Lie to Me: A Contemporary Billionaire BWWM Romance (8 page)

* * *

B
ut
, again, you couldn’t argue with the results. Zoe’s face looked like it had been photo-shopped into a cover girl. Not a blemish or line remained. Her eyebrows had been modeled to arched perfection, her lips were a plump crescent of come-hither scarlet, her cheek bones – which had barely existed before – were clearly delineated and contoured, her eyes framed in delicate windows of mascara and long fake lashes.

“You look stunning,” said Nick. And she did.

Zoe admired herself in the mirror. “I do, don’t I.” She lifted her chin to see herself from every angle.

“I would recommend going for a lower maintenance model next time,” Ilke confided in Nick. “With her, you’ll spend more money on upkeep than you would in replacing her.”

Zoe continued to stare into the mirror. “I don’t even look like me anymore.”

Nick heard the small tinge of regret in her voice – and strangely enough, he felt it himself.

“You’re welcome,” said Ilke.

Nick pulled out his American Express card and handed over.

* * *

C
lothes shopping was next
.

Although he was a little ashamed to admit it (as most bartenders would be) Nick had a great eye for women’s fashion. He did not spend a lot of time reading up on the subject, he did not keep up to date on what was in and what was out, he simply had a natural flare for what color and design worked best with a woman’s overall look and body-type.

“It’s quite tight,” said Zoe.

“It’s supposed to be.”

“I can hardly breathe.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

Zoe looked in the mirror. There was a note of awe in her voice. “I look amazing.”

And she did.

“Next dress, please.”

Again Zoe stared disbelievingly in the mirror. “Are we sure these boobs are all mine? I really don’t remember having them before.” She pushed them together and then released them, watching them bounce perfectly with the new, properly fitting bra she’d been sized into.

“Presentation is everything.”

“It feels like there’s more scaffolding than the Eiffel Tower digging into my ribs but you can’t argue with the results.”

Nick nodded – you really couldn’t.

“Have we got anything that will make my legs look longer?”

“Next dress, please.”

This time Zoe was a little unsteady as she looked into the mirror.

“Why would higher heels make my legs look longer?”

“It’s an optical illusion. And the skirt helps.”

“You don’t think the skirt is too short?”

Nick shook his head. “It shows confidence.”

“If I try to sit down it’ll show a damn sight more than that!”

“You don’t like it?”

She looked at him. “Do
you
like it?”

Nick took in the unexpectedly lengthy expanse of Zoe’s legs. “We’ll need to get you a better color shoe to go with it. But yeah, I like it.”

“Then I like it.”

“Next dress, please.”

And so it went on, from business-like and professional (‘I could run for congress in this!’) to fancy eveningwear (‘Cinderella can suck it!’). After a while Nick wondered how many dresses Zoe could really need for the few days that she was going to have to pretend to be Vanessa, but it was surely better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. Besides, she seemed to be having fun trying on stuff that she could never have afforded. And, truth be told, he was having fun watching her. It was nice to turn his talent for women’s fashion to something practical – he had started out by turning Zoe into Vanessa, but now he was turning her into something even better.

It occurred to Nick, and he hastily suppressed the though even as he thought it, that he was actually turning her into his vision of the ideal woman.

There had always been, somewhere towards the back of his mind, an image of this elusive creature, a woman who was a combination of sexiness and sophistication, of brains and beauty. She would come to the opera with him and discuss it afterwards with intelligence and insight. She would dress like an angel, but have a bit of a past. She would be sweet yet sensual, cultured yet down to earth, she would be well behaved in public and badly behaved in the bedroom.

He had nicknamed this creation Sabrina. He had never met her and Zoe was certainly nothing like her, but he now realized that his model in this project was less and less Vanessa, and more and more the fictional Sabrina. Could Zoe be shaped into his image of perfection? There was work to be done but she seemed receptive and open to improvement. He had thus far in life had no luck in finding the ‘real’ Sabrina, maybe constructing one was a good second choice.

There was much to like about Zoe, and the rest could be fixed.

* * *

I
f there was
one thing that life had taught Zoe Blanchard about herself it was that she was not to be trusted around men. To clarify: other people could trust her around men – she was not a boyfriend thief or even a boyfriend flirter – but she could not trust herself around men.

Zoe had horrendous taste in men.

More accurately, she had optimistic taste in men – she had a habit of thinking that them to better than they at first appeared. Perhaps it was because she was such a nice person herself, but Zoe found it hard to see the jerkiness in others. When she saw someone acting like a dick, she immediately wondered what could be wrong in their life to make them act that way. Surely no one could
just
be a jackass for no reason. And she clung to this bright-eyed world view even after dating a procession of world class jackasses, in all of whom she had tried and failed to find some mitigating reason for their jackassery. In a room of men, Zoe knew that she could be trusted to find the biggest jerk amongst them and be attracted to him. It was not that she liked bad boys – she really didn’t – she just lacked the ability to spot them.

It was with trepidation therefore that Zoe found herself looking at Nick differently. Worse still; she was starting to make excuses for him.

Of course she had found Nick attractive from their first meeting in the bar. He was a handsome man, a very handsome man – he was tall with chiseled good looks, hair that looked good when combed and amazing when not, and a body that Zoe had started sneaking frequent looks at just to make sure she hadn’t been imagining how good it looked.

He was hot, he was rich (not important but it didn’t hurt), he was intelligent, he was funny, he was cultured, and… he was an asshole toward her much of the time. The fact that she had spotted this was a great comfort to Zoe. She
never
noticed when guys to whom she was attracted treated her poorly – at least not until it was too late. So the fact that she had already picked Nick out as a slimeball meant that she was not that attracted to him. Which made is what she told herself to feel reassured, anyway.

But if she was not attracted to Nick then word had not reached her libido. Nor had it reached her dreams, which had started constructing some increasingly wild, physically challenging, and borderline impossible fantasies about her and Nick (and, on one occasion, an enthusiastic ballet dancer).

These were not the dreams of a disinterested woman.

On reflection, Zoe had finally decided that the reason for this breaking of her usual pattern of failing to recognize jerkiness in the jerks she invariably fell for was down to the unusual situation in which she was getting to know Nick. This was not a guy she had been set up with by Alisha, or someone she had met in a bar with Alisha, or someone Alisha had met on the bus and brought home on the off chance this was someone she was working with. (As she thought about it further, perhaps Alisha was the one with terrible taste in men since
she
was the one who kept setting up all those terrible dates. The thought was mildly comforting.)

While she failed to recognize assholes whom she dated, Zoe had always been quick to spot the ones she worked with. And while the assholes she dated usually had the decency to try and hide it – for at least long enough to get into her pants – Nick had flaunted his dickish behavior from the first. While he had been cordial enough at their initial meeting, by the end of it he had implied that she was stupid, ill-educated, fat, and ugly.

She disliked him immediately.

But then, as her cultural lessons had progressed, Zoe had found him to be surprisingly charming company. Was this because he was actually a charming man? Or was it because she was becoming more attracted to him and so had started making excuses for his behavior? Either way, he lost it again on the day they went sailing – Zoe was convinced she would never forgive him for that and that he had become set in stone as a jerk in her eyes. But then came the night of the ballet, and somehow (Zoe was still not altogether sure how) by the end of that night they were laughing and happy and she was once again looking at him with that pleasantly uncomfortable knot of attraction in her stomach.

Being around Nick was a rollercoaster ride for Zoe. She never knew how she was going to feel from one day to the next. It also occurred to her that part of the reason for this must surely have been that Nick himself did not care how she saw him. If he did care then his inconsistent behavior made no sense whatsoever. She was just a project to him and when this unusual assignment was over then that would be that.

The makeover day changed things, there was no denying that. But Zoe, once again, found herself confused – she was not sure if they had changed for better or worse. Actually she was not sure of anything.

The hair dressing had been irritating – largely due to Steven – but you couldn’t argue with results and she had looked fabulous, even if she looked like a completely different person.
But
, she reminded herself,
that was the point, right
? The makeover had been agonizing in more ways than one but, again, you couldn’t argue with results – she looked like a different person. She looked stunning, even to her normally critical eyes.

The clothes shopping had been fun. Zoe had never thought of herself, nor ever wanted to think of herself as one of those girls who define themselves by the clothes they wear, but she had to admit that shopping without a budget for clothes had been a riot. The fabrics, the embroidery, the perfectly tailored cuts—the fact that one outfit was more than her monthly salary—all of it had been exhilarating. And the clothes themselves had been wonderful, and they had made her look wonderful. She knew, logically, that the clothes had not actually changed her, but they had seemed to take what already existed of her and had reorganized and redistributed her into a much better looking version. And a result like that, you couldn’t argue with.

At the end of the day Zoe had looked into a mirror and seen this extraordinary, and frankly unfamiliar, woman looking back at her. That of course was the point – she was supposed to be a different woman, she was supposed to be
Vanessa
. And she admitted she was starting to do a fairly good impression of her.

But still, the sight took Zoe’s breath away for reasons that had nothing to do with the success of Nick’s plan. This woman who stared back from the mirror had a stylish hair-do, every hair perfectly in place and complimenting the luminous glow of her sharply made-up face, her dress was professional and yet sexy, showing off the best of the body beneath whilst coyly keeping it hidden. The woman was… well maybe not quite gorgeous, but she had taken a big step towards gorgeous from what she had been at the start of the day. And Zoe found herself thinking; maybe Nick was right. Maybe a few more salads instead of Big Macs wouldn’t hurt. She could drop a bit of weight, change this, adjust that - think how she could look by the end of it!

And in that moment Zoe found herself frightened by what she had inadvertently become.

Like most women, she was insecure about aspects of her body and her appearance, but she had fought hard to embrace who she was without compromise. Now suddenly she was looking for things to change? And all it had taken was a makeover and a few pointed suggestions from Nick.

More worryingly perhaps was that when she had looked into the mirror, she had also seen Nick standing behind her, and the way he looked at her now was very different to the way he had looked at her when she had been just ‘
Zoe
’. If he had not been attracted to Zoe herself, then Zoe now saw that there was a chance that he might be attracted to the woman she was becoming. And for a fleeting moment Zoe wondered if it might be worth letting her old self go… if it meant she could be with Nick.

* * *

T
here were
definite plans in Zoe’s mind as she went up to Nick’s office the following morning – she was not about to let Nick down or let the company down but she wasn’t going to let herself down either, and she needed a break before things got out of hand. But her plan would have to wait as, when she got to the top floor and said good morning to Eddie, she saw that all was not well.

“What’s wrong?”

It did not take a genius to spot when something was wrong in Eddie’s world. Some people wore their hearts on their sleeves but Eddie wore his panic there. When it came to things wrong in his world, Eddie was a human weather vane, waving desperately in the direction of trouble.

“Mr. Rothberger’s in the office!” he hissed conspiratorially.

“Okay,” said Zoe slowly; that Nick was in his office did not seem like earth-shattering news (although it didn’t take much to spook Eddie).

“Not Mr. Rothberger,” Eddie shook his head fast. “
Mr. Rothberger
!”

“Adam Rothberger?” suggested Zoe, who had, over the last week or so, learned to decode Eddie.

Eddie nodded. “I don’t think it’s going well.”

Zoe now heard the muffled sound of raised voices that issued from behind the door. “Any idea what they’re talking about?”

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “I tried listening at the door, but apparently that’s unprofessional and I could get reported for that kind of thing.” He shot a meaningful sidelong glance at the other desk, which was a hive of activity as ever. “I think it’s about money. It’s usually about money.”

Most things are, Zoe though ruefully. “In what way?”

“Mr. Rothberger keeps spending it.”

“Mr. Rothberger…?”

“Mr. N. Rothberger.”

“You could call him Nick?” suggested Zoe.

Eddie looked warily at the other desk again as if to say that there were spies everywhere. “I don’t think I could.”

“Just to facilitate this particular conversation.”

“I don’t think I could.”

“How about Mr. N and Mr. A?”

Eddie accepted this as a reasonable compromise and continued. “Mr. A doesn’t like the way Mr. N spends his money.”

Zoe frowned. “Isn’t it Mr. N’s money?”

“Opinion is divided on the subject.”

“How so?”

“Mr. N thinks that he should be able to spend his own money any way he wants. Mr. A thinks that since the money comes from the family business then that should come first. Oh, says Mr. N, and by ‘family business’ you mean the one you run? So I just hand my money over to you, do I? Well, says Mr. A, that’s better than you handing it over to bookies and bartenders and loan sharks and liquor salesman and hoo… ladies of easy virtue.”

Eddie looked around again to ensure no one was eavesdropping, though the irony of that particular act seemed to pass by him unnoticed. “Then Mr. N went on for a bit about how he’d never been with a… lady of the night, and he’s never paid for sex. (Or at least not with money – he slept with his college roommate’s sister and he paid for that. Plus there was this girl in San Francisco who turned out to… but that’s probably not important.) Anyway, Mr. A said, you don’t spend your money wisely. And Mr. N said, well it’s my money – its right there in my bank account – and there’s nothing you can do about it fat face.”

Zoe took all this in. “You spent a bit longer listening at the door than you let on didn’t you?”

Eddie blushed. “Maybe a little. But it was very interesting.”

“He really called him fat face?”

“I got the impression it was a childhood nickname.”

Zoe nodded – those could still hurt, there were a couple from her own past that she would rather not think about.

“Did you want to buzz through and tell him I’m here?”

Eddie pulled a face. “Not really.”

“Because you don’t want to interrupt the argument or because you’re still not sure about how the intercom works?” asked Zoe, sympathetically.

“A little from column A and a little from column B.”

Zoe passed the time waiting for the sibling argument to end showing Eddie how to use the intercom. She had showed him three times already but Eddie was not a fast learner.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” there was a question she had been wanting to ask Eddie since day one and she now seemed to have time, “how did you get this job?”