The Fake Family Deal (Deals and Desires #1)

1. Ellis

CHAPTER 1

ELLIS

E very word I read makes the situation worse.

Never once in my entire career have I made losses like this. Never once in my entire life have I managed to so dismally overestimate how well I was going to do. I’m the best at what I do. That’s why I’m so rich and successful.

Usually.

Everyone loves babies — I thought.

I know everyone loves fit and attractive people, but I’ve already won that market completely. After all, it’s what put Ellis Inc. on the map. I broke into the market with Beautiful Fitness, my network of apps and gyms exclusively for people who want to look really good and get told as much.

There might have been a little bit of what you might call controversy for a while because of that rumor that we were actually screening people to make sure they were up to our standards. Of course, if I had my way, I would have been screening people to see that they were up to standard, but instead I had to put out some nonsense statement about beauty coming from within, and how everyone in the world can be beautiful and my app is for everyone and blah, blah, blah.

I’m pretty sure that didn’t fool anyone. But it’s bad for business to call people ugly, apparently. Clearly no one understands the meaning of the word exclusive anymore.

But anyway, Beautiful Fitness is doing amazingly and has been for years. That’s why I thought it was time to try something new.

That’s why I’m so appalled by all these figures on my screen. I have never once seen a spreadsheet with so much red on it.

I reread the figures again to try and make them make sense, the numbers wobbling before my eyes. We’re off our predicted number of sales by almost forty percent. Forty percent! Why is no one buying this? Maybe I should have gone with a free-trial version after all, but I was convinced we didn’t need to.

“People already know who we are,” I said. “Ellis Inc. is already a household name, whether people want it to be or not, and millions of people are pregnant right now,” I said. “If we can appeal to people by promising them beautiful parents and beautiful babies, then we’ll be bringing in profits like nothing else.”

I was so confident that this would work. But the proof is in the figures — and they are not happy. I’ve never felt a knock like this. It’s almost unbearable. There has to be some way of making this work. I can’t become known for being a man who makes a loss.

I also can’t shut down after less than a year of Beautiful Baby being on the market. That would be a failure, and I don’t do failure.

Ellis Whitlock may be seen as controversial, arrogant, annoying, grouchy, selfish, unfriendly, and mean, but one thing I have never been accused of is being unsuccessful. Even my most ardent critics can’t accuse me of that.

They can say what they like, but everyone loves Beautiful Fitness .

One article, when it first took off, said that it was the greatest fitness app ever created, and that it was causing a sweep of people who had never been into exercise before to take it up. “With the goal of being beautiful,” it said, “Ellis Whitlock has inadvertently created a revolution in fitness. Instead of, as some claim, this app being marketed as exclusively for the beautiful, it argues that wellness makes everyone beautiful, inside and out.”

I have that review printed off and framed in my office.

But Beautiful Baby has the most one-star reviews I’ve ever seen. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read them. I know it’s going to cut deep and that the comments will probably be rude. Why do people think they have a right to be rude to me — just because I’m rich?

There’s a knock on my office door, snapping me out of my misery. “What?” I yell, slumping in my chair.

Priscilla comes in, smiling. She’s my head of PR, five foot ten with dark hair and a South American complexion, and the kind of smile that anyone would be happy to look at. And she’d better have something good for me today or else I’m going to tell her what I told her when the reports about Beautiful Baby started coming in: that I don’t want to see her face until she has solutions.

She walks over, her stilettos tapping on the floor. “May I?” she asks, gesturing to a seat. I grunt and nod, staring her down.

“Mr. Whitlock,” she says. I can almost see her pulse flickering in her throat. She’s clearly nervous. Good. She’s got a lot to prove to me right now.

I’m not really going to fire her — and she knows it — because she’s both very good at her job and very good-looking, and they are basically the two qualities I prize most of all in my workplace. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be absolutely furious with her if she’s about to screw me over again.

“We’ve had an idea,” she says, plastering on the fakest-looking smile I’ve ever seen, as if she thinks that smiling broadly is going to win me over. Unfortunately she’s more or less right there.

I keep staring at her firmly. This is two days in the making, so it had better give me everything I need to hear. My temper is not exactly a secret, and I’m certain Priscilla won’t want to be on the bad end of it.

“You won’t like this — I’m not going to lie — but just hear me out before you start shouting, all right?”

I nod slowly in assent, honestly having no idea where she’s going with this. I’m at a total loss for ideas myself, so anything they come up with must be better than anything I’ve come up with so far.

“We think it would be beneficial for you to star in a reality TV show.”

Oh. So not better than the nothing I’ve thought of, then.

But I promised I’d hear her out, so I bite my tongue and glare at her to continue.

She takes a steadying breath and keeps talking. “Currently, your image is… well, to be blunt, it’s less than favorable on a personal level. Beautiful Fitness is working really well and everyone’s still very happy with it, but Beautiful Baby is going to need a softer approach if it’s going to work.

“We’re trying to appeal to parents here, to mothers and their newborns, and to fathers who want the world for their family. And what they’re getting right now is a collection of really great features, but with absolutely no personality. We think that if we can prove to everyone that you are actually a family man, then we can triple our sales overnight.”

I scoff loudly in disbelief. “Whoever paid you for this prank, they didn’t give you enough.”

Priscilla shakes her head evenly. “No prank. This is the line we’re going with. We want to make you appeal to people.”

“Seriously?” I say witheringly. “A reality show? Me? On TV? Do yourself a favor and just get out of here.”

She doesn’t have to be told twice.

I don’t have to be told at all to know that she’s thinking, “ Well , at least think it through ,” but I’m not listening to the Priscilla in my head right now. I’m trying not to get very, very angry.

Whoever pitched that idea must be insane. My reputation isn’t being some cuddly little hippie, happy, baby-loving, soft-hearted guy. I built my fortune with sheer determination and not a single smile. I’ll be damned if they’re going to talk me into this one.

I’ve never liked babies anyway. Too messy, emotionally and physically. They can be cute, but I wouldn’t want one. I wouldn’t have the first idea where to begin looking after a baby, let alone pretending to be its dad.

Dads aren’t exactly something I know that much about.

Then again, I’ll be damned if we can’t think of anything better for Beautiful Baby.

Maybe my career really is about to go down the drain.