At the Billionaire’s Wedding (29 page)

Her next two stops went well, too, and she returned to the library with a lighter van and a much lighter heart. Almost light enough to forget about how she couldn’t go to the most exciting party she’d ever be invited to in her life.

She texted her sister
Home soon
, and went into the staff room to grab her purse. When her boss stepped into the open doorway, she knew it from the heavy scent of Axe For Men.

“I’m thinking about changing the van’s Friday route,” Dick said, flipping through papers in his hands.

He was only doing this to hurt her because she’d enjoyed her day.

“You can’t,” she said, initialing her mileage in the bookmobile’s logbook. “The donor specified the routes.”

Dick laughed. “Do you really think that the anonymous donor of the bookmobile cares where we drive the thing?”

“Since he specified the routes, I think he must. Or she.” She turned her back on him, pulled her purse out of her locker, and managed to avoid slicing her palm on the broken zipper.

Dick was still standing in the doorway. Now the papers were stuffed in his pocket and he jingled car keys in his palm.

“Going out tonight, Cali?”

“Every night, Dick.”

“You’re so hot in those jeans, Cali.”

“You can get fired for saying that to me, Dick.” She’d once spoken about his inappropriate comments to the director of the library, Cara Schaeffer. Cara had taken Cali’s complaint very seriously. But Dick had stellar ratings from all his female employees except Cali. Cara documented the complaint, then privately told Cali she should try to get hard proof of the harassment. Overwhelmed with complications in Zoe’s medical needs at the time, Cali couldn’t fight both battles at once, and she’d let it drop. Anyway, Dick’s father was a state representative, with all sorts of political connections. She’d never win.

“Don’t be so sensitive. You know it’s all in fun,” Dick said. He knew she couldn’t afford to lose this job or hire a lawyer. He gave her a smile just patronizing enough to prickle under her skin. “Got a date tonight?”

“I sure do.” She always did when he asked.

He twirled his keys around his forefinger, the Mercedes logo prominent on the fob. “Does he pick you up in a CLS63 Benz?”

She pulled her purse tight over her shoulder and faced him. “He picks me up in a limo, actually.”

His eyes slithered down her body. “Do you do him in the limo, Cali? With the driver watching? I bet you like it when the driver watches.”

She walked toward him. “Move, please.”

Some nights he didn’t step aside right away. Some nights he made her ask nicely.

He didn’t make her ask this time and she went into the corridor.

“After you bring the van back tomorrow,” he said behind her, “I want you to start the claimed-returned list. It needs to be finished by Monday night.”

“Fine.” Drudge work. Depending on the collection, it would take hours. She’d have to ask her neighbor, Mrs. Fletcher, to grocery shop for her and Zoe again. Third time this month so far. But Dick always made her pay for rejecting him. This time she was getting off easy.

Later, while helping her sister wash her hair, she invented stories about the sexy hat guy to distract herself from worries and amuse Zoe.

“Maybe he’s a spy hired by Dick to take incriminating vids to send to the anonymous donor so I’ll get fired.”

“Or he’s a really lazy drug dealer,” Zoe said, rubbing her spiky locks with a towel. Four years younger than Cali, she was infinitely hipper.

“Or maybe beneath the hat he has three eyes and an alien brow ridge, and he’s just hanging around in the park to study humans before the big invasion.” She shook two pills from a bottle and dropped them onto Zoe’s palm.

“You should tell him go to the mall instead.” Zoe swallowed the pills with water from a plastic Iron Man cup. Zoe had a thing for Tony Stark. “More people there.”

Cali smiled.

“But I like the other scenario best.” Zoe ran the three fingers on her left hand through her damp hair. “The one where he’s the anonymous patron of the mobile library just checking up on his investment. Wouldn’t that be great? If it’d been him all along?”

“Sure. Other than the alien explanation, it’s the most likely.”

“He’s hot, right?”

“I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen his face.”

“But you said he’s got a hot body.”

“I think so.” The Levis and loose button-down didn’t reveal much. But his shoulders were broad. And once, when he’d gotten a phone call, stood up, and loped out of the park, the chamois shirt had caught in his belt. She’d liked the way his jeans hugged his hips. A lot. Too much. “He’s got a great butt.” Tight.
Hot.

“Nobody says butt anymore, Cal. Do you ever read those magazines you check out of the library?”

“I get them for the ads.” She paged through Cartier watches, Manolo Blahnik shoes, and DKNY lingerie. And fantasized. “Ass. He’s got a great ass. Are you happy?”

A sleepy smile creased the scars around Zoe’s lips. The meds were kicking in. “When’s Jane’s wedding, again?”

“In four weeks.”

“You have to go. Cut loose for a change.” Zoe’s eyelids drooped. “You’ve got a week of paid vacation you’ll lose if you don’t use it.”

She’d been saving it for emergencies. The more Zoe healed, though, the less she thought she’d need it. But it was always best to be careful.

“Cutting loose isn’t my style, Zoe.”

“You’re going to England, Cali. You’re going to meet a hot, rich guy, have a crazy whirlwind romance, and he’s going to fall in love with you,” her sister said dreamily. “Then we’ll get to live in a mansion like we would’ve if Dad hadn’t turned into such a fuckup.”

Cali brushed a lock of hair off her sister’s brow, fingers scraping over the hard skin where the burns had penetrated to the bone. “Night, goofball,” she whispered.

The next day, after Cali brought the bookmobile back to the library, she sent a quick text to Zoe,
Have a good time watching junk TV w Mrs. F
. Then she got to work on the claimed-returned list. An hour into the project, Dick showed up and tried to crowd her up against a shelf. She slammed the heel of her palm into the side of his face, slipped out while he was cursing, and ran to the bus stop, shaking with fear and rage all the way home.

The minute she got inside the apartment, the bad night got worse. Zoe’s eyes were glassy.

“It hurts, California.”

Cali knelt beside the wheelchair, wrapped her arms around her sister’s shoulders, and tucked her face against Zoe’s leathery cheek.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” But inside she was weeping the same words she always wept on nights like this:
Damn that drunken bastard to hell
.

After she got Zoe to sleep, she sat beside the bed holding her hand for a while, dozing. She couldn’t turn in yet. Too many things to do first. Bills to pay that Medicaid wouldn’t cover. Dishes that’d been stacking up for days. Laundry. She would put in the clothes first. If she was lucky, the guys from 3G wouldn’t be smoking joints in the laundry room and everything she owned wouldn’t smell like pot for the next week.

Slipping her hand out of Zoe’s, she shut off the light and gathered up the dirty clothes and towels from the floor. Throwing them all in the plastic laundry basket, she grabbed last month’s
Vanity Fair
to read while the machine filled up, and opened the apartment door. Her foot slipped on paper on the threshold. It was a thick envelope. Across the front in neat, bold type was
CALIFORNIA BLAKE
.

It couldn’t be an eviction notice. She’d paid the rent. Last month. But their landlord knew she’d get it to him as soon as she got paid, and he was always cool about it.

She stuck the envelope in her back pocket and went downstairs. Smoke hovered around the open door of the laundry room and she almost reversed direction. But she had exactly one clean pair of panties left.

Trying not to breathe, she said “Hey” to the guys from 3G, opened a washer, and dumped in the clothes. Then she put her quarters in the slot and measured the soap. Waiting for the basin to fill, she pulled the envelope out of her back pocket and opened it.

And stared.

She shook her head, but the contents remained the same. One round-trip ticket to London Heathrow Airport in her name for the week of Jane’s wedding. One contract for a week of nursing care from the five-star home care company Cali wished she could afford, with her name at the top and
PAID
marked after the hefty total at the bottom. And one $800 gift certificate to Joan Shepp, an upscale women’s designer boutique.

The washer clicked into cycle and started to gyrate against her hipbones. Numbly, she poured the soap in a careful ring and shut the lid.

Then she looked through the documents again.

This could not be real.

She didn’t believe in fairy godmothers. She didn’t believe in miracles. And she sure as heck didn’t believe that a little secondhand marijuana smoke inhalation could turn an eviction notice into a dream come true. Which meant that Maggie, Masala, and Roy had pooled their money for this. She’d no idea where they could’ve scrounged up this kind of cash. Probably from under their mattresses.

She couldn’t accept it, of course. Monday she’d make a detour to Green Park from her usual route and return it to them after thanking them profusely. She’d only ever seen them at the park on Fridays, but aside from her sister, they were the best friends she had. God bless the anonymous donor of the bookmobile, or she never would’ve known them. And God bless her friends for this gift.

Later, despite Dick’s harassment earlier and Zoe’s pain, despite the empty checkbook and the brown mark on her last white blouse from the sucky dryer, she went to sleep smiling.

“You’re not telling me the truth.”

“Cali girl, are you calling me a liar?”

“Masala.”
She didn’t have time for this. She’d already gotten a late start after spending fifteen minutes on the phone with the home care service, begging for the name of the person who’d purchased the contract—unsuccessfully. Now she had to get the van back on its route or she wouldn’t have enough time at her first stop. She looked desperately around Masala’s hair salon, but everyone just looked back like she was crazy. She thrust the envelope at Masala. “Please. You’ve got to take it back.”

Masala folded arms draped in filmy hot pink polyester. “I can’t take nothing back that I didn’t give.”

“Then give it back to Roy. Or Maggie. I can’t accept it.”

“Why not? If somebody wants to be fool enough to give you that kinda money, you’re an even bigger fool not to accept it.”

“But—”

“Let the good deed be worth something, Cali girl.” Masala’s voice gentled. “If you give it back, whoever it was that gave it to you is gonna be disappointed.”

Masala unfolded her arms and circled one around Cali’s shoulders. She squeezed tight.

“Do something crazy for once, girl. Go to that fairy-tale wedding. And when you come back, you gonna tell us all about how you met Prince Charming and had the time of your life.”

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