5. Carter
CHAPTER 5
CARTER
I lounged on a rather uncomfortable gold couch in the tailor’s shop, awaiting the tailor himself. Both walls were lined with shelves filled with fabrics of all sorts. What should have been a nice, almost peaceful place nevertheless failed to unsettle me. This was the shop of a very wealthy tailor, who did only work for rich clients, and the expense showed. The room was both modern and stuffy, narrow, with many square features that must have pleased a designer but which seemed clumsy to me.
It always struck me as a little funny, that being surrounded by wealth could make me, a fellow rich person, uncomfortable. I just never saw the reason to exchange my personal preferences for what was expected of me. I preferred to like my rooms and enjoy spending time in them, and if that meant buying from shops that made my peers laugh at me, well, truth be told, I didn’t care. Let them laugh. I was the one who wouldn’t have a perpetually sore ass every time I sat in my living room.
“Are you nervous?” Brian asked. He sat on a chair across from me, a glass case coffee table between us. A set of antique sewing tools, labelled, accompanied with little fact plaques, were inside the case—the only charming thing in the whole shop, in my opinion.
“Of course I’m nervous.” I plucked at my beard hairs.
“It’s just a party. If this is how nervous you are for a party, imagine how you’ll be on your wedding day.”
That was getting a bit too far ahead. “Do you think we scheduled it too quickly? I know this was the best time, but—”
Brain stopped me with a derisive snort. “Sounds to me like you’re doubting my skills. Don’t worry, Carter. Everything is running very smoothly. I know you said you didn’t want to see how many people are coming, but let me tell you, the response has been huge.”
“Ugh. Stop. I could be sick just thinking about it.”
Brian laughed. “You’re not nervous about the party. You’re nervous about meeting a girl. Just relax. If you do, you do. If you don’t, you tried. And you can try again. I’ve enjoyed scheming with you and you had best believe I will jump on the opportunity to do it again.”
That made me feel a bit better, at least.
Approaching footsteps, descending the staircase at the far end of the shop, announced the arrival of the tailor.
I got up and shook hands with him. “Sir John,” I said.
John had been knighted once upon a trip to England, when he provided an emergency solution to the Queen’s wardrobe malfunction. She granted him knighthood on the spot. He did not let anyone forget his “rank” and took every opportunity to flaunt his supposed importance. I was halfway convinced that he had his wife call him Sir, as well. Certainly when they were in bed together.
Sir John shook my hand much too firmly, squeezing like he had everything to prove. “Good afternoon, Mr. Bryant. I’m so pleased to be able to service you today. Have you the garment with you?”
“Right here,” Brian said, holding up my costume.
“Ah, this is for the party you’re advertising, is it not?” Sir John gave a smile that tried too hard to be disinterested. “I may attend myself.”
“Will you wear armor?” Brian joked.
Sir John gave him a withering glare I didn’t quite understand, since it was a perfectly logical question that I might have asked him myself. Maybe he mistook Brian’s humor for outright making fun of him. Turning back to me, completely and intentionally ignoring Brian, he said, “Why don’t you follow me and I’ll take your measurements? Then we can get the costume from your assistant. ”
Maybe he thought that would offend Brian, but the truth was, I knew I wouldn’t be anywhere without him. Brian knew it too. As my assistant, he did far more than simply fetch coffee and take calls. He was my confidant, my right hand man, the one who turned ideas into reality.
I really hope this guy isn’t going to start laying into Brian as soon as we’re alone together, like we’re teen girls at a slumber party.
Luckily, nothing of the sort happened. Sir John busied himself with flitting around me, measuring every inch of my person, and the only talk was when he requested for me to move in a certain way to make another measurement. Or when he made comments on my body, usually complimentary, comparing me to other clients who, in his professional opinion, had let themselves go due to their wealth.
He didn’t need much in the way of a response from me. I simply stood there and took it while he tangled me in his measuring tape, breathing in the scents of polish and cut cloth.
Finally, he released me to fetch the costume from Brian, and then spent a considerable length of time making minor adjustments until my costume fit me better than any suit I owned.
“I have to hand it to him,” I told Brian, once we were outside and alone, “the man is good at his job.”
“At least he has that going for him, since he’s terrible at conversation.” Brian climbed into my car, behind the wheel. He mimicked Sir John. “Oh, you are a surgeon whose saved dozens of lives? How quaint. But your coat doesn’t fit and therefore, I hate you.”
I laughed.
“Let’s get some coffee. A treat after the hell we just went through.”
“I won’t argue. I’m exhausted.”
We decided to hit up a small shop that neither of us had been to before, one that wasn’t part of a chain. Effervesce was the name, for whatever reason.
Brian reached the door first and stepped in. I followed after, and was immediately hit in the face with a blast of warm, sweet-scented air. Upon first glance, there really wasn’t anything about this coffee shop to set it apart from all the others. It looked the same, smelled the same, not that that was the bad thing. From the name, I had just been expecting something a little more eclectic.
“Go ahead and get me whatever you’re getting,” Brian said, and headed off for the men’s room.
I stepped up to the counter. A girl stepped out from a door in the back and approached, smiling such a sweet smile I had to do a doubletake. I was fairly certain I had never seen someone so pretty in my whole life. She was a slim little thing with straight, caramel-brown hair and wide brown eyes. She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup and didn’t need to.
The girl looked up at me, making friendly eye contact, seeming not to notice the effect she’d had upon me. “Hi,” she said, in a sweet little voice. “It’s a nice afternoon, isn’t it? What can I get you, sir?”
I gazed at her, enchanted by her, unable to look away and scan the menu. I wanted to keep her talking, keep her attention upon me. “What’s with the name of this place?”
She laughed and leaned her elbows on the counter. I found myself leaning in, too. “The owner used to sell coffee sodas at fairs, from a cart. They were so popular she was able to open up this shop. The name, Effervesce, means little bubbles, like a fizz or soda carbonation.”
“Did you say coffee soda?”
“Yep.”
“What in the world is a coffee soda?”
I half-expected the girl to get bored of my questions, but she showed no sign of it. “It’s exactly what it sounds like, coffee, but carbonated. Any coffee you want can be made into a coffee soda. Mocha, espresso, latte… We can customize it any way you want, and if you’re looking to turn your coffee break into dessert time, we can add a scoop of ice cream.”
I smiled at her. She sounded so enthusiastic about something that she had to say. I could almost have believed that this was all her idea, except she didn’t look old enough to own… anything, really. “Well, I feel like this is a phenomenon I can’t miss. I’ll have two coffee sodas. Make one a mocha and—”
From nowhere, another girl appeared, wearing an apron with a pattern of foaming bubbles on it. She was also pretty, though in a more conventional way, with plenty of makeup used to carve her features into society’s beauty standard. “A mocha,” she gushed, “and what else?”
Ah, dammit.
The cute girl clearly had no idea who I was, but this second one did. It was a shame, since I had been enjoying being an ordinary guy.
I looked back at the cute girl. “For the second one, I trust you to make me something astounding.”
She blushed, a cute flush of pink coloring her cheeks and the tops of her ears. “Are you sure you don’t want to pick something yourself?”
“I trust you,” I said.
She nodded and rang me up. I paid with a handful of bills and got change back just as Brian returned from the bathroom.
“What’s your name, so I can call you when these are ready?”
Brian answered for me. “Brian.”
The girl flicked him an interesting look, and that amused me. She didn’t know who I was, but the name Brian seemed to ring a bell for her. Maybe she wanted to be a lawyer or something and therefore knew of him that way.
After a moment, she just nodded. “Okay, I’ll have those ready for you real quickly.”
“Don’t rush on our account,” Brian said, chuckling a little. He elbowed me. “You’ll spoil him more than he already is.”
The girl laughed and turned away.
The other girl grabbed her shoulder and spoke in a low voice, clearly trying not to be overheard as Brian and I moved off to a table. “Let me make his drink.”
Brian nudged me and tilted his head toward the girls, asking if I had heard. I nodded a bit and kept listening, intrigued by what seemed to be unfolding drama.
The first girl nibbled on her lip. “He asked me to do it, Suzie.”
“You don’t even know who he is!” Suzie blurted out, her voice a bit too loud to have a hope of being secretive. “Or do you and you’re just trying to play coy with him?”
The girl blinked. I wished I knew her name, but she had no name tag and it would have been too intrusive and sudden to ask. “Play coy? What? Who is he?”
“You’re kidding!” Suzie tugged the cute girl in even closer and spoke in her ear. I strained to hear more. “That’s Carter Bryant, the billionaire! Wow, holy shit, I can’t believe you had no idea who he is. Are you seriously that sheltered?”
The cute girl flushed, color rising to her cheeks. She moved away from Suzie and moved over to the counter. I silently rooted her on, sensing that she’d had enough and was reaching the point where she lost patience. “Well, no matter who he is, he’s a customer. And he asked me to make his drink, so I’m going to.”
Brian gave me a little wink and leaned in. He murmured, just a breath of air, “It looks like you’ve got yourself a fan.”
I rolled my eyes.
The shop was soon filled with a constant whirring and buzzing of equipment as the two girls worked to create coffee sodas for myself and Brian. I shot frequent glances over at them, more interested in what the cute girl was doing than what Suzie was up to. The cute girl operated a machine, sticking some sort of nozzle into a cup and pushing a button. A silvery stream of bubbles pulsed through the dark liquid of the drink, making it fizz and swirl with rich hazelnut and cream colors.
The cute girl removed the nozzle and looked up.
Our eyes met over the counter.
She smiled and ducked her head, and turned away to resume fiddling with my drink.
Suzie started speaking again, voice wavering in out through the background cacophony. “Since you’ve clearly been living under a rock for, like, ever, I bet you don’t even know that Carter Bryant is throwing a huge party tomorrow for Halloween.”
“I had no idea,” the cute girl replied, sarcastically.
I smirked against my hand as Suzie misinterpreted the sarcasm for a genuine statement of ignorance. “I knew it. It’s going to be the biggest and best party in the whole city, probably the best one all year. And the amazing part is that Carter will be looking for a wife at the party.”
“I hope Mr. Bryant gets what he wants out of the whole thing.” The cute girl glanced up. “Brian?”
Brian and I got up and went over to the end of the counter.
The cute girl passed over a chilly cup, and a straw. “That’s the mocha.”
I handed it to Brian.
She held up another. “And this is the custom order. I made you what I like to get. Hazelnut and dark chocolate, with just a bit of cream swirled in.” She smiled shyly from under long, dark eyelashes. “I really hope you like it.”
“I’m sure I will,” I told her.
“Maybe go ahead and try it to make sure,” she suggested. “If not, I can make you something else.”
Even if I hated the drink, I would say I loved it just to see her smile.
I tapped the straw open, put the open end in my mouth and blew the wrapper at Brian, striking him directly on the shoulder. He twisted and caught the scrap of garbage and tutted at me. “Litterbug. As if these two don’t have enough to do.”
“Nice shot,” the girl said to me, giggling.
Suzie hovered in the background, back stiff, looking like a furious cat.
I stuck the straw in my drink and took a sip. The first taste was a tang of fizz, followed by rich coffee notes and hints of sweetness, which tingled and danced on my tongue. The flavor morphed as the fizz continued. “Wow,” I said, looking down at the simple dark drink in the cup. If I hadn’t been told otherwise, I would have assumed it to be cola; this was so much better than simply Coke, however.
“You like it?” the girl asked anxiously.
“I do!” I smiled at her. “You have great taste.”
She smiled back and lifted her hand, wiggling her fingers at me. “Have a great day.”
“You, too,” I told her.
As I walked away, I heard Suzie muttering. “That does it. I’m making that man my husband.”
“I’m going to the party,” the cute girl responded, in a polite, though skeptical tone, “but I’m just going to be supportive for Maggie.”
Outside, Brian burst out laughing. “God, the tension. I thought at any moment it’d get too thick to breathe.”
I sipped more of my delicious coffee soda. “I liked that girl.”
“Don’t tell me you mean that Suzie chick.”
“No!” I scoffed, climbing into the car with him. “The other one. I didn’t catch her name. She was so nice the whole time. I hope she doesn’t have to work with that Suzie too often, for her own sake.”
Brian stuck his drink in the drink holder and turned the car on. “You could solve that by hiring her out of the blue, like you did to me.”
“Don’t tempt me with ideas. You know I’ll act on them.”
“You mean you’ll have me act on them.”
I looked out the window, dismissing him. “I pay your bills, so it’s all the same, anyway.”
“Augh,” Brian groaned. “My fragile ego.”
I chuckled. Using my straw, I swirled the ice around in my drink cup. I thought more about that cute girl and had to hold back a sigh. If I was any other billionaire in the world, I’d do more than entertain the fantasy of hiring that girl. I’d act on it. Since I hadn’t lost my common sense, I knew how it would look if I did, though. A man my age, 30, successful, buying out a young girl who was hardly 20, hiring her to make coffee sodas for him at his whim. That surely wasn’t a scandal waiting to happen.
Besides, she didn’t care who I was, not even after Suzie told her. That girl wasn’t one to be swayed by fame and status.
Smart, as well as cute.
I wondered if I’d run into her at the party.