, even if he is hot, which hasn’t been confirmed, he’s about to be powerless and poor like the rest of us. Not good. I’ll have to go back to Tinder and hanging out in clubs if my new job can’t produce a hot CEO,” Marj teased.

  “You better hope he gets things straightened out because Lena Cates will flush us right down the toilet. She has the business sense of your average trophy wife...heavy on the narcissism and light on the administration side.”

  “Maybe she’d just bask in the wealth and leave us alone? Hire a manager?”

  “Remember the King Herod thing from Sunday school...kill all the babies in case one of them is Jesus? Imagine King Herod as the wicked queen from Snow White. If it’s a woman, fire it because it could be fairest of them all.”

  “Is there any basis to this or is it just an urban legend? I mean, seriously, I’m sure there are plenty of women who have inherited businesses and run them like rational human beings. Botox doesn’t make her a bad person or wildly jealous of other women.”

  “Her husband, when he was alive, gave her a company to run because she wanted to try her hand at being an executive. Within six weeks every woman was either let go or quit and was replaced by young men. It was like she was building a harem. There was an article about it in Business Week with a really tacky picture of shirtless men serving her coffee while she sat on her desk in a tight top and a short skirt,” Angie sniffed.

  “So she’s doing wonders for feminism, I gather. Maybe she just thought...hell, I can’t defend something that stupid. She’ll turn this place into the boy version of Hooters and we’ll all be out of a job,” Marj lamented.

  “First Vegas, then the soup kitchen.”

  “What?”

  “Marketing is going to Vegas for the merger. The executive suite and three reps from Marketing, yourself included. The deal is they want this to sound like a real merger, like an opportunity for the company to expand, not like we’re being taken over. So the best spin doctors are going to press the flesh with the new owners and figure out ways to make this look like a good idea to the stockholders and the media.”

  “I’m going to Vegas? Oh, thank goodness. Maybe I can hook up with an Elvis impersonator and get a quickie wedding. That way I won’t have to get at the end of the breadline when the Wicked Queen takes over. I’ll have his salary to live on.”

  “I don’t guess you’ve ever been to Las Vegas then,”

  “No, but I’ve seen it on loads of sitcoms.”

  “Clearly. Well, there’s not a lot of Elvis going on there anymore.”

  “Fine, I’ll get a nice Mariah Carey impersonator and we’ll tie the knot,” Marj said dubiously.

  “Make sure it’s a talented impersonator and not just somebody in a wig and a pair of Spanx.”

  “Well, obviously I don’t want to wind up hitched to a crappy impersonator who doesn’t make any money. I’ll have to get out my sexy clothes and pack them. When do we leave?”

  “You’re leaving Friday after work.”

  “Oooh, weekend in Vegas, baby! You just cheered me up. If I have an expense account for food and gambling, it would be better. Do I have one of those?”

  “No. But you can eat those ninety-nine cent buffets and nurse one drink all night.”

  “Or I could wear my shortest skirt and get someone to buy my drinks.”

  “Good plan. Just be sure to do some marketing while you’re there.”

  “I will. I’m always marketing. Just now I’m trying to figure out how to market myself to a successful celebrity impersonator,” Marj teased.

  “Great. If you get rich and decide to quit, call me.”

  “I will, babe.”

  Marj hugged her and took off. She had a wardrobe to inventory and a boot camp class to attend. She hurried to her apartment and swiftly yanked every usable article of clothing from her closet and piled it on her bed. She flopped open her battered weekender suitcase and started loading it. In went her high heeled boots and her red stilettos. Never mind that the stilettos had come from Goodwill, and she’d had to use a Sharpie to cover the scuff marks, they were still nice shoes.

  Then she grabbed her stretchy black miniskirt. She’d had that since college and never once had it failed to showcase her perfectly toned butt and thighs well enough to pull a hot guy. A sparkly tank top she’d inherited from Britt who decided it was ‘too flashy’ for herself. She chose leggings and a tight blouse for her arrival—sort of naughty-secretary wear. Dinner would require something more formal. She dug through her club dresses—bits of glittery Spandex—and sighed. Everything was too trashy looking for a business dinner, even if Marj was hoping, half-jokingly, to attract a rich guy. She was going to have to buy something.

  First, boot camp, then shopping. After she sweated for an hour, climbing, jumping and doing push-ups until she was sure she would pass out, she took a quick shower at the gym and headed for the boutique she always ogled on the way to the bus stop. Obviously no more bus for her, but she could, at least, peer in those aspirational windows and get an idea of what she wanted to look for.

  In her post-workout flush, she stood outside the display window and took in the deep blue cocktail dress, form hugging and strapless but for the shadow of navy lace that ran from the bodice to the throat in a sheer panel of alluring faux modesty. She practically pushed her nose up against the glass to stare at it. It was perfect. She would wear it with her boots...no, too hooker. Her red stilettos? Too desperate. Hmmm...it would require new shoes. And probably a bank loan. She bit her lip.

  Britt had accused her of having no idea how to overspend. She was about to prove her wrong. Because something about that dress captured her. She needed it. Marj had always believed fashion was an art form, and this spoke to her, saying everything true and hard about her life and how there wasn’t anything sumptuous in it, and the lace reminded her of how she tried and failed so many times to hide her heart. She had cared for Luke, and he had cheated on her and dumped her. And even her best friend’s husband thought it was as much her fault as Luke’s—because they were both players.

  Except she wasn’t a player, not really. She was a woman with her eyes wide open, and if that meant there was no prince at the end of the story, then she would have to face it. Because she wasn’t Britt—she wasn’t sweet and lovable. She was practical and hard and lonely as hell. And maybe in that dress, maybe someone would see it and think it wasn’t so bad to be who she was.

  So Marj walked inside the shop and bought the dress from the window. When the clerk suggested she buy the eight instead of the six, she refused. She knew that her shape took up space. She also knew it would look fantastic a little too tight. She wasn’t afraid to be uncomfortable. She’d been uncomfortable most of her life, after all, so she might as well show it. Six days a week of working out for as long as she could remember had given her a body with nothing to spare—no bulges anywhere that a tight dress might reveal, no extra f
at, no extra anything. So she bought the six and vowed to soap the zipper if she had to in order to zip it up. She cringed when she paid for the dress because it was so expensive, but hopefully it would be her lucky charm, the thing to start her new life. No man, new job, maybe a hope somewhere.

  Chapter 4

  Everything at the hotel and casino in Las Vegas where she was booked was red and gold. Not gold but gilt—every table leg, every mirror frame, everything. The opulence managed to look both fancy and tacky, a little bit like me, she thought cheerfully. She rode the mirrored elevator to her floor, checking out her reflection from every angle, tugging at her leggings a little where they were bunched up behind her knees. So she was bent over, yanking on her leggings when he got on the elevator.

  “Going down?” he asked archly.

  She stood up and tried not to look flustered, despite the fact that she was embarrassed—cheeks flaming—and he was gorgeous.

  “Hardly,” she said with what she hoped was a dismissive expression.

  He was tall with broad shoulders and chiseled features, your basic fantasy. Dark hair swept back from his forehead. Dark, penetrating eyes, a square jaw that spoke of authority or, at least, stubbornness. She stared. She was riveted; it couldn’t be helped. He was wearing, she observed, black trousers fitted perfectly, a deep purple polo shirt, a slim chronograph watch—everything tailored, of the highest quality and ruinously expensive. He didn’t have a smartwatch or any sort of obvious tech toys of the kind.

  Everything about him said rich and classic and nothing to prove. His forearms were muscled, his wrists thick. She always looked at wrists because, despite the urban legend about finger length and certain masculine attributes, she’d often found men with strong and sturdy wrists were far better endowed than their slender and elegant counterparts. Forget artistic hands or pianist’s fingers. Give Marj broad, strong wrists and capable hands any day of the week.