Chapter 2 - The Favor

Three months earlier.

"No! Absolutely not!"

This was Mira slamming her coffee down, the lid popped off. Coffee exploded all over Bea's blueprints. The result looked like a crime scene.

Despite Mira's outburst, Bea didn't flinch.

"Mira, it's just one dinner."

"With your ex-fiancé."

"With Adrian, one dinner and a gala." Bea's voice didn't even crack.

The problem was that it should have.

"He needs a date. It's for the Calloway Group Gala. He wants someone who won't sell photos to the tabloids."

"So just hire a stranger."

"He wants you." Bea said in a strange way.

Her face slowly turned into something complicated that Mira didn't have time to analyze.

"He wants someone who won't fall for him."

Mira's laugh was loud, disbelieving that their Tuesday had turned to this.

"That's your pitch?"

"That's my pitch."

The silence was so sharp it could cut the tension between the two friends.

"Bea, we've been friends for eleven years," Mira said. "With everything we went through in those eleven years, and this is the favor that you are asking?"

"Would you like me to lie about how bad it looks?"

"I would like it if you could lie just a little."

Bea looked at Mira, she didn't smile. She simply said:

"I can't ask anyone else. It's you that I trust, Mira. That's the whole pitch. I don't have another one."

It felt as if the eleven years of friendship between her and Bea meant nothing, Mira said:

"Fine, just a dinner and the gala. But if I can't stand him, I will bill you double."

Bea tried to smile but her smile didn't reach her eyes.

"He's not insufferable, that's the problem."

*******************

Mira didn't say yes immediately and certainly not that afternoon. All she said was that she was going to think about it.

They both knew what that meant.

That night, while Mira was drinking a glass of wine and pretending to review a blueprint, she pulled up Adrian Cole's name on her phone. She didn't call or anything. She just wanted to look.

CEO of Calloway Group, a thirty-four-year-old who inherited an empire that he quietly doubled….

Every photo that he had showed the same face. Controlled, unreadable… Pleasant.

That face that never looked surprised, not even once in a decade of press coverage.

Mira recalled the two hundred and eleven couples whose weddings she had planned. How they would look at each other like the room had melted away. It was just them at that moment.

What would it take to make a face like that become warm? Uncontrolled? Unscripted?

She closed the browser. She felt annoyed that she actually wondered about Adrian.

She texted Bea instead.

"Fine. A dinner and a gala. But remember I'm billing you double if I can't stand him."

Bea's reply came back immediately.

"You won't be billing me double. Trust me."

**********************

Cass found her staring at her phone the next morning while they were working on the chart of the Alvarez wedding. Mira was completely ignoring the work at hand.

"Are you doing the thing?" Cass asked.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you get quiet and start overthinking a man instead of our floor plan." Cass didn't look up from her color-coded chart.

"Who is he?"

"He's a nobody."

"A nobody who made you forget the Alvarez centerpiece order for the first time in two years?"

Mira stopped. She didn't answer.

Cass smiled, a knowing smile that said she already knew everything.

"Well then, if this man is who I think he is, I'd like a raise before you make it official." she added.

"I want to put this on the record." Cass said.

"There is nothing to make official."

Cass went back to her seating chart, unconvinced.

"Sure boss. Just remember I called it first."

*************************

Adrian Cole's stock dropped eleven percent in just a matter of days. The tabloids were vultures calling it a scandal. A mistress, a meltdown of a billionaire CEO. But the fact is, it was his lawyer, discussing a lawsuit with him. At a hotel. At midnight.

Nobody checked. Nobody ever did.

His office took up three floors, and just looking up at the building made Mira's neck hurt.

"Ms. Santos."

Adrian was already standing by the window when the elevator opened. It felt like he was counting the seconds until she arrived.

His voice was low, rough. He sounded like someone who hadn't slept in a week and had no plans to start tonight.

"Bea speaks highly of you."

"Bea rarely speaks highly of anyone." Mira sat straight. "I would take that as a warning."

Adrian almost smiled, but Mira wasn't sure, it was as if something flickered across his face. Was it really a smile?

"Noted."

He studied Mira the way he would go over contracts before signing them, searching for a clause that would cost him later.

"Your payment would be your normal rate," he said.

"Plus a premium that is considerable enough for the inconvenience."

"What happens after Friday?" Mira asked.

"After Friday, I go back to my mess and you go back to your weddings."

"Two hundred and eleven weddings, and never once did you want your own?" he asked.

"Twelve." Mira corrected him.

"Excuse me?"

"Two hundred and twelve, I closed a contract yesterday. I only count the ones that actually make it down the aisle."

Mira looked at him and continued. "Disappointing men rarely make the list."

"That almost sounds like a challenge, Ms. Santos. Careful."

"What if it was?"

"Then I will have to make sure that I am unforgettable and for the right reasons."

He looked at her with an admiration she could not place.

"Also, the contract has an exit clause." Adrian added before she got ready to stand to leave.

"You can dissolve the contract in forty-eight hours, no explanation required, no penalty."

"I am letting you know this before you sign anything."

"I don't think it is wise to let people know that when you're trying to close a deal."

"I don't want just your signature, Ms. Santos. I want you to stay because you want to. Not because a contract makes it inconvenient to leave."

Mira looked at him for a little longer than she should have. It almost seemed that he was vulnerable, unguarded, unscripted…

"That's a very strange thing for a billionaire to say to his fake date."

"I've been called strange before."

Adrian didn't look away. "Take it as a warning, same as the one you gave me about Bea."

"Friday, then," she said, standing up, getting ready to leave. "One dinner. One gala. Nothing more."

"Nothing more," Adrian agreed.

Neither of them believed it. Neither of them said so.