Billion Dollar Mistake by K.C. Crowne

Chapter 12

SAWYER

Ihad a decision to make – and I needed to stop screwing around.

I was in my office, seated at my desk with my legs propped up on it, hands folded behind my head as I thought it all over. Work was looking very manageable for the day – I had a meeting with some of the engineers in an hour, then a few housekeeping matters to sort out after lunch. Other than that, I was open.

That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Work was often a solid way to keep my mind off other matters that might preoccupy me, whether I wanted it that way or not.

So, that morning I found myself having nothing to do but sip my coffee and think about whether or not to pull the trigger with the whole “fake marriage” thing. On my computer was a list of contacts, other women I’d known over the years who might make suitable partners for this unusual arrangement.

However, there was a problem with the women on my list – I didn’t know them. Sure, I’d taken them out for nice dinners and whisked them away on whirlwind weekends in Ibiza and Paris and Buenos Aires. I’d wined and dined them and gotten them into bed, both of us having our fun before it was over and done.

However, I didn’t know anything about them beyond that. Most were good company for a few weeks of distraction, but I’d always made sure to end things before they got too complicated. That didn’t always work ‒ I’d been the source of more than a few shed tears and screamed out expletives, but I always made sure to cut things off before too much time had passed. However, that meant I never got a chance to get to know the women on a deeper level, to understand what their character was like.

That had always worked for me, but now it meant that I didn’t have a single woman from my past that I could come to with a proposal like this. There might be plenty of women who’d chomp at the bit to be my fake fiancée, but how many could I trust after that? Which of them would threaten to go public unless I gave them more money than we agreed to? Hell, which of them could be trusted to keep a secret like that, to not blab it out the second they had one too many White Claws in them?

None of the women seemed like good candidates – none of them but Jolene. I’d known her as a teen, knew she had a solid professional history. More than that, I got a good vibe from her. She seemed like the perfect candidate ‒ so much so that I worried she might slap me out of moral indignation if I were to present the arrangement to her.

A chime sounded from my computer, and I sat up, clicking over to check my email. Excitement rushed through me when I saw that it was a message from the private investigator I’d hired to check into Jolene’s background. I hadn’t gone crazy with it – no men in trench coats following her around and lurking in the shadows. If there was any chance I’d be enlisting her for the job though, I figured it’d be due diligence to make sure there were no surprises.

The email was comprised of a dozen or so documents ‒ college transcripts, criminal records, those sorts of things ‒ along with a short summary written by the investigator. I leaned forward, coffee in hand, as I gave the summary a read.

Most of it was information I already knew but there were a few surprises. For example, that her parents were divorced, her dad having flown the coop when she was young. I read on, seeing that her dad had sent Jolene and her sister and her mom some money during the girls’ childhoods. Didn’t matter – money or no, it was a scumbag move to run out on your family like that.

I’d known that she had a younger sister, but she’d been too young back in the day for our paths to have crossed during high school. Her name was Joanne, and she worked at the DA’s office here in Denver. I couldn’t help but smile at their names – Jolene and Joanne. Kinda cute, really.

I read on. When I reached the paragraph about her adult life, I saw that it was all information that I’d already known – summa cum laude from Colorado State, then top of her class at Colorado Med. I clicked her CV and was just in awe as I went over how well she’d done at school. The woman could’ve been making seven figures a year doing belly tucks and face lifts in LA but had instead moved back to her hometown to study corpses for a living.

When I reached her financials, I found a bit of a surprise. Her credit was solid, and I hadn’t wanted to go poking around in her bank account, so that information was hidden. Her student loans, however – damn. The woman had racked up over a hundred thousand in debt, and there was no doubt in my mind that her job at the coroner’s office left her barely enough to keep up on the interest, let alone the principal.

No wonder she lived so humbly.

It gave me an idea – if I were to bring her in on this plan, offering to pay off her student loans might be a hell of a bargaining chip.

Someone as talented and brilliant as she was didn’t deserve to be weighed down by student loan debt.

A buzz from the intercom snapped me out of my thinking. The office door opened, and Mrs. Weller popped her head inside.

“Your doc’s on the line, kid.”

“Thanks, Andrea.”

She shut the door and I pressed the button for the speakerphone.

“You know I have a cell phone, right?”

“Ah, that’s no fun,” Zander replied. “More retro to do it through the secretary. What’s up with you?”

I paused, not sure what do say. Did I tell him about what I was doing? I wasn’t the lying type, and more than that I sort of wanted his opinion on the matter.

“Long story.”

“Got plans for the afternoon? Supposed to be a nice day – thought you might want to hit the links.”

I glanced outside, seeing that the sky was a perfect blue, not a single puff of white hanging over the peaks of the Rockies in the western distance. Some fresh air sounded perfect, to say nothing of the chance to hang out with Zander.

“Let’s do it.”

We made plans to meet up at his country club at two. With that, I plunged headlong into the work of the day and before I knew it, the time to head out had arrived. As I was leaving, I let Andrea know she could close up for the day and head home. Since that meant she’d be free to pick up her grandkids from school, she was more than happy to oblige.

An hour later I was with Zander at Cherry Creek Country Club, the ritzy spot where he had a membership. After greeting one another and catching up on what had been going on with the both of us ‒ me withholding an exception, of course ‒ we grabbed our gear and headed to the links.

The day was perfect, bright and sunny and just warm enough to be pleasant.

Around the putting green of the third hole, I gathered the nerve to bring up what I wanted to talk about with Zander. I spilled it, telling him about Jolene and the fake marriage plan.

He regarded me with a quizzical expression, not saying a word.

“If you’re just going to stare at me like that,” I said as I took position in front of my ball, “then I’m going to knock this thing in.”

Right when the putter touched the ball, Zander let out an uproarious laugh – one that was enough to totally knock me off my game. I swatted the ball harder than I should’ve, the ball zagging across the green at an angle that didn’t bring it anywhere close to the hole.

“You done?” I asked once he finished laughing. “Because that’s most definitely a do-over, doc.”

“Sorry,” Zander said as he wiped tears from his eyes. “It’s just…man, that’s a plan only someone like you could come up with, bud.”

I bent over to pick up the ball. “What, you think you’re too good to fake a marriage to ensure that you get put at the head of a multibillion-dollar company?”

“I mean, I get why you’re doing it. But man, it’s got all sorts of failure points. What if she slaps you in the face and goes right to your dad when you ask her – how about starting there?”

“She doesn’t seem like the type; she’d probably be more likely to tell me to screw off.”

He ran his hand through his thick hair as I placed the ball in an approximate spot to where it had been before.

“I’ve got an even crazier idea,” he said as I positioned myself for a putt.

“Crazier than my plan? Let’s hear it.”

“How about, you know, you actually date her – see where it goes? Hell, maybe live together first?”

“No dice. That’d take way too much time, and my dad wants this all to happen fast. Like, in a few months.”

“But you like her, right?”

“I do. And that’s the scary part.”

“So, maybe your dad’s right, that you just need to take some time and get to know her, let things happen on their own.”

“Dad doesn’t want me to take time – he wants me to get married before he retires. So, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask her to marry me, tell her the terms of the arrangement, and see how it goes.”

Zander chuckled. “Getting married and then seeing how it goes. Sounds pretty ass-backwards to me, but what do I know? I’m not the one faking a marriage to take over a company.”

Maybe Zander had a point. As we finished the game, with me playing terribly, I considered the matter. Was there something real between Jolene and me? Something more than simply fruitful grounds from which to grow the deception to end all deceptions?