Better Off Dead (11 page)

The older man spoke, extending his hand, “Not at all.”  It was creepy phone guy, aka Mr. Enoch.  “I’m afraid I should be more…flexible.  Regrettably, I’m old and set in my ways.  Please forgive me, Miss. Hart.”

Okay, his voice may still be kind of creepy.
She took his rather warm hand,
but he really couldn’t be any more handsome and ingratiating
.  She could well imagine him holding court with royalty, and she was sure he and Shirley would get along perfectly.

She smiled to herself just thinking of Shirley chatting him up on her bus.  The idea was preposterous.

Mr. Enoch released her hand, giving her a tiny dip of his silver haired head in salute.  Then he turned to the other man at the table.

Wow!
  Lucy thought, looking up into his handsome, dark featured face.  Dark chocolate brown eyes you could get lost in.   His lips were kissably thick, with just a touch of pink.   And his bone structure was perfect; Prince charming in the flesh.  Not to mention how his suit was tailored to hug his lithe body to utter perfection.  The chocolate and caramel in the suit only accentuated his dark skin and hair. 

Oh, and his eyes—drowning deep.
Can’t get overt those eyes.

But then she noticed the look on the handsome younger man’s face.  It was a look she’d never seen coming from a man.  Usually men looked at her with admiration and longing.  That she was used to.  But this guy, he looked at her with clear distain.  Lucy had never had a perfect stranger look at her with such pure contempt.

“This is my nephew, Gabriel Enoch,” Mr. Enoch said, introducing them.   “Gabriel, this is Lucy Hart.”

Lucy beamed her brightest smile at him, thinking that maybe he was uncertain of her, or that he was just shy.  She offered him her hand. 

He looked upon it like he didn’t know if her hand was clean enough to touch. 
Obsessive
Compulsive disorder?
  There were no less than six kids in her old school that had extreme cases of the illness.  She almost sighed with empathy.  Those kids were a mess, and miserable as all get out.  

But then Gabriel Enoch reached out and took her hand.  He was hot.  Not as in visually appealing, which he was.  His hand, his flesh, was hot to the touch.  He shook her hand and then suddenly let it go, looking at his own hand as if it had been infected or something.

“She won’t work,” he said to Dante Enoch.

“Gabriel?”  The Lawyer’s voice was smooth as silk, but there was irritation there too.

“It won’t work.  She’s so…”  He was glaring at Lucy with loathing.

“She’s Beautiful,” Dante tried to finish for his nephew.

“Shallow and greedy, I’d say.”

Luvici cut in.  “She comes from a good family.  That is what you were looking for.”
             

“Not that good,” Gabriel said.  “Not if she’d do this for money.”

Both lawyers stood there with shocked expressions on their faces.  Gabriel turned to Dante.  “I’m sorry, Uncle, but I have things I need to take care of.” 

Lucy knew she should have been hurt.  Any other girl in the world would have been pushed to tears by the words that fell from Gabriel Enoch’s lips.  But she wasn’t like any of those girls.  She’d already had every kind of degradation visited upon her in the last six months.  She needed this, no matter what kind of jerk she had to work with.

Lucy blocked his escape by walking up to him and laying one of her freshly manicured hands on his chest.  The gesture was intimate, as was the smile that she knew would bring out her dimples.  This made Gabriel gulp, which was good.  It meant she had his full attention.

“I might be shallow and greedy, and I may be the sort of girl that would do…” She gave him a slow, dismissive up and down look, “this for money.  But you need this just as much as I do.”

He scoffed.

“Come on, Gabe…”  His eyes flashed angrily at Lucy nicknaming him. 
Interesting
.  “What is it anyways?”

“What is what?” 

Lucy noted how his irritated tone suddenly shot down in volume.

“Well, from your lack of an accent, I’d say you don’t need a fiancée for immigration purposes, so this all has to do with the object of your affections.”

Gabriel scowled, anger glowing in his gaze.

“So what’s the what?  Is your family racist or something, so you can’t bring your non-Anglo Saxon girlfriend home to meet the folks?  Or…”  Lucy laughed and rolled her eyes.  “I get it.  I get it.”  She sat down and took a sip of the ice cold bubbling water that sat at her place setting.  “I’m going to be your beard.”

“You’re going to be his what?”  Dante looked completely confused.

“His beard,” Lucy answered.  She looked up into Gabriel’s scorching gaze.  “So you’re gay and you don’t want your family to know.  Well, I wouldn’t have guessed.  Course, it’s hard to tell nowadays.”

“I’m not gay,” Gabriel said flatly.

“Not that it’s any of my business, but I think trying to hide that kind of thing from your folks isn’t good for you.”

Gabriel looked taken aback.  

“I mean, stress like that can ruin your complexion.  Not to mention put lines on your face before their time.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”  Gabriel shook his head and Lucy saw that his fists were balled up.  “I’m not gay.  But there’s nothing wrong with being so.”  He shot her through with his eyes.  “Only low people still find homosexuality something to hate or be embarrassed about.”

Whoa…this guy is serious as a heart attack,
Lucy smiled.
   More interesting
. 
And kind of likable, if you ignore the whole “low people” barb.

But,
Lucy peered up at Gabriel Enoch’s exacerbated face
, I like yanking his chain.

“So, Gabe…then your family’s a bunch of bigots?”

The look on Gabriel’s face turned downright scary.  He bent down, one of his fists on the table, lowering his face to mere inches from Lucy’s.   “My family is none of you goddamn business.”

Lucy felt a stab of fear.  But instead of leaning away from him, she leaned toward him, her smile still in place but her eyes turning cold.  That wonderful annoyed heat was building in her head again.  It was such a relief, how that feeling seemed to clear her head and make her calm.  Well, calm wasn’t quite the word for it.

Determined maybe?  That heat seemed to let her see where she was supposed to go, what she wanted, and what she needed to do to get it.

“Then my family and my motifs are none of you goddamn business either.  And I’m not a prostitute, so quit looking at me like I am!”

A smile flickered across his lips.  There was something, suddenly, passing through the air between them.  Be it something sinister of simply a trick of hormones, but whatever it was made Lucy’s toes curl and the back of her neck tingle.

He smells so good…

But he is such a jerk!

The heat evaporated from Gabriel’s expression as he straightened to his full height.  He was smiling and shaking his head.  Lucy didn’t like his smile.  She liked him better when she was pissing him off.

“She’ll do,” he told his uncle, and then he nodded to Lucy as he started to walk away.

“Gabriel?”  Dante said.  “Where are you going?  There is much to discus.”

Gabriel spoke as he walked to the door:  “You know the terms we need.  I’m certain you can handle things from here.”

And with that Gabriel Enoch was gone out the front door, disappearing into the bright Californian daylight.

Luvici sat down and pawed through the menu.  Dante turned and looked at Lucy.  She couldn’t stop smiling.  Had she passed the test?  What came next?  She was seeing the sparkling diamond at the end of her journey again.  And this time, it was twice as big as before.

Dante sat down, shaking his head and then looked up at his lunch guests with a weary look in his eyes.  That look extinguished when Luvici called out an order for a bottle of Chateau Margaux 1995, and an appetizer of oysters.

“Very well, Francis.”  Luvici glared at Dante, but didn’t say anything back.  “Shall we order?  Then we can talk business?”

“Fine by me.”  Luvici went on to order a huge and exurbanite meal.  French onion soup and a Cesar salad—as if his breath needed any help being disgusting.   Then he ordered a porterhouse steak (rare) with provolone cheese and scampi shrimp on top.  Throw in a baked potato with butter, sour cream, bacon bits and chives, and Lucy thought she was going to throw up if she was going to have watched him eat all that.

But since this was her fantasy restaurant, she wanted to order something really good.  She’d been eating mostly her grandmother’s cooking and McDonalds, so eating at a high class eatery was an event. 

Her mouth watered as she looked over the choices.  Everything on the menu looked good, especially since there weren’t any prices on it.  Maybe a combo platter of a little of everything…maybe the size of the table?  
             

Then she thought of how she hated feeling so thankful for being there.  Being like that, feeling that way, it just made her mad.  How had she gotten this far down?

“I’ll have the grilled chicken and a spring leaf salad with honey mustard dressing on the side.”  She was going to trim down to her old size—she’d just decided.  And she was going to demand weekly trips to this very restaurant in their negotiations.  That way she’d get over this whole “thankful for things” phase.

~*~

Negotiations went well until Luvici asked for too little money.  Why he’d decided to low ball the other lawyer made no sense to Lucy.  All she could think was,
That’s not enough.  That’s not even half what I need.

“I’m sorry Mr. Enoch,” she interrupted, “but Frank misunderstood what amount I require to do this…bit of acting.”  This made Luvici flinch, and made Dante squint at Lucy like she was out of her mind.  “I need at least three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.  And that’s just at the end of the job.  What I need now is a charge card for shopping.”

“Shopping?”  Dante squinted even harder at her.

“Shopping…you know?  Every young woman’s favorite past time.  I need a whole new wardrobe…that is if you want Gabriel’s parents to believe I come from a good family.  I imagine since you’re their lawyer that you’ll keep my father’s legal problems, and my family’s money problems, from them.  You’d handle that sort of investigation for them, right?”

“Well, yes…” Dante said, looking surprised.

“So, I’ll need to shop to pull off the rest of it.  And I’ll need use of a car.”

The look on Dante’s face was wide eyed surrender.  Lucy had to smile.

“Well, I can’t be expected to take the bus to go shopping, or to go wherever it is I’ll end up having to go during this hoax.”

“This isn’t just some childish prank, Miss Hart.”  Dante’s tone was scolding, and his expression could be taken as the beginnings of a heart attack.  He looked stressed and weary as hell.  “This is a very important, very serious matter.  Gabriel’s father…everyone in the family must be convinced that you are Gabriel’s betrothed.”

Lucy leaned forward and instinctively took Dante’s still very warm hand and smiled reassuringly.  “I can do this.  I promise.  I’ll make even you think that I’m in love with that arrogant jerk.  So no worries, okay?”

A sudden understanding passed between them.  They knew that they needed each other, and that they would both uphold their part of the deal.

“Done,” Dante said pulling his hand gently from Lucy’s and straightening his tie and suit.  “Three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars at service end, use of a car and a credit card for shopping purposes.”

“And some mad money.”

“Mad money?”

“And a cell phone.  I’ll run through the minutes on this thing in no time.”  She held up her little pre-paid phone and waved it at Dante.     

      
              “Maybe you’d like a computer too.”  Dante said wearily, yet with definite sarcasm.

“No,” Lucy said, sticking out her lower lip, thinking.  “Just make it an
iphone.  Then I can do whatever I need, internet wise, through that.”

Luvici coughed and turned away in his seat so Dante wouldn’t notice he was laughing.

Dante smiled as Luvici’s oysters, salad and soup arrived.  Then he turned that smile on Lucy.  “Gabriel is going to have his hands full with you, isn’t he?”

HIS SPIRITS
high, Gabriel returned to Enoch Industries and threw himself into his work.  He fired off e-mails, made phone conferences, even let his assistant, Laurel, schedule a lunch with his mother.  He felt good about the girl he’d chosen to be his red herring fiancée.  She was shrewd and devious, and thought fast on her feet.  He always respected a goal oriented person. 

Lucy Hart had been attractive, yet too young.  He’d loathed her on sight.  No one so juvenile and clearly narcissistic would be capable of pulling off such an intricate, important deceit.  Yet in the brief time he’d spent in her presence she’d shown she was skilled in a wide range of nefarious behaviors.  He’d wanted to kill her where she stood when she’d insulted his family.  But just watching her shift gears from hostile to beguilingly seductive, and then to shrewdly perceptive, convinced him that she was the girl for the job.  Young or not, shallow and money hungry, he could tell she would stop at nothing to achieve her goal.