Page 37 of Return Billionaire to Sender

I frown. What’s a per diem? Is it the stipend? The way he says it, it sounds like it would be weird if I had used it up already. “No,” I say. “But I wasn’t sure…vis-a-vis your company culture…” I mumble as Willow taught me.

“Put your room number and it’ll go toward your per diem,” Nisha says. She makes me tell her my room number and then she scribbles it on my check with a nice tip and throws it onto the table. “Come on, let’s go.”

Coralee stands and grabs her purse. “We’ll be passing by him on the way out, but don’t engage unless he does,” she says to me. “Follow my lead.”

I follow her and Nisha down past the row of booths. The path to the door takes us right past the corner where Malcolm scowls at his phone in the candlelight.

He lifts his gaze as we near, expression mysteriously stormy, like he’s just learned lots of mysterious things on his phone that he feels really intensely about.

Coralee nods as she passes and he nods back at her. Nisha exchanges nods with him, too. He catches my eye as I pass. I nod, ears buzzing like crazy. Luckily, my feet still work, carrying me ever forward.

Did he nod back? I don’t even know, but I can feel the weight of his gaze on my skin as I follow my new coworkers out into the bright lobby.

Nisha grins at me. “Your cheeks are all rosy,” she says. “When I drink, I just get puffy eyes.”

“Red carpet time,” Coralee says, grabbing our arms and leading the way across the glamorous lobby. High above, a strange glass sculpture glimmers in the light.

11

Malcolm

Lyingto oneself is one of the most idiotic habits.Just one more won’t hurt. Maybe this time will be different.

How gullible do you have to be to believe a lie that you yourself tell yourself?

Yet people do it. They do it a lot. It keeps them victims of their own ridiculous games.

So just to be clear, I didn’t come down to the bar for a drink, though I could have tried to tell myself that. I didn’t need to stretch my legs; I didn’t feel like a change of scenery, nor was I up for a bit of a stroll.

I wanted to see her.

I’ve been unable to wrest my attention from her since the moment I collided with her in the lobby, and my inexplicable inability to ignore her only intensified when she turned out to be my coach. And then there’s that maddening, tantalizing butterfly bow tie.

And the way she threatened me. Yes. She’s got my full attention now.

Her sitting next to Lawrence was not my favorite thing ever. But then she left with Nisha and Coralee while Walt and Lawrence stayed behind, huddled up in intense conversation—American football, knowing them.

I finish my drink just as a call comes in from Tokyo. I wander out to the lobby to take it, pacing around, guiding my software systems group across the ocean toward salvaging a deal. I’d assumed she’d gone up to her room, but some twenty minutes into the call, I spy her through a lobby shop window, or more, I spy a bit of her hair, partially hidden by mannequins. I’d know that hair anywhere.

I find myself drifting nearer, settling into a seating area on the boutique side of the lobby, giving marching orders to a team a world away, while being entirely focused on the scene through the window of a women’s dress shop.

Coralee moves in front of Elle at one point. Coralee wears a gown of blazing sapphire, and Nisha’s in a bright retro number with geometric pink shapes, but it’s Elle who shines. She’s in something subdued—a slim sheaf of light brown. A shade lighter than her honey-colored hair, it sets up a resonance—the gown enriching her hair, the hair enriching her gown.

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m on my feet, moving even closer, mesmerized. I’m close enough to see that the two of them are listening, enrapt, to Nisha. Nisha’s talking and laughing and clapping. Nisha’s a woman with a clap for every occasion; on this one, she seems to be emphasizing a humorous point she’s making.

Elle turns to the mirror. She smooths her hands over her hips and turns this way and that, army green eyes steady on her reflection.

She likes the dress; that’s clear enough, and really it is perfect in the sexy way it grazes her barely there curves, perfect in the way it hugs her breasts, the way the scoop of the neckline frames the regal collarbones that she hides under those ridiculous pantsuits. I imagine running my finger along her collarbone, from one side to the other. The line of her collarbone is my second-favorite line on her, second only to the coy slope of her nose.

She puts up her chin, straightens her back, and gazes at herself from where she stands at the corner of the shop, unaware of the world outside the store window, unaware of the fact that when a bad man stands in a certain place in the lobby, he is free to enjoy her secret communion with the mirror.

Is the chin-up woman the woman she imagines would wear this dress? She turns again, taking herself in from another angle, and I think it’s most definitely bravery—that chin up attitude she puts on, as though she’s trying on the feeling of bravery the way she’s trying on an elegant dress. And in a flash of intuition, I know she’s thinking of me, thinking of facing me down. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that I am. I’m the dragon she’s been sent to torment, after all. I’m the one she requires bravery for.

I drink in this unguarded moment, this private performance of bravery. Real bravery is tedious. But this girl’s put-on bravery is vulnerable and fascinating and entirely unexpected, just like her.

I remember when I was first trying on my own look of bravery as a young boy; trying on bravery like an ill-fitting suit, a hard stare at the mirror, an invisible cloak, desperate for that brave feeling to become part of my very own exoskeleton.

She turns again, straightens even more. This time she narrows her eyes at her reflection, lips slightly parted. This new look—good god—it’s demure and flirtatious and ever so slightly witchy at the same time.

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