11. Hayden
Chapter eleven
Hayden
Steven rolls his eyes and hangs his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This guy . . .”
“You’re telling me.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Addie, with a refreshed aura about her that I can’t quite put my finger on, exclaims, “What happened?”
As if she owns the place, which I suppose she kind of does, goes behind and leans on the receptionist’s desk.
I’m still a bit mesmerized by her, but I try my best to stay focused.
“Um.” I cough to clear my throat and hold my balled fist up to my mouth. “Well, I went into his dingy office this morning—wait a minute.” Suddenly, something occurred to me. And I peer over at Steven, who is digging something out of his teeth with his fingers.
“What?” she asks.
“I thought you said we weren’t supposed to talk unless it was through him.”
“Oh, right.” When her light eyes wander over to him, she grimaces as he digs out whatever he is aiming for, looks at it, and then flicks it onto the ground.
“So . . .”
“Whatever. I guess it doesn’t matter as long as all three of us are here. Please, continue.”
“You’re sure?” I can’t risk pissing her off. Especially not now when I need her more than ever to secure the deal.
“Yes.”
“Fine. As I was saying, I went into Errol’s office this morning after calling him to let him know we were ready to sign the paperwork.”
I pause for her reaction to that, as her permission wasn’t exactly explicit. Instead, all she said was “Fine,” demanded we communicate only through the attorney, and then stomped away.
When she nods assumingly, I feel more at ease.
“But as soon as I sat down with him, he started acting shifty. Even more so than usual.”
Her eyebrow raises. “Okay?”
“So, I worried about what I thought was the worst—that he’d sold the property to other owners and didn’t honor the extra time I asked for.”
Steven steps closer and wipes his brow with a handkerchief he retrieved from his back pocket. “Did he?”
“No. But he did have a change of heart.”
“Meaning?” I can tell by her tone that her patience is wearing thin.
“His son-in-law, Randall O’Brien, got involved in his company’s financial problems and has now been given control, via power of attorney, over all of his assets.”
“Okay, so now we work with this Randall fella. Nothing can be worse than that old coot himself.”
I stick my forefinger in the air and wiggle it. “Not so fast.”
Steven opens his mouth again, but then snaps it shut.
“Well, did you arrange a meeting with the son-in-law? We need to get a feeling for where his head is at before we jump to any conclusions,” Addie offers.
Oh, sweet summer child. I wish it was that simple.
“After being dismissed without another word from Errol’s office, I did a little digging on my phone while still parked in their lot.”
“And? What did you find?” I’ve always had a flare for the dramatic build-up, but I should have remembered from when we were kids that Addie was not a fan.
“Randall is a devout Christian, and he only works with others who share his beliefs.”
Steven thuds his hands against the wooden desk. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What is this? The Dark Ages?”
Apparently.
“I’ve looked through all of his past dealings, and every single partner he’s ever taken on has either been a member of the same church as him or at least a documented man of God, as it were.”
“So, what are we going to do?” Addie asks.
“Well. You’re Catholic, are you not?”
She blows an elongated raspberry into the air.
But when I hold her gaze, she stops and says, “What? Oh, my God. You’re serious?”
“Salvador was always going on and on about his Catholic beliefs. I just assumed—”
“I mean, sure.” She stands up straight now. “I’ve been to mass about a billion times in my life. Except that was all before. Like when I was a kid. As an adult, I haven’t been to church since Luna’s baptism.”
“You went to Catholic school, no?”
With a sigh, she admits, “Yes. But again, as a child.”
“Nevertheless, you can ‘talk the talk,’ and ‘walk the walk,’ if you had to?”
Her lips purse and her nostrils flare. “I don’t know! I guess.”
Perfect. That’s all I needed to hear.
“Oh, no. I don’t like that look in your eye,” she cautions.
“What?” Steven isn’t as familiar with my many looks .
She points at me with the other hand resting on her hip. “He has an evil plan. I just know it.”
“Do you?”
“I—I wouldn’t call it evil, per se. Just deceptive.”
“Aha!” Addie claps her hands together. “I knew it. I knew it!”
“Well? What is it?” Steven asks before his eyes widen. “On second thought, if it isn’t ethical, I probably shouldn’t be apprised of it.” After that, he turns his back to us, shoves his hairy fingers into his ears, and hums to mask our words.
I chuckle a little before approaching him and pulling his arms at his sides.
“Relax, we aren’t going to scam or fraud anyone out of money. All I’m proposing is that we act like a couple.”
At that, Addie’s blue eyes get big, and her pupils dart between Steven and me. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s your plan? To win some Jesus freak over by pretending to be a same-sex couple?”
The mere suggestion of playing Steven’s sugar baby makes me want to step on his loafers.
“Please tell me that’s not the plan,” he begs.
Oh, please. It’d be your pleasure.
Once the teasing silences in my head, however, I finally come clean. “No, not necessarily.” My head dips for a second, I line my lower lip with my finger and thumb, and then I glare back up at Addie.
Her face remains neutral until she seems to get what I’m insinuating.
“Oh, God. No.”
“Well, we’ll have to practice not using the Lord’s name in vain if this is going to work, but yes.”
She shakes her head and crosses her arms across her chest.
“Absolutely not. That’s ludicrous. Absolutely not!”
“Addie—”
“No!” She continues to back away. “Besides, it’ll never work, Hayden.”
The corner of my mouth curls down. “You sure about that?”
“Completely.”
“Come on. It won’t be that hard. We just have to go in there a few times, act like we’re the kind of couple that fell in love at first sight in middle school or whatever and never kissed another soul until our wedding day.”
A chortle releases from her throat. “Oh, yeah. Because that will be such an easy sell for a manwhore like yourself.”
“Hey!” I pick at my suit. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” she presses.
“. . . Fine.” If that helps her reconcile her negative feelings with me, so be it.
“Addie? What do you say?” Steven inquires after a few moments of silence have passed.
“Um.” I haven’t seen her do it in years, but she’s biting away at her fingernails.
“Do I need to get the Bitrex?” I joke, knowing fully well that’s the bitter gel or whatever that her mother used to put on her nails to curb the habit when she was a kid.
“Shut up!” she says like a pubescent teen as she pulls her hands away from her mouth and holds them behind her back.
“In all seriousness,” I continue, changing my tone. “I need you in this with me, Addie. And I need you to commit one hundred percent. So, please don’t agree to this lightly. You simply can’t.”
I’m far enough that I can’t hear it, but I can still see her take a deep breath in and out.
“If it helps to think of it this way, you’ll be keeping your mother’s grubby little hands away from your abuelo’s fortune. I mean, if we can pull this off, she’ll have no right to it. Right?” I ask with my attention on the attorney in the room.
He bounces his head from side to side but admits, “Yeah.”
“So? What do you say?”
“I don’t know!” She looks up at the ceiling and chews on the side of her cheek.
“Addie, it’s all going to be fake.” I’d be lying if I said her apparent struggle and disinterest in being in a real relationship with me didn’t hurt. But I can’t afford to dwell on something so silly and selfish right now. “Completely fake,” I reiterate.
Steven chimes in and backs me up. “As Hayden was saying, this is the first step to securing your inheritance.”
“Yes, exactly.” I want to grab him and kiss his scruffy face in appreciation of him being her voice of reason. “And this is the perfect property. I mean, you saw it.”
“How long? How long with the charade have to last?”
“Only long enough to get the paperwork signed,” I answer.
“Fine. But my daughter is not to be involved in any way, shape, or form.”
Shit. That’s right. I haven’t thought about the adorable kid who burst into Salvador’s office the other day in a minute.
“Well? That’s a hard boundary for me, Hayden.”
I throw my hands up. “Okay, okay. That’s fair.”
Her jaw is clenched as she asks, “You promise?”
“I promise. In fact, Steven? Can you draw up a contract for each of us to sign?”
“Uh. Um, I mean—” he stutters. “There’s no real legal standing to enforce such an agreement in a court of law.”
“It doesn’t need to be. But I just want something that will ensure Addie that my intentions are pure and that I won’t go against any of her boundaries , as she said.”
He scrubs the sides of his face with his fingernails before finally agreeing to it.