Fated To My Billionaire Call Boy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Red Pocket Square
On the night her divorce is signed, Hallie mistakes the man at the bar for the companion she thinks her friend booked, learns he is Ephraim Stanwick from Statistics 201, and hires him for her ex's engagement party.
The man in the red pocket square sat down across from me, and I handed him an envelope.
I should back up an hour.
At four o'clock that Thursday, a judge in a Boston courthouse signed the paper that ended my marriage.
Lawson didn't come.
He sent his lawyer, a gray man who never once looked at me.
Five years of my life were undone in ten minutes.
I was twenty-nine years old, I had a one-bedroom in Somerville with no curtains, and I had never felt so loose in my own skin.
Wynn took me to dinner to celebrate.
She ordered the wine, and I drank four glasses of it, because nobody was waiting at home to ask where I'd been.
"You know what you need?" Wynn said, with her fork in the air.
"A man who is paid to be nice to you. No strings. I should hire you one."
"You should," I said, and we both laughed.
At seven, a text came in from Wynn's number.
It said, "Your companion for the evening will find you at the Aldine hotel bar. Dark suit, red pocket square. Enjoy."
Wynn was in the bathroom.
I looked at the screen for a long time.
Then I put on my one good black dress, hugged her goodbye, and told her I was going home.
I went to the Aldine instead.
I'm not proud of it, and I'm not sorry either.
For five years Lawson Gaines decided what I wore, what I ate, who I called and when I quit my job.
Tonight a man was going to be nice to me because I'd said yes, and nobody would ask me to be grateful.
The bar was dim and quiet, with brass rails and a bartender polishing glasses.
I took a table in the corner.
At ten past eight, my phone buzzed with a different message.
It was Lawson.
"Engagement party Saturday, nine o'clock, the Aldous house on Beacon Hill."
"Selena wants you there to show there are no hard feelings."
"Sign the house release and you can have your grandmother's piano back."
Engagement party.
The decree was four hours old.
I read it twice and then set the phone face down so it couldn't look at me.
The door opened.
A tall man in a dark suit came in out of the rain, shook water from his hair, and stopped just inside the room.
There was a red square of silk in his breast pocket.
He looked at the whole bar.
Then he looked at me, and something crossed his face that I took for nerves.
He was good-looking in a way that didn't try, with dark hair, broad shoulders and grey-green eyes.
I thought, Wynn, you didn't skimp.
He crossed the room and stopped at my table.
"Hallie Brennock," he said.
His voice was low and a little rough.
"They told you my name," I said. "Good service."
He opened his mouth and I held up a hand.
"Please don't explain anything. I've had four glasses of wine and a very long day, and I'd like this to be easy."
I slid the envelope across the table.
"I don't know how this works. Is it cash up front?"
He looked at the envelope.
He didn't touch it.
"What's in it?"
"Six hundred dollars for tonight. I'll pay more if you'll do something else for me on Saturday."
"What's Saturday?"
"My ex-husband's engagement party. Two days after the divorce. I'd like to walk in on the arm of someone who makes him wonder."
Something almost like a laugh moved in his chest.
He sat down.
"You don't remember me," he said.
I frowned.
"Should I? Do you tell all your clients that?"
"Statistics 201," he said. "Boston University. You sat in the back row, because you hated the professor, and you drew in the margins of everything."
The room tilted a little.
"You borrowed my pen on the first day and never gave it back," he said. "You drew a fox in the margin of my notes."
I stared at him.
A fox.
I had drawn that fox in a lecture hall nine years ago, because the professor reminded me of one.
"Ephraim," I whispered. "Ephraim Stanwick. The front row. You wore the same grey sweater every day."
"Three grey sweaters," he said. "I rotated."
My face went hot all the way to my ears.
He was my classmate.
He was the quiet boy who answered every question, and now he was sitting in a hotel bar in a dark suit, waiting for strangers.
"Oh no," I said. "Oh, Ephraim. I'm so sorry. Things must have gotten really hard."
He blinked.
"Hallie."
"No, it's all right." I put a hand over my eyes.
"There's no shame in it. Everybody needs rent."
"I'm only mortified I handed you six hundred dollars like a tip."
I pushed the envelope a little closer.
"Make it six thousand for Saturday. I have savings, and I mean it. I want the best date in Boston at that party."
He was quiet for a long moment.
His eyes went to the red square in his pocket, and then back up to my face.
Something decided itself behind them.
"Six thousand," he said slowly.
"Is that enough?"
"For Saturday." He picked up the envelope and tucked it inside his jacket. "I'll be there."
My shoulders came down.
"Done?"
"Done," said Ephraim Stanwick.
I was too relieved to notice that he was smiling.
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