Carrying His Baby

“It took a lot of wrangling to get a foot in the door, Hallie. I want us to make the most of it.”

“Val, everything will work out fine. Trust me. Do you want me on desserts myself? I could handle that, if you like.”

Valerie considered.

“I wouldn’t mind, actually, but you’re good at keeping staff ready, organizing, making sure everything goes smoothly. I want you out at the event, not in the kitchen.”

Hallie shrugged.

“With the right menu, I could do both. If it’s frozen desserts, I would only have to supervise plating. Everything else will be done ahead of time. I can juggle.”

That was another thing Hallie did extremely well. She could juggle a dozen things and keep them all in the air.

“We’ll see. For now, I just want to land this and get that part done.”

“I don’t think I like our wine billionaire,” said Hallie, suddenly.

“Why not?”

Valerie was surprised.

“Well, I’ve never seen him with the same girl twice. In tabloids, I mean. And I did a basic search, you know, to try to figure out what the client wants. Standard, so we can tailor our pitch. He seems like a bit of a dick,” declared Hallie.

“Hallie!”

Valerie was shocked.

“I suppose you don’t get to be a self-made billionaire at twenty-nine without being a bit of a dick. You probably have to trample over a few people to do that. But still, he seems to have no respect at all for the women he dates. There was this one report about how he forgot the name of his date at some red carpet event. Can you imagine how embarrassing that must’ve been for the poor girl?”

Valerie’s eyes were sparkling, as they did when she was deeply interested despite her best efforts not to be. Still, she tried.

“We shouldn’t be gossiping about our client.”

Hallie grinned.

“Not our client yet, and we gossip about all our clients. It’s practically part of our perks,” she pointed out.

“Well, maybe, but you know how tabloids are. And all those gossip sites. They all want clickbait. Good things never make it for clickbait.”

Hallie shrugged.

“And he’s always seen with all these models. It seems pretty obvious that he goes for the superficial. If he wanted anything more, he would at least be seen with the same model twice.”

“Well, he’s young and single. And extremely handsome.”

Hallie pretended indifference. She didn’t want to admit that yes, she had found him extremely handsome, too. He seemed to be tall and broad shouldered, always impeccably tailored, and he had a smile that reduced even seasoned veterans of the tabloid circuit into giggles. Even society matrons seemed to like him, from what she had read.

Apparently, that combination of sunshine blonde hair and eyes so blue they were like the sky made him irresistible to women. There was the famous chin dimple, too, she thought, rolling her eyes. Who on earth made a Twitter account for a chin dimple?

Some besotted idiot, she figured. There was an actual Twitter account dedicated to his chin dimple, and sometimes, expressing the dimple’s philosophical musings about the universe.

It was all beyond ridiculous, really. Nobody with an ounce of sense would be taken in by all that. He might be charming – and by all accounts, he used that charm to good effect – but did nobody look beneath the surface anymore?

What about kindness, compassion, using your power for good and all that, she wondered, because he had both wealth and power. If she’d had that kind of money and power, she would spend it all on something far more important than private jets and buying islands.

“Val, the man has an island.”

“What?”

“An actual island. A Polynesian island. He really owns an island. I checked.”

Valerie’s eyes popped a bit at that.

“An island seems… a bit much,” she conceded.

“A bit? Try a lot. Who on earth needs an actual island?”

Valerie shrugged.

“I don’t think billionaires have our priorities. But details about our client, fingers crossed, is good. Anything more?”

“He likes nectarines. He really likes nectarines, and all kinds of sauces and marinades with nectarines. That’s something I got. He also likes coconut-based desserts, a lot. I’ve added both in our sample menus. I’ve added a few low-cal, low-fat options of everything. Judging by the women he hangs out with, those are also necessary. And his favorite drink is Jameson’s. Irish whiskey. Which is funny, I had the most awesome Irish cabbie named Alfred on the way over here.”

She trailed off as Valerie’s phone rang. She could only hear one side of the conversation, but she could get the gist.

“Lori, you need to handle… That is absolutely out of the question. It is not an emergency, it’s just a problem. I… I’ll call you back, two minutes.”

Valerie raised harried eyes to Hallie.

“Lori is wigging out.”

“And how. She didn’t get the peaches. Our produce guy didn’t have peaches, so it’s the end of the world.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, can’t she send somebody to get peaches?”

“Nobody’s in. Everybody’s out at that birthday party, remember?”

“Of course. And she can’t go, because she’s Lori. I’ll go and get her the damn peaches.”

Valerie nodded.

“I would’ve preferred to have you here for the meeting, but… Well, I have the research, and I have everything here. You will have to go and sort out Lori and her peaches.”

“On it,” said Hallie, and walked out.

She had to admit, she didn’t feel as much regret at not being at the meeting as she might have. She was curious to meet Aldous Banks, the playboy billionaire, but she wanted her first client meeting as manager, though a very junior one, to be a client she would like. A client she could enjoy working with.

There were some clients she loved running point with. They were the ones who were excited about the event, open to ideas, who cared about how their guests would feel. Not the ones who threw parties because throwing parties was what you did. Especially not ones who threw parties that doubled as corporate and business mixers.

She really didn’t like such events. She liked catering fun events, where everybody let their hair loose and could just be themselves.

Still, she was curious. She had never catered for a billionaire before.

Well, it wasn’t like billionaires had horns, she reasoned. Billionaires were regular people. With at least a billion dollars, which she couldn’t even imagine, honestly. How much space would a billion dollars take in, say, hundred-dollar bills? She had no clue.

She hated herself for that nagging little wish that he’d have the party on his yacht, or on his island, or in his house – mansion – castle – whatever he lived in. If he had his party on an island, he wouldn’t be hiring them, she reasoned as she went down the steps to be smart and catch the subway back.

Or he might, of course. Billionaires did crazy shit like flying the help all over the place, didn’t they?

That’s what she would be, of course – the help. She was fine with that, really. She might have dreamed of being a princess with her own castle when she was a child, but she had left those childish fantasies behind. She was working her way up the ladder, slowly.

Her dreams were simple, in any case. She didn’t want castles and private jets, except during short, foolish moments. She wanted a cottage, with a backyard where she could have a swing, and a little herb garden. She wasn’t even too particular about a garden in the front yard. She would be fine with window boxes if that was too much.