Chapter 2
VICTORIA
My dress was salvageable, thank God. I’d bought it eight months ago from a consignment shop on Melrose. It was pretty and made me feel confident. It gave me an hourglass shape.
There was a time when a dress like this would have been something I bought without looking at the price tag, one of dozens hanging in my stuffed closets in a house I hadn’t paid for with money I hadn’t earned.
That was a different life. A life I’d walked away from with two suitcases and my mother’s disappointment following me out the front door.
No amount of Louboutin’s and Prada dresses could make up for the hollow feeling in my chest. Much to the dismay of my parents.
My family made money money. Their wealth defined them, and they built my childhood around enforcing my identity as a Cavendish.
Etiquette classes, formal ballet training when I was five, dresses every day.
My everyday life was a pageant show for a public audience, and I’d been critiqued and managed until my inner voice stopped talking all together.
For a long time I tried to convince myself that I could be who they wanted me to be to fit into their world.
But then I met Betty, and through her I found charity work, and through that? My inner voice came back. I came back. And that was a gift I didn’t even know could set me free.
My parents called it a phase. Then they’d called it a disappointment. Then they’d stopped calling altogether.
I squared my shoulders and checked my phone. I could not screw this up. Betty was counting on me tonight, and just because some asshole with zero manners or spatial awareness literally knocked me on my ass, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to pull out all the stops.
I checked my phone to see if Jack Montana had returned my calls or texts. Nothing.
Our reservation had been for seven. It was now seven fifteen.
The restaurant had a policy, which the very pleasant woman on the phone had explained to me when I’d booked.
No one got seated until the whole party arrived.
If I booked for two, there had to be two butts to fill the seats.
They would hold the table for fifteen minutes.
After that, it went back into rotation, and we would wait at the bar.
Rather, I would wait at the bar and hope the famous actor showed up.
I called him. It rang four times and went to voicemail.
Hi, this is Jack. You know what to do.
I didn’t leave a message because I did not trust myself to sound professional at that particular moment. I sent a text instead. We had a reservation at seven. I’m outside. Please let me know your ETA.
If it wasn’t so important, I would have already left. I reminded myself why I was here. Betty’s charity. The one she’d built from scratch over six years. I’d told her I could do this. I could get a big Hollywood movie star to sign on. We needed his face. His name. His money.
That meant I had to play nice.
I hated asking for anything, but this wasn’t about me.
This was for kids. I could swallow my pride and smile.
We had plans. Big ones. We needed the money.
Events were only as good as the names attached to them, which was why I was standing outside a restaurant waiting for a man who had not responded to six texts.
Jack Montana’s name on the auction materials would fill a room.
A black SUV pulled up to the valet. I held my breath, willing it to be him. Willing our table to still be available.
Jack Montana got out with zero urgency, one long leg at a time, and swept his fingers through his long dark hair that grazed the top of his shoulders.
He was exactly as he looked in the movies.
Tall, square jaw, zero wrinkles, and flawless skin.
He wore a casual outfit that I knew cost more than our monthly operating budget.
He handed his keys to the valet without looking at him, scanned the front of the restaurant, and found me standing to the side of the entrance.
“Victoria Cavendish?”
“Yes. Jack. Hi. Thank you for coming.” I smiled and extended my hand, which he shook once. “Our reservation was at seven, so we may need to check in with the hostess about the table.”
“Traffic was insane,” he said, already moving toward the door.
It was not insane. And I knew damn well he could have been on time.
I was on time. Everyone else that had a reservation was on time.
He didn’t make our dinner date a priority.
It was an afterthought. I hoped Betty understood that this was probably a futile mission.
This was not a guy that gave a shit about sick kids and their families.
“It won’t be a problem,” he said and pulled open the door.
I followed him inside. The hostess looked up from her stand to greet us and nearly choked on her own tongue. She coughed, sputtered, eyes watering, cheeks burning, and held up a hand in apology.
Jack looked down at me and grinned. His smile was disturbingly white. “I get this a lot from women.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Jack Montana.” The hostess had mostly recovered. Her cheeks were still red as she used her thumbs to dab under her eyes, careful not to ruin her makeup. “Wow. I mean, hi. Welcome. Sorry, I’m a bit of a mess.” Nervous laughter poured out of her.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, surprising me with nice manners.
”We had a table at seven, but I got held up.
” He leaned in and looked at her like she was the only woman in the world.
If there was ever a snake charmer, it was him.
She swayed as if hypnotized by his good looks.
I rolled my eyes straight up to the ceiling.
“I was hoping you still had a table for us,” Jack said.
“Of course!” She led us through the dining room and I took the chance to mentally rehearse my pitch to Jack. Then I made the mistake of glancing to my right.
Him. The man from outside. The unapologetic bulldozer. My rear end still ached from hitting the pavement.
He sat at a table near a window with a pretty woman across from him. He glanced over just as I was walking by. We made eye contact. I glared at him but he flashed me an infuriating grin. There was no apology in it, just smug arrogance.
Damn him.
He didn’t care he bowled me over and laid me out on the sidewalk. No fucks to give. He was rich and handsome and some woman standing in his way was not his problem. I glared at him, something I knew how to do very well. I was raised with rich, mean girls. Glaring and sneering were an art form.
That only made him smile more.
Damn, I wished I had a plate of food or a glass of wine.
I would absolutely dump it over his handsome head.
Those stupid green eyes and thick, long lashes.
That annoyingly sexy black hair that looked like silk and sat perfectly on his stupid head with no product.
And that damn square jaw and broad shoulders.
Stupid handsome men. They were all on my shit list tonight.
I looked away first, raised my chin, and did my best to look annoyed and aloof.
“Here you go,” the hostess said.
She wasn’t looking at me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if she knew I was in the room.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Jack said and took a seat. “Hey, can we get a bottle of wine? House best.”
“Of course.” The hostess blushed and filled our waters. “I’ll have it sent right out.”
Okay, I’m supposed to be paying for the dinner. I did not have it in the budget for the best of anything. The meal tonight was already a stretch. House best? How much was that going to cost? Five hundred? A thousand?
Oh God, Betty was going to murder me.
“I’m really glad we could make this work. I know your schedule is?—”
“I had a thing run long,” he said. “Documentary thing. Very intense.”
“Of course.” I took a sip of water. “Well, I appreciate you being here. The auction is coming up fast and we’re really excited about the lineup this year.” I had practiced this spiel a hundred times. I knew numbers and facts and was ready to plead my case. “We have big plans for?—”
“Is the salmon good here?” He studied the menu in his hands.
“I haven’t been before, so I’m not sure.
” For a hundred and seventy-six dollars, the salmon better be spectacular.
“As I was saying, the ask is genuinely minimal. A dinner, two hours maximum, with whoever wins the auction. We can arrange security if that’s something you’d want on-site, and the press we generate beforehand is entirely in your control?—”
“I had salmon last week in Vancouver that was unbelievable,” he said. “You can’t get salmon like that in LA. The water’s wrong. You ever notice how there’s no bears in LA? They know where the good salmon is, and it ain’t here.”
I looked at him across the table. He continued to read the menu with complete absorption.
Jack Montana was worried about fish. Did he even know why he’d met me here?
Did he remember what he’d agreed to with the auction?
Did he have the slightest inclination that hundreds of people were counting on him to focus for a few hours and be a good boy for once?
He reminded me of my father. The kind of person who moved through every room as though it had been arranged around them.
Other people were nothing more than ambient noise until they became useful.
I had spent the first twenty-two years of my life around people like that.
I knew exactly how they worked and exactly what they thought of people like me, which was not much, until you proved otherwise.
My words were wasted on him. But I couldn’t give up. This wasn’t about me. Honestly, if it had been, I would have told him to fuck all the way off at the ten-minute tardy mark.
“The salmon might be worth trying,” I said pleasantly.
“And it’s not like you don’t have the money to order something else if you want.
You’re Jack Montana,” I said, feigning a dreamy sigh that nearly had me crashing out at the table.
If data and empathy weren’t going to do the trick, flattery would have to do.
“And I understand you had reservations about the auction. I want to make sure I address anything that’s been on your mind.
But I’d love to use our time tonight to actually talk through the details, if that works for you. ”
He looked up from the menu and assessed me like he just realized I was at his table. The corner of his mouth tilted upward. He probably wanted people to compare him to Elvis with that little half-smile.
I would never. That was blasphemous. And his was fake. Elvis’s half-smile was all natural and so sexy.
“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
It wasn’t enthusiasm. It wasn’t even interest, exactly. But I would take any sign of progress. If he opened the door a crack, I would push my way in there. Prepare to be dazzled, Jack Montana. This would be a long night, but if I secured his place in the auction, it would all be worth it.