The Scandalous Billionaires Collection (10 page)

"Oh my God. Melissa, what is it big sis? Tell
me what's going on."

Where to start?

Melissa tried to think back but there seemed
to be too much going on at once and all she could call forth seemed
to be a tangled mass of confusion.

"I think I've met someone." She said in a
dazed voice.

"Uh… okay." This was new territory for Suzy.
Her big sister didn’t ask for help. Ever. Period. And as for
relationships? They were a no go area for discussion. She put her
hand over the phone and turned to her friend Bella who she was
sitting on the hospital bed next to her watching TV.

"Bella, can you give me a moment please?"

Bella looked confused.

"I need some privacy. It's Melissa."

Bella was genuinely surprised. She was Suzy's
best friend and like the third sister of the Price family--there
was never any question of secrets between them.

"I don't think Melissa is doing so good."
Suzy explained.

"Oh, of course. I'm sorry. I need a little
fresh air anyway." This was a first as well. Melissa was the rock
in Bella's adopted family. If she wasn't doing well then it must be
serious. She grabbed her jacket and left her friend alone in the
ward.

Suzy took her hand off the phone and put it
back to her ear.

"I'm sorry Melissa. So, uh, tell me all about
the… the new guy. This sounds like good news to me or am I
misunderstanding you somehow?"

Her sister was right. It
sounded
like
good news, but what part of her relationship with Jason Demovic was
actually good?

"It's complicated." She said in a shaky
voice.

"Okaaay. So let's take this nice and slow.
What exactly is the complication?"

"Complicat
ions
Suzy. Plural. Messy
would be a good word too."

Suzy was struggling. She had never been in
this role with her sister. It was always the other way around. She
needed to get onto more familiar territory if she was going to be
of any help at all.

"Okay, so let's start with something simple.
What does he look like? Is he hot?"

"Hot? You could say that." Melissa said with
a wry laugh.

"Alright." Suzy said, feeling a little relief
already. "What does he look like?"

"He's tall, dark, gorgeous, athletic. Sexy
doesn't even come close to describing it. Hot as all hell would be
closer."

Suzy's jaw was hanging open. Her older sister
didn't
see
men. She hardly noticed them unless they were on
her analysts couch waiting for her to psychoanalyze them.

"Melissa… is this really my big sister
talking?"

"It's me alright. I think. Maybe it's a new
me. A new version, but not a better one."

"Well I don’t know about you, but I'm liking
this new version. Go on, tell me more about this guy. Don’t hold
back on the details."

"It's like he's messing with my head in way
that's infuriating, baffling, scary even, but it's totally turning
me on."

"Wow."

"His eyes are deep brown and have this crazy
intensity I can’t describe but when he looks directly at me he has
this deadly serious look, as though… as though…"

"Spit it out Mel, as though what?"

"As though fucking me is the only thing on
his mind and that it's going to blow my mind when he does."

"Jesus." Pause. "Christ."

"But then suddenly he smiles and you can
believe he's just this easygoing guy who you can kick back and have
fun with."

"Am I allowed meet him?" Suzy asked, with awe
in her voice.

"He's also rich."

"Shut. Up."

"Extremely rich."

"I thought you didn't care about a guy's
money."

"I don't. I'm just telling you that he's rich
because he is."

Suzy gulped. She had nothing to say. Her
imagination was running wild but didn't have much further to go
than what she had already heard. The guy was a fantasy from a movie
or a romance novel, but not an actual human being.

"After that it gets complicated." Melissa
continued. "He won't tell me what his problem is although he's
hinted it has something to do with relationships."

"Stop right there."

"I just hope I can help him."

"I said stop. Please, please, please tell me
this is not one of your clients."

"What difference would that make?" Melissa
was stung by the accusation from her kid sister. It seemed
everybody was pointing the moral finger at her these days. "Aren't
you the one always telling me I need to cut loose every once in a
while? Break some rules?"

"Yes, but not
those
rules. Break some
other rules. Have sex in an elevator with a stranger. Go drinking
in the afternoon with some guy you met at the drugstore, do
something, but don’t, for the love of Jesus, sleep with another
client."

"Another? Suzy, God damn it, not you too? I
never slept with any client. Can’t you just get that straight?"

"But you have that case coming up--"

"I never slept with anyone. There was nothing
sexual. Nothing."

"Okay, okay of course not. I'm sorry I
brought it up. Let's get back on track her. Tell me about this guy.
This one sounds pretty sexual to me."

"He's not a client."

"Well thank God for that at least. So he has
a problem with relationships. That doesn't sound too bad, you're a
psychotherapist after all so maybe you can help him while you, you
know, while you guys are jumping each others' bones."

"He came to me as a client but I refused to
take him on and then…"

Melissa paused.

"What? Stop... stop stopping! Just tell me
already."

"He kissed me."

"Wow. Where?"

"The lips--"

"I mean 'where' as in what place? We’re you
guys on a date or something? Did you go for coffee?"

"This is where it begins to get
complicated."

"Don’t say it was in your office."

"It was in my office."

"This isn’t good. That's thin ice right
there. Even I know that. Did anyone see?"

"No. I don’t think so. Maybe just Sandy."

"Sandy? He's the biggest blabber mouth in New
York City!"

"I can trust him. He's not the one I'm
worried about."

"Who are you worried about?"

"It's David. He sent this guy to me and now
he's forbidding me not only to see him as a client but to see him
at all."

"What right does he have to do that?"

"No right but he's, God it's not like him at
all, he's been weird this last couple of days. He's threatening me
that if I Jason again--"

"Jason. Nice name. I could do a Jason."

"He's threatening to withdraw his support
from me in my ethics committee hearing."

"Which is when?"

"Next week. Tuesday. But I don't care."

"No. Stop right there Melissa. You do care.
You put your whole life into this, getting the best grades you
could to get scholarships to Harvard and Stanford. You struggled
and fought to get to where you are today. You are so nearly there.
Another few months and your client base will build up. This whole
ethics thing will be forgotten. So don't you dare tell me you are
going to throw all this away for some guy that you just met a few
weeks ago."

"I met him two days ago."

Suzy began screaming into the phone.

"I'm coming out there. Don't do anything,
don't go anywhere--"

"Calm down Suzy. If you don't calm down I'm
hanging up. You're in hospital for God's sake."

"These damn kidneys! God damn it, as soon as
I'm done here I'm coming over, even if it kills me."

"If you come over here, I'm leaving the house
and you will only waste your time."

"Melissa, please--you're scaring me. This
isn't like you. What's really going on?"

"Promise me you will stay put?"

"Yes, yes, I'll stay here, but we need to
talk this through."

"That's why I called you. You're the only
person I can trust."

The words went deep. Suzy had to bite her
lip. She was determined to help her big sister even if it meant she
had to grow up by ten years in the next ten minutes.

"You can't afford to get so agitated Suzy,
it's not good for you."

"I know it Melissa, I know. So please don't
do this to me. You're the single most important person I have in
the whole world. Please don't throw your whole life away."

"But that's exactly it Suzy. Maybe that’s
what I've been doing for years. I'm not so sure I'm even cut out to
be a psychoanalyst. I'm not sure I'm even that kind of person
anymore."

"But you so are."

"You don’t know me Suzy." The words were
painful to say. "I had to grow up so fast when mom went… I wasn't
always like this; so damn uptight, so anal, so fucking logical and
reasonable about everything. I used to have fun too, you know."

Tears were beginning to well up inside her.
Suzy didn't know what to say. All this was a revelation to her and
as yet it still made no sense.

"Please Melissa. I don't know what you're
going through, or what you went through after mom, but just…
please, if you won't do it for yourself then do it for me. Stop
seeing this guy. Please."

"I'm spending the whole day with him
tomorrow."

"Oh my God, no." Suzy's voice was despairing.
"What if David finds out? Melissa.. please don’t do it."

"He told me not to worry about that."

"Who did? This guy Jason? Of course he said
that, he just wants to get into your pants. He'll say
anything."

"He told me he could handle the ethics
committee."

"He's a liar Melissa. He just wants to bone
you. How could he possible 'handle' them?"

"He's a billionaire."

"A millionaire?"

"No. Not a millionaire. A
billionaire.
A multi-billionaire."

Suzy sat up in her hospital bed. She was
feeling cold from the dialysis machine but the conversation with
her notoriously uptight and buttoned down older sister had
transfixed her.

"What's his name?"

"Jason Demovic."

"
The
Jason Demovic?"

"I guess so. Unless there are two
billionaires with that name."

"Are you kidding me? That guy is like Brad
Pitt, George Clooney and Ryan Reynolds all rolled into one but with
Bill Gates' bank account. I'm watching him on TV right now."

Melissa sat up straight as well.

"You are?"

"Sure. And he's on the cover of Hey There
Magazine surrounded by gorgeous women getting into a
limousine."

Melissa couldn't hold herself back now; she
switched to Channel 27 but Chauncey Tales was falling over herself
trying to provoke some drunken Z-lister into making an ass of
herself.

"I don't see him."

"You watch TV now?" Suzy was incredulous.
"What channel are you on?"

"The Fame TV Network."

"You watch the Fame TV Network now? Did you
like, get a blow to the head that altered your personality or
something?"

"Just tell me what damn channel he's on
before I miss it."

"He's on CNN."

Melissa fumbled to get there and then shushed
her sister to hear the story. It was Jason alright, the man who had
left her shaking in her office under the force of his electrifying
stolen kiss.

She turned the volume up. He was surrounded
by women again, but nothing like the bimbos he had been with the
night before. The line-up of demographically diverse females looked
more like a world music festival than a Fame TV scoop. He was
standing a little to the left of a stage in a line of women wearing
colorful traditional dress from all over the world. An elderly
woman was front and centre addressing the audience in heavily
accented English but with incredible dignity and education. The CNN
subtext said it was an address to the United Nations.

Melissa gasped. "That's Fernanda
Salazar."

"Who?"

"Fernanda Salazar. She's one of the greatest
living visual artists of Latin America, if not the entire
world."

"You mean the old woman with the Spanish
accent?"

"No. I mean the incredibly dignified lady and
internationally renowned artist with the august presence who is
right now addressing the United Nations assembly."

"Trust you to recognize the obscure old
painter and not even know who the sexiest man on the planet
is."

"What are they doing there?"

"It's a women's rights thing. Don't you know
anything? Demovic has been on a charity spending spree for months.
Apparently he'll soon overtake the Gates' Foundation for total net
contributions to charity and he's only been going at it for less
than a year. The guy is like a saint as well as a sex God and one
of his big things is women's rights. They say it has something to
do with how his Dad treated his mom. I'm telling you now, the woman
who reels this one in is the luckiest gal in the freaking
universe."

Melissa turned up the sound. Fernanda was
inviting Jason to say a few words on behalf of the indigenous
women's foundation of which she was the founder and of which he was
now, apparently, the principal benefactor. Jason looked
uncharacteristically humble. It was like she was looking at a
different man. He stepped up to the podium and Ms. Salazar stood
next to him like a proud mother next her son.

He took a deep breath, looked at some notes
and then pushed them aside. When he looked up again he was
transformed and the full power of his intense gaze peered out into
the living rooms and into the news rooms of the world.

"I don't deserve this applause." He said.
"All I've done is write a check so that these brave women can begin
to change our world from the ground up. If you, the powers that be,
are going to give your applause to anyone it should be to
them."

A thunderous applause rang out from around
the hall.

"But this applause will sound hollow if the
plight of women and girls around the world and I mean in every
country in the world, is not addressed by people like you. This
little girl," He took the hand of a tiny eight year old African
girl next to him and held it up, "Kisima is her name--she walks
over ten miles every day to get to a school that has no
electricity, no running water and most of the time no books to read
or pens to write with. And she's one of the lucky ones because her
parents allow her to go to school along with her two brothers. Now
can any of you people sitting here in your seats of power and
privilege, say that you worked as hard as this to get to where you
are today?"