Read Billionaire With a Twist Online
Authors: Lila Monroe
He
smiles at me face-to-face and oh dear God, he has actual dimples.
“Good luck with the interview.”
“Thanks,”
I say, my gaze flicking to my watch one last time. It’s 8:54.
“You’ll
knock ‘em dead,” he says. I nod, trying to paste a
confident smile on my face.
I
face the doors I’ve been dreaming about opening for the last
week—well really, for the last twenty years—and feel
hopeful again. I have five minutes to get inside and pull my shit
together so I can show these people what I’m made of.
One
last thing first. “Are you sure I can’t replace that tie
I ruined?”
“Tell
you what,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “I’ll swing
by here next week and if you’re working, you can buy me a
coffee.”
Because
he’s gorgeous and he made me feel better and I’ll
probably never see him again, I’m suddenly brave. I say, “Off
the record, I would definitely call you handsome.” I wink at
him and enjoy the surprise on his so-totally-more-than-handsome face
as I stride away from him and toward my waiting future.
Inside,
my bravery falters: this place is seriously impressive. A huge lobby
with a polished marble floor, white marble columns reaching to the
ceiling, and holy crap, an actual Rodin sculpture in the middle of
the room. I stare at it, awed, until I notice a short, brisk-looking
woman holding a clipboard. I nervously approach. “Hi, I’m
Grace—”
“Bennett?
You’re the last to arrive.” She guides me out of the
lobby and pulls me toward the main auction hall as I fiddle with my
skirt and make sure my blazer is on straight.
“Do
I look okay?” I ask but she ignores me and opens the doors.
She
shoos me inside where a woman in a sharp black two-piece business
suit is speaking to the dozens of men and women my age already
standing behind tables stacked with papers and glossy photo spreads.
She stops and glares at me as I make my way to the only empty table,
closest to her.
I
whisper, “Sorry,” but she ignores me. The Armani-clad
dude next to me who has enough gel in his hair to grease a wheel
rolls his eyes.
“As
I was saying,” the woman in charge continues, pausing to glare
at me again, “I am Lydia Forbes, head of personnel. As far as
you’re concerned, that makes me lady fate herself. For one of
you, this internship will change the course of your entire life.”
Thanks for the
reminder.
“The
rest of you will continue searching for the elusive pearl to launch
your career.” I think I might hyperventilate, but the rest of
the candidates in their expensive clothes nod along as cool as
robots.
Lydia
continues as she paces the room. “In front of you, you’ll
find descriptions and photographs of ten objects that represent the
types of fine and decorative arts typically auctioned off here at
Carringer’s. You have exactly thirty minutes to identify and
appraise each piece, and then you will be interviewed.”
My
pulse races like I’m still jogging, but there is excitement
mixed in with my extreme anxiety. I get to look at beautiful art. And
even though I’m nervous, I also know that all those years I
spent studying my brains out in order to get my arts degree (while
still holding down a full time job) are finally going to pay off.
Lydia
stops in front of me, drums her French-tipped nails along the edge of
my table. “Each of you has an excellent resume, but only one
can be the best.” She gives me a little sneer as she walks
away, and I feel like my heart might pound out of my chest, but I
know I can do this. Mom would tell me take three deep breaths and
then go. I hear her voice in my head: “Everything slows down;
you can focus.”
Lydia’s
sharp heels sound like cat claws on the floor. “Your time
starts now.”
This
is your dream, Grace
.
I take three deep breaths and dive in.
“Last
summer I went to Italy for six weeks, but now Rome feels so
provincial, you know?” a snooty-looking brunette with perfectly
straight, shiny hair sitting next to me says.
I’ve
been in the salon—too luxurious to be called a waiting
room—outside Lydia’s office for nearly an hour. Art
adorns the walls, each piece worth at least a hundred years of my
salary. Worry knots in my stomach as I hear more and more of the
other candidates talk about their family compounds on Cape Cod, and
all their mutual friends from boarding school and Ivy League
colleges.
It’s
like a window onto a completely different world. They even use the
word summer as a verb, as in “Where did you summer?”
which is how this conversation next to me got started. The only
places I’ve ever “summered” were on the patio with
my mom, lemon juice in our hair for highlights, with the occasional
trip to the community pool.
“Oh,
Chelsea,” girl number two says. “Just because the guy you
laid in Florence never called you back doesn’t mean Italy has
been ruined.”
“Please,
Angelica, you’re only going abroad because your daddy said you
couldn’t laze around his Hamptons house again this year.”
“He
forced me to apply for this internship too,” Angelica pouts.
“Some old buddy of his knew someone here, blah, blah.”
Blah blah
is
how this girl refers to connections I would kill to have. She has no
idea how lucky she is. “Daddy thinks my Yale degree makes me a
genius, but I know I failed that assessment just now.” She pats
her blonde hair-sprayed bun. “I didn’t even know what
that rod thingy was! It looked like a broken curling tong to me.”
I
try not to think about how unfair it is. The art world is like this
everywhere, all about who you know and which circles you run in and
how rich your family is. I don’t have a celebrity neighbor or a
trust fund so girls like this will never take me seriously, but
hopefully that won’t matter in my final interview. I know I
aced those test materials.
That
“rod thingy” was a 17th century German scepter, not a
salon accessory,
I
have to force myself from saying out loud
.
Lydia’s
assistant with the clipboard appears as the Armani asshole from
earlier exits her office. “Grace Bennett?”
I
stand up and enter the room. My hands are sweaty, my throat tight. I
sit down in one of the chairs across from Lydia’s glass-topped
desk. Unlike the rest of the building, this room is all high-tech and
glossy-looking, with only a pair of antique Chinese cloisonné
vases as decor.
“Ms.
Bennett,” Lydia says, leaning back in her white leather chair.
Her perfectly coiffed hair doesn’t move as she looks me up and
down. “It says here on your resume that you studied at…
Montclair Community College.” She drawls the last two words
with clear amusement. “I was unaware that one could receive a
fine arts degree from a community college.”
“Not
all of them offer the program,” I say, my heart sinking at this
immediate obstacle. “I was lucky to find Montclair Community
College after I had to drop out of Tufts.”
“You
got into Tufts?” She looks surprised.
“I
attended for a year on a full scholarship before…a family
emergency called me back home.”
Lydia
waits for an explanation, but I don’t tell her anything more.
Mom getting sick, her death, it still hurts too much to talk about,
and soon enough Lydia slides her reading glasses to the tip of her
pointed nose and looks at the next paper in her folder. “You
did very well on the assessment.”
I
let out a breath I’d been holding since entering the auction
house. “Oh, that’s so great to hear.”
I
knew it!
“I just
love art so much—the Baroque era is my favorite, the movement
in the paintings, the energy and life in such dramatic, vivid
detail—but any true masterpiece hits me, right here, you know?”
I touch my heart. “It’s like a real physical response,
and I just want to be around the beauty, the craft, the history of
the art you have here.”
Lydia
removes her glasses, almost smiles at me. Maybe this isn’t such
a long shot after all. “Many of the other applicants also did
well,” she says. “Tell me why you deserve this.”
I
take another breath. Where do I even begin? “I would work so
hard if you give me this opportunity, Ms. Forbes, harder than anyone
else. I understand what an opportunity this is, and I don’t
take that for granted.” Not like the trust-fund kids outside, I
silently add. “Day or night, whatever Carringer’s needs.
I want this job, and…honestly, it’s everything I ever
wanted. I know I would be really good at it, and if you just let me—”
“Thank
you, Miss Bennett,” she says, cutting me off. She stands
abruptly, so I stand, too, my skirt sticking to the back of my legs.
“That will be all.” She gestures to the door, where I see
her assistant has been standing still as a statue during the entire
interview. My cheeks burn.
A
little flustered, I thank her as I walk across the room. “We’ll
be in touch,” Lydia says as I exit and am flung back into the
sea of rich kids and their designer duds and college connections,
feeling like the biggest fish out of water ever. What just happened?
Chelsea
and Angelica still sit in the same place, chatting and laughing.
They’re not nervous at all, and I wonder what it must be like
to not have to try so hard. To have daddy pull strings for an
interview, and have your life served to you on a silver platter. As I
walk past, Lydia’s assistant calls a ridiculous name that
sounds like “Grandelwile Brandyblerg” and Angelica says,
“Oh, he’s supposed to be really good. And his mother is
on the Board of Directors here.”
“I’m
not worried,” Chelsea says breezily. “You know my dad is
one of their biggest clients. My name is already on the paperwork.”
Angelica
rolls her eyes. “Why did I even bother?”
Chelsea
sees me watching them and smirks. “None of you should have
bothered. This whole thing is for appearances.” She looks me up
and down and clears her throat loudly. “Speaking of
appearances…” Next to her, Angelica giggles.
My
heart sinks. Tears begin to burn behind my eyes and I walk away fast,
quickening my pace even though my feet are blistered and sore. I have
to hope that that spoiled, shiny-haired, smug girl is wrong. That
this whole day wasn’t just a formality like she thinks, that I
have a chance.
Mom, I
did my best.
I cross
my fingers as I head back out into the city streets.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Does Grace land the job of her dreams? And who’s the sexy stranger she spilled her coffee
all over? Grace and St Clair’s story continues in
THE ART OF STEALING HEARTS
.
There’s more from Lila Monroe!
Sexy Australian
billionaire Grant Devlin is ruining my life. He exercises shirtless
in his office, is notorious for his lunchtime hook-ups, he even yawns
sexily. If I didn't need this job so bad, I'd take his black Amex and
tell him where to swipe it.
He doesn't even know I exist, but
why would he? He jets off to Paris with supermodels, I spend Friday
nights with Netflix and a chunk of Pepperidge Farm frozen
cake—waiting for his call. Because every time he crashes his
yacht, or blows $500k on a single roulette spin in Monte Carlo, I’m
the PR girl who has to clean up his mess.
But this time, it’s
going to take more than just a fat charity donation. This time, the
whole company is on the line. He needs to show investors that he’s
settling down, and Step #1 is pretending to date a nice, stable girl
until people forget about what happened with the Playboy Bunnies
backstage at the Oscars.
My plan is perfect, except for one thing:
He picks me.
Sexy playboy billionaire Asher Young goes through girlfriends like he goes
through bottles of Moët. I would know — he brings them all
to get fitted for my luxury lingerie designs. I guess that's one way
to avoid awkward conversations when they find another girl’s
panties in his Maserati.
Now he has a proposition for me: he’ll invest in my design
business, and I’ll finally open the boutique of my dreams.
There’s just one problem: I can’t stop kissing him. And
he looks REALLY good naked.
Make that two problems….
Thanks to knowledgeable (and sometimes flirtatious) bartenders in Los Angeles who talked to me for hours about
whiskey.
Thanks to Uber for all the rides home.
Thanks so much to all the readers and bloggers who have encouraged me this past year. Writing is isolating work, and
your feedback and friendship keep me going.
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