cuff links then pulled on his jacket. Then he combed back his hair in the mirror.
“It was a test,” he said to my reflection. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t just want me for my money. Which you don’t. So it’s perfect!” He turned around to fasten on his wrist a watch that cost more than the building we were in. “You passed! Congratulations! You can now date me.”
“Uh no.”
“You still don’t believe me?” He took a magazine out of the wardrobe and flipped to a page.
“See?”
I peered at it. Chris Winchester. Hedge fund wunderkind. Net worth three billion.
Motherfucker.
“You…you…”
He wrapped an arm around my waist. “There’s a limo waiting downstairs. I have dinner for us planned at a restaurant at the top of another tower I own.”
I threw him off and screamed, “You lying sack of shit!”
2
Chris
I jerked back.
Grace was furious! Her glasses had slid down her nose, and she was a ball of indignation.
“Why are you mad at me?” I exclaimed. “I said you passed the test!”
“I took off work for this garbage,” she snarled. “I have five brides waiting for their pictures, and you are wasting my time with mind games.”
“I have a right to make sure that you’re not a gold digger,” I said, annoyed that she wasn’t ecstatic that she had passed my test.
“And I have a right,” she said, jabbing a finger at me, “to tell you that you’re a sorry little man-child.”
She threw the magazine at me.
“I’m a billionaire!” I picked up the magazine. “See? It says it right here. I’m the next biggest thing.”
Grace didn’t care. Instead she turned and stomped out of the apartment.
I ran after her, trailing her down the stairs.
“Any other woman in Manhattan would be jumping at the chance to date me,” I informed her.
She stopped abruptly on the landing. “I will never date you, Chris Winchester, and I pity the woman who ends up married to you.” She hurried down the rest of the stairs. The limo driver opened the door as Grace hurried past him on the sidewalk.
“We have champagne and—”
“Use it to drown Chris with,” she snapped at him.
“Grace!” I ran after her and reached for her.
She whirled around, key ring jangling, brandishing a pink canister of pepper spray at me.
“Whoa, whoa!”
“Stop following me,” she said loudly, waving the canister in my direction.
“Jeez, I was just trying to do something nice for you.”
“Fuck you.” She stomped off down the street to the subway.
“So how was your date?” Boris asked me when I returned to the limo.
“I thought it went great. Apparently not.”
“And she just left?” Josh Svensson asked me the next evening at our weekly poker tournament. I was losing. Probably because I was playing with three Svensson brothers and I was sure they were all conspiring against me.
“Can you believe it?” I said, still annoyed. “I purposely bought that hovel because it had the perfect view of my tower. I had a limo waiting with champagne and a nice dinner planned. She went home and worked instead of staying with me.”
“She went to work? It doesn’t sound like you two are compatible at all,” Liam Svensson said.
“I work!” I scoffed.
“Barely. What time did you get up this afternoon? Two?” Josh teased.
“Twelve. But I went to bed late. Grace threw me off my sleep schedule. Damn it, I can’t believe she turned me down. No one turns me down! And it was so obvious she wanted to sleep with me, too.”
“Didn’t get laid and got told off,” Eric said with a laugh.
“At least he wasn’t pepper-sprayed. Raise,” Josh said.
“Shit.” I put more chips in the center of the table. The Svenssons’ older brother Greg had threatened them with disownment and grievous bodily harm if they gambled with money, so instead we gambled with dares.
The last time I’d won, I had made Eric stand outside of Jennifer Aniston’s New York house and serenade her with a Gregorian chant complete with the whole monk getup. Now he was winning, and I knew he was gunning for me.
“Just show up at her apartment, apologize, and ask her for pity sex,” Liam suggested.
“He’s looking for a wife, not a hookup,” Eric remarked.
“No, I’m not!”
“Then you would have just hooked up with her in the hovel,” Eric retorted. “Admit it. You’re ready to settle down.”
“I don’t want a gold digger, and all women who want to get married fit that bill,” I said, glaring at my card hand. “I just want someone to hang out with regularly. I need a