The Billionaire's Fake Fiance Page 9

  I always hated that book.

  I hated that you could rearrange the clothes to lie about the person. I preferred to arrange it so that the correct heads went with the correct outfits. I remember trying to tape the pages into their rightful configuration, much to the anger of my little sister, Willow, who preferred to mix it up. She thought it was funny to put a ballerina head on a clown body with lumberjack boots.

  Turnip Truck glances up. Our eyes meet, and again I have the sensation that her clothes are flipped wrong. That her stare is flipped wrong. But then she turns away and busies herself with whatever she was doing.

  “Sasha’s on the phone with IT,” the woman says. “Should I ping her?”

  “By all means. Ping her.”

  Ping her.

  I take a seat in the waiting area, annoyed. I wonder, not for the first time today, what Operator Seven is doing. Is she calling other people? Unease rises in my chest.

  I grab a Vossameer newsletter from the little table and pretend to read it, but I can’t stop going back over our conversation. The way Seven’s voice gets raspier when she’s aroused. Her sense of humor. I love how she doesn’t take shit from me, but there’s that vulnerability to her.

  The women shuffle their papers. Turnip Truck seems to be helping the receptionist. Maybe Sasha gave up on her and demoted her. Being that she’s so moronic and all.

  Finally Sasha finds her way up to the front. “Mr. Drummond! I hope you weren’t waiting long.”

  I stand. “I’m going to need the contact information for the wake-up-call service.”

  “I hope there isn’t a problem,” Sasha says.

  A flutter of papers behind the reception desk.

  “Oh no!” The receptionist disappears behind the desk, kneeling, presumably to gather whatever papers were dropped.

  Turnip Truck stands there looking bewildered at this strange demonstration of the principle of gravity, then she, too, disappears behind the desk. Apparently picking up dropped papers is a two-person job at Vossameer Inc. Do I need to fire every last person on this floor?

  Everybody except Sasha. Sasha’s work has been stellar in the past month. And her ideas for doing behind-the-scenes lab spotlights have really grown on me.

  “Mr. Drummond? Are you no longer finding it effective? I could find you a new service. It would be no problem,” Sasha says.

  “No, I’m happy with this service you found. I just need the contact information. The name of the service. The number.”

  Now Sasha looks bewildered. Am I speaking in Urdu?

  “Will that be a problem?”

  “Sure, I could get that for you, no problem.” She smiles brightly. “I’ll email it.”

  “I’ll take it now, if you don’t mind.” I nod at the phone in her hand.

  She looks down at it. “It’s not on here. It’s on my desktop.”

  I sigh. “I’ll wait, then.”

  She looks nervously over her shoulder. “I got kicked offline. I need to go back and reboot it, and it’ll be a bit. I don’t want to make you wait. I’ll email it as soon as I’m back up. The first task.”

  It comes to me here that Sasha’s hiding something. She seems nervous.

  “As soon as it’s back up,” she confirms brightly. “Top of my to-do list.”

  I frown. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have started the reboot process before you left your desk? It would be rebooted by now.”

  “Oh, of course,” she says. “But I thought you might be up here with an urgent matter. I’ll have that info ASAP.”

  I sigh. What the hell am I even doing down here? I have work to do. “ASAP.”

  Fifteen

  Lizzie

  * * *

  Sasha turns to me as soon as the door closes behind him. “Did I not ask you for those call service details yesterday?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Yet you didn’t see fit to provide them for me. Thanks for making me look completely foolish.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, clutching the papers to my chest. Quietly freaking out.

  “Don’t be sorry, just get me the damn details. Are they on your computer?”

  “Yes?”

  “Come on, then.” She heads toward my desk.

  I follow, quietly freaking out even harder. If I was a cartoon, there would be jagged scribbles around my head.

  Because obviously there’s no contact information for the wake-up service to show her. What am I going to do?

  “It might take a bit to put my hands on it,” I say, taking my chair and inputting my password. “I’ll have to dig around a bit. I’m not sure where I put it…”

  “How hard can it be? You got it on Craigslist, right?”

  “Uh…that’s what you suggested…”

  “At some point you were going to have to pass along the details to billing, were you not? Did you not write it down?”

  “I guess I was in a hurry at the time. I know I can put my hands on it, it’s just—”

  “That you’re disorganized? And that your disorganization is affecting the people around you?”

  One more write-up and I’m fired. And I lose my bonus. I cannot lose my bonus. With shaking hands, I type Hello Morning Wake-up Service into the search bar for my local disk.

  “That’s what it’s called? Hello Morning?”

  “If I recall.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  I hit enter. Hello Morning is a Japanese TV show and an inspirational thing for women. “I might have to dig.”

  “What about your email history?”

  “Oh, good idea,” I say. I navigate to my mail, but there’s nothing there for that day. “Oh, wait,” I say. “I was cleaning my inbox. Maybe I deleted it or…”

  “Why on earth would you delete something like that?”

  Why indeed.

  She waits.

  What else can I do? I scroll to my trash. It won’t be there, of course. I’m just trying a lot of things. I can feel the tears prick at my eyes. She’s going to find out now. Either she’ll give me a write-up for not being able to locate the details of the service I hired for Mr. Drummond or she’ll give me a write-up for lying and posing as a wake-up service.

  And if she knew what really happened, I’d get nine hundred write-ups.

  I close my eyes, trying to think what to do. She’s criticizing my junk-mail filter. I can barely hear her. I’m feeling mortified and a little bit angry—not at Sasha; she’s just doing the best she can, though she could lose some of the Cruella bitch-i-tude.

  No, I’m mad at Theo.

  What the heck? He couldn’t just leave it alone? What does he want with the company information? Is he planning on ratting me out? I feel so betrayed, like we had a little secret together.

  I take a deep breath, getting ready to tell her there is no service, but then her phone sounds. A wind chimes tone, which is sort of perfect for her in a weird way.

  “I need to take this. Have it to me in five. You understand?”

  I nod.

  She walks off. I sit there, heart pounding. That’s when I get the idea. I’ll quickly set up a service. I can do this!

  I break land speed records in how fast I sign up for a Yahoo! email account—HelloMorning456@ymail.com. I use the email to set up a Craigslist advertisement. I make the ad very generic—Wake-up calls provided. Prompt. Trustworthy. Effective. I hesitate about the price. I have no idea. I quick Google wake-up-call service prices and settle on one. I hit submit and wait for it to go live.

  My heart pounds nearly out of my chest while I wait.

  I refresh my email again and again. Finally it’s up. But it says when it was posted, dammit.

  Nothing to be done.

  I do another quick Google search to see whether there’s a way to change the date. There doesn’t seem to be a way, but I discover that it’s a common ploy to delete and repost things on Craigslist to keep them on top of the search.

  Perfect.

  I grab a link
and type a quick note:

  Ack! Looks like they took down the old posting and put a new one up—that’s why I couldn’t find it! Trying to stay on top of the feed I guess :) But this is the service we’re using.

  I say a little prayer and hit send.

  Then I inspect the ad. If Mr. Drummond scrolls all the way down, he’ll see the date. But why would he scroll down?

  The more I think about it, the more I think he might not. He’s too demanding and jerky to sit there and study every inch of the ad. He’ll click the email and make a few demands. Mr. Drummond wants what he wants when he wants it.

  It still really stings that he’s going over my head to my superiors. We had a certain intimacy going.

  Then I remember another hole in the plan—they’re going to want to set up with Hello Morning in billing.

  Shit.

  I go to my PayPal account and set up a special section that invoices under the name Hello Morning. Thank you, PayPal! I arrange it so that the money goes directly to my favorite sea turtles charity. They want the button to say donate, but I do a workaround to get it to show up as a regular checkout button.

  If he finds a way to follow the bread crumbs when I set up with accounting, they’ll lead to sea turtles.

  Ha! Go ahead, follow the money, asshole.

  I sit there wishing I’d picked a more outlandish charity. Sad clown fund or something. But sea turtles are worthy. Sea turtles are my favorite cause in the world.

  I smile, feeling excited. Energized. Happy.

  When was the last time I felt happy? Not since Mason.

  I send the stuff to accounting as a new vendor. I give them the address, let them know the rate, and tell them they’ll be receiving invoices every thirty days.

  My brand-new Hello Morning Yahoo! email address gets a response with a purchase order number. Hello Morning is to put this number on all invoices.

  Yeah, whatever!

  I write back to thank accounting. I sign it Katherine Mayhold, comptroller. I don’t know why I choose comptroller. But why not? I had phone sex with my boss at 4:30 in the morning and now I’m in a prairie dress impersonating a wake-up-call service. Just another day at Vossameer!

  I get to work on the Instagram strategy, but I can’t help but have the Yahoo! web mail up on my phone. Waiting.

  Whatever will Professor Wonderbrain do now?

  Report me to my boss? If anything, I should be reporting him. Maybe he wants to apologize. Maybe he’s mortified. Maybe he wants to get a different caller.

  My heart sinks a little at this thought.

  Nearly twenty minutes after I sent the email to Sasha, a new email arrives. An email from Theo Drummond, CEO, Vossameer Inc. Subject line: Query.

  I slip my phone into my lap and click on the message, heart pounding.

  To whom it may concern:

  I’m interested in contracting with you to hire the operator I’m currently working with as a dedicated provider for me and my business. Money is no object. Please call me at your earliest convenience.

  Sincerely,

  Theo Drummond, CEO, Vossameer.

  1-212-555-1561

  He wants me all to himself.

  My pulse races as I reread it. I don’t know how to feel about it.

  It’s kind of pushy and entitled. At the same time, it’s flattering. Is he a little bit jealous? Wondering how I talk to my other clients?

  So he’s just going to buy up all my time. Make me talk to him.

  And I have no idea what to reply. Obviously the answer is no. Operator Seven is booked—we established that yesterday.

  But if money is no object, you’d think Hello Morning would find a way to accommodate him.

  I wring my hands. I tell myself I don’t have to write back right away. Maybe my company is busy calling people around the world. Maybe the CEO is in Bermuda.

  An hour later, Mr. Drummond sends another email. I’m following up on my previous query, copied below. I’m looking to expedite this process. Please respond at your earliest convenience.

  My pulse races. I feel like a fugitive. If I keep ignoring him, he’ll just send more emails. Or maybe he’ll try to investigate harder. No, I have to answer. I look around for Sasha, and then I pull out my phone and hit reply.

  Dear Mr. Drummond:

  We appreciate your interest in contracting with Operator Seven, but she is committed to a full roster of clients at this time, and there are no circumstances under which we would break that commitment. We appreciate your understanding and wish you luck with your search for a suitable alternative.

  Just to annoy him, I sign it, The cheerful folks at Hello Morning.

  I send it off.

  No email comes back.

  An hour later I’m really stressing. Was it too much? Too unbelievable? Who wouldn’t at least give him a price for buying out all these contracts?

  I cringe every time I hear voices up front in reception, thinking he’ll have seen the time stamp on the ad and figured the thing out.

  I eat my smell-free lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, trying to get into the competitive analysis part of the Instagram strategy, but I feel like this whole thing is spinning out of control.

  No, I think, it’s not spinning out of control! I’m lasting like a champ. Just the rest of today, then two days to go! I put more work into the Instagram rationale for Sasha. I talk about how people love a little drama, love to pull for the underdog, and this lab journal angle lets them in on that. I suggest a few junior chemists who could log his daily progress. We could do an image of the day—papers and beakers. Explanations in layperson’s terms.

  Stanley from accounting calls me that afternoon. He wants me to come down and discuss a problem with the vendor I submitted, namely that there needs to be an address and phone number for payment to process.

  Hmm. I wonder what vendor that could be? LOL.

  I head down.

  Unsurprisingly, the vendor turns out to be none other than Hello Morning. Stanley shows me his computer screen. It’s some sort of invoicing program. He points out the fields that need information. Did somebody get a call from his boss?

  “This service doesn’t have an address and phone number,” I say. “I think they send emails from a PayPal address.”

  “We can’t pay them from our system without that contact info.”

  “I see,” I say, trying to sound unhappy. “Let me email them and try to get that info.”

  I go back to my floor. Just for the hell of it, I send an email request for contact info from my company address to my Yahoo! address, and I cc Sasha and Stanley. To show I’m trying.

  I compose another email to just Stanley, giving him the link to the Craigslist ad. Here’s the info, Stanley. This is what we’re dealing with. The customer service is terrible!

  I hit send.

  Good luck getting those jerks to reply!

  And nothing comes back. I’m relieved for the first hour, but then the silence becomes ominous.

  Is Mr. Drummond trying another angle? Mr. Drummond is tenacious. He was tenacious on that phone call with me. And he’s certainly tenacious as a chemist.

  In one of the interviews with him that I read back when I was applying for this job, he talked about how he knew the original formula absolutely had to be possible, that he could sense it, like a sculptor sensing form trapped in rock, needing to be uncovered. He kept going at it, striving to figure out its shape, its detail. He couldn’t rest until he had it. He slept in thirty-minute intervals while he was going at it. Like a pit bull he went at it.

  Apparently people had been dreaming about this advanced type of blood coagulant for years. People knew that it was possible, but the difference is that Theo muscled his way into solving it.

  And here, I have the flimsiest of smoke screens. A Craigslist ad. A Yahoo! account. Mr. Drummond could probably place a call to Yahoo! itself and find a crony to give him my info.

  But can he do that in two days? No way. And that’s al
l I need: two days.

  Sasha comes back a while later. She has her phone in her hand. She sets it on the desk. The ad is on the screen. “Something’s fishy,” she says. “Look at the date. This ad was put up today.” She eyes me. “Today.”

  “I know, right?” I turn my hopefully innocent face up to her. “It turns out that sometimes the people offering services at Craigslist take down their old ads and put up new ones so that they appear at the top of Craigslist searches. It’s a known technique that Craigslist frowns on.”

  “Hmph,” she says. “And they don’t even have a website.”

  “I know, right?” I say.

  “Mr. Drummond doesn’t like mysteries,” she informs me.

  I swallow and nod.

  “This is frustrating for Mr. Drummond, and therefore it’s frustrating for me.” She looks at me again, as though I’m somehow at fault, which, admittedly, I am. “Dig a little, okay? Google the shit out of Hello Morning and see whether you can get something. Surely there is something out there. Don’t businesses have to register with the state or something?”

  I grit my teeth. “I’ll check it out.”

  “Don’t just check it out, give me answers. You wrangled this service. You need to handle this. I was counting on you to vet it at least a little, but apparently you didn’t do that, and now we’re stuck with this disruptive situation. I don’t want to disappoint Mr. Drummond again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry; be proactive.”

  I nod. As a matter of fact, I won’t be proactive, but I will be remembering that line to amuse Mia later on.

  “Have the answer on my desk in the morning.” With that, she storms off.

  Mia is there when I get home, working at her cross-stitching. “How’d the wake-up call go?” She puts out the peanuts.

  “Oh, it went…fine.” I concentrate on getting a glass of water.

  “Were you just like, ‘Wake up, motherfucker’? Did it work again?”

  “Yeah, I guess it worked. It’s hard to say.”