CATCHING THE BILLIONAIRE

Chapter 3

Okay, how do I look?” I turned away from the mirror over the sink and struck a pose.

Beny's expression was carefully neutral. “Truthfully? Like a kid in his dad’s suit.”

The post fund raising dinner was themed, black&tie, and I unfortunately didn’t have one, so I’d borrowed Beny's. Not completely grasping the impact of Beny being six foot six and an athlete. When I was pretty much the opposite of that. “What if I rolled the sleeves up?”

“Don’t you fucking dare. That’s my best tux.”

As I walked across the room, the trousers slipped ominously down my hips. I tightened the  belt I’d hidden under the cummerbund and managed to stave off disaster.

Beny winced. “Do you really want to meet important people looking like that?”

“It’s not that bad.” My hair was having a small rebellion of its own. I’d quiffed it in one side but the whole thing had fallen sideways like a drunk on Saturday night. But fuck it. Matthew Bloomberg wasn’t coming anyway.

He’d probably forgotten about me the moment he’d put the phone down. And I wasn’t going to be…sad or disappointed about it. Nope. Not even a little bit.

He wasn’t all that. Okay, I admit he was good-looking, but he wasn’t photogenic, really. He never smiled. Always the same flat stare, as though he regarded the camera as an enemy.

“I’m telling you,” Beny was saying, “it is that bad.”

I waved a hand, implying that I really don't give a damn, and picked up the bow tie he’d laid out for me. Turning up the collar of Beny’s dress shirt and slipping the silk around my neck, I abruptly remembered I had no idea how to tie the damn thing. The last time I’d had to do this had been matriculation and it hadn’t gone well. Maybe because I’d still been drunk from the night before. Or maybe because bow ties were bullshit.

I messed with the ends, crossing them over each other and moving them about randomly, as if this would miraculously make a bow appear under my chin.

Beny sighed. “You don’t know how to do that, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Come here.”

I went there and Beny stood up, pushing my hands out of the way. And then, just like that, his confidence seemed to desert him. We’d always been fairly snuggly, but this was different somehow: my eyes turned up to Beny’s, him frowning down at me, a piece of black fabric twisted between his fingers, so close to my throat that it felt like a promise or a threat. “Shit,” he muttered, “it’s hard to do it backwards.”

There were about sixty-four million jokes I could have made. Instead I closed my eyes. Tilted my chin to make it easier for him. “I trust you.”

He fiddled, the touch almost aggressively impersonal. “Left end lower than right, bring it over, make a loop, up and through…fuck.” A knock on the door and Beny jerked away from me, the ungainly knot he had created unraveling instantly. “Um, yeah?” he called out.

Noel stuck his head in, gingerish curls flopping haphazardly. “Message from the Lodge. You’ve got a visitor.”

Beny looked startled. “Me?”

“Nuh-uh”—he pointed at me—“that one.”

It couldn’t be…could it? “Who?” I asked, like a disingenuous fuckwit.

“Bloomy somebody? No. Bloomberg. Yes. That's right. He’s waiting for you.”

“Oh my God.”