Chapter One
MARINA’S VOICE ROSE HIGH AND shrill. “Oh my God, did you see this?”
Jada didn’t look up from her phone. “Yes.”
“You did not see it. It’s mind-blowing.”
“I know.” Jada sipped her coffee and squinted at the small type on her news app. She reminded herself to make an appointment with her eye doctor.
“Look! Just look.”
Hmm, Jada thought as she scanned an article, the feds planned to raise interest rates next quarter. It’d be a wild day on Wall Street.
Marina grabbed her arm, rudely pulling Jada’s phone away with it. “Seriously. Check it out.”
Jada sighed, glanced at Marina’s tablet. It was exactly what she thought she’d see: a handsome man escorting a beautiful woman to some premier or other. More celebrity gossip. “Okay, I’ve seen it. My mind is officially blown. Let go of my arm now.”
Marina blew out an exasperated breath and released her. “Fine. I’d hate to keep you from your boring economic indicators.” She tossed her tablet on the table and sipped her latte, staring out the coffee shop window with a vengeance.
Jada didn’t know how her sister did it, but somehow, Marina managed to drink coffee in a way that made Jada feel guilty.
She set her phone down. “I’m sorry. If something’s important to you, it’s important to me. You have my complete attention.”
Marina glanced at her sideways. “Really?”
“Really.”
Marina smiled, a sparkling and infectious grin. “Good.”
Jada wondered for what was probably the millionth time in her life, if Marina had just played her.
Marina snatched up her tablet and passed it over. “Look at that. I can’t believe it. Ian Buckley is engaged.”
Jada eyed the photo. The man certainly was attractive, well-muscled, tanned and manly in his dark suit. The rail-thin woman clinging to his arm had the face of an angel, a hungry, hungry angel. “What show does he star in?”
“What? He’s not an actor.” Marina said “actor” the way most people in this circumstance might say “septic tank scrubber.”
“Oh. Sorry. Singer?”
“It’s Ian Buckley. I-annnn Buck-leyyyy.”
“Saying it slowly won’t tell me who he is or what he does.”
“He’s one of my billionaires. Damn, Jada. It’s like you don’t listen to me at all.”
Uh-oh, Jada thought. Marina was going to whip out a pout any second. “Oh! THAT Ian Buckley. I got confused, I guess. Sure, I remember.”
“Liar. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m going to forgive you because you’re my older sister and it’s not your fault that your priorities are in the wrong place.”
Jada couldn’t resist. “Right. Focusing on my financial future and trying to excel at my career are obviously screwy priorities.”
“Exactly.” Marina’s finely-shaped brows knitted. “I can’t believe Ian is engaged. One less billionaire on the market. This one hurts especially bad because Ian’s so fine.”
Jada studied the photo, read the caption under the picture which made mention of Ian’s company, BGH. Jada might not have recognized his face, but she knew Buckley Group Holdings. Now that she really looked at his picture, she realized she should have known who he was on sight, and recalled Marina showing her his photo before. Jada simply hadn’t looked closely enough.
“The caption’s only reporting a rumor that Ian’s engaged,” Jada said. “They haven’t gotten confirmation from either camp.”
Marina sighed. “Oh, I’m sure it’s true. These rumors don’t come from nothing. Someone close to them leaked it. You forget, I’m part of the press, so I know how this stuff works.”
Jada bit back a grin. Marina’s job as junior reporter at their small-town community newspaper hardly qualified her as belonging to the national press corp. “Well, all isn’t lost until official word comes down. So far, we only know for sure that Ian is dating ...” she scanned the page again for the woman’s name, “Sasha ... something. They don’t give a last name.”
“That’s because it’s just Sasha, the supermodel. One name. You’d think you’d—”
Jada let her mind wander while Marina set her straight on Sasha’s resume and how it qualified her to be known by a lone name. Jada couldn’t stop looking at Ian Buckley. He truly was a handsome man. Tall and bronzed, lean and muscular in all the right places. She liked how his hair was buzzed short on the sides, and she liked the scruff that darkened his square jaw. His hair was a dark color, too.
He had a long, distinguished nose, and nice lips, defined cheekbones. She couldn’t make out the color of his eyes in the photo, but she guessed they were blue, because the color would suit him.
Ian stood in a loose, limber kind of way, at ease in front of the horde of photographers, completely in his element with a beautiful blonde glamazon melting all over his side.
Marina’s saga finally interrupted Jada’s examination. “... if I could get just one date with Ian, that’s all I’d need. One date, and he’d forget all about Sasha.”
Jada took a last glance at the pair in the photo before shoving the tablet away. “Marina, billionaires don’t date real women like us.”
Marina gasped, covered her mouth, her brown eyes saucer-shaped. She shook her head, then dropped her hand. “I can’t believe you said that. Take it back.”
“Nope. Sorry, but you have to face the truth.”
/> “I’ll do no such thing. You’re totally wrong. I can’t believe you don’t think I’m hot enough to get a billionaire.”
Jada wasn’t falling for it. Marina was beautiful, and knew it. Jada thought she, herself, wasn’t bad-looking, but that didn’t change the fact that they weren’t ever going to snag any male of the mega-rich persuasion. As women of color who weren’t famous, who were just normal, everyday women, Jada and Marina didn’t have a chance in hell with men like Ian Buckley. Facts were facts, and no amount of daydreaming or wishing would change it.
“Quit exaggerating,” Jada said. “You know you’re hot. We all know it. But come on, when was the last time you saw a man like Buckley with someone like us?”
“If you’re insinuating this is a race issue, I’m going to have to point out that Michael Langdon, who is the sixty-fifth richest man in the world, married—”
“I know. He married the daughter of a Sudanese oil magnate. Hasn’t really worked out the way Langdon wanted, I bet, with the war and all. Anyway, that was forever ago, and it was hardly a love match.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Right. Anyway, we don’t have a rich daddy to buy us an even richer husband. And I’m okay with that. Maybe it’s time you should be, too.”
Marina crossed her arms over her chest. “Never. Ian Buckley may be off the market, but there’s still plenty of single billionaires just waiting to sweep me off my feet.”
Jada laughed. “I’ll give it to you, you’re a determined dreamer.”
“Damned right. And I tell you, Jada, there’s a billionaire out there for you, too. I know it.”
“If you say so.” She took a final swig of her cooled coffee. “I’ve gotta get to work. See you tomorrow morning at the gym? Six-thirty sharp?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t have any choice. Gotta stay in shape for my man.”
“What man? Are you dating someone?”
“For real? Duh. For my billionaire to come. Where’s your head?”
“Reality. That’s where my head is, and that’s where it’s staying.” Jada stood, grabbed her purse and jacket.
Marina stood, too. “One of these days, sister, I’m going to make a believer out of you, then you’ll truly see what’s up.”
“That’s awesome. Good luck with that.” She strolled toward the door, dropping her empty cup in the trash as she passed.
Marina called out behind her. “Reality is what we make it.”
Jada waved her hand in the air, not looking back or bothering with a comeback. Poor, deluded Marina. The least Jada could do was give her the last word.
TWO DAYS LATER, A PERSISTENT pounding woke Jada from her dreams. She sat upright in bed, pushed her hair off her face and blinked stupidly. What the hell was with the noise? Was it the end times already? The zombie apocalypse?
She rubbed her eyes and yawned. Bang-bang-bang. She jumped. Someone was pounding on her bedroom window. There were more bangs and bashes. It seemed multiple someones were beating on windows all around her house.
She glanced at the clock. It was only a little past eight. Damn. It was Saturday and she’d hoped to sleep until nine. Whatever was going on outside, it had better be important, especially since it sounded kind of scary. Fire? Tornado? Gas leak?
She climbed out of bed and padded quickly down the hall to the front door. It was dark in the living room and she couldn’t see outside since she always closed her drapes at night. Reluctantly, she peered through the door’s peephole. A man’s face fish-bowled before her. He was rapping on her door. Deafening. This was crazy. What was wrong with him?
Jada flung the door open, ready to give the man an earful, but the sight that greeted her on the front porch left her speechless, her mouth hanging open.
There had to be twenty, thirty people on her front porch and lawn. Some of them held microphones, others cameras, both still and video. Bright lights raised overhead nearly blinded her when they swung her way.
She shaded her eyes and when the intruders began yelling at her at the same time, she considered covering her ears, too. She vaguely noticed that more people poured into the yard from the sides of the house and blended into the crowd surging toward her.
Jada froze in place, thoroughly surprised and confused by the unprecedented scene. Oddly, she recalled something she’d once read. In ancient times, when people first saw men riding horses, they thought they were seeing a new creature, a single entity, a magical man-horse. They hadn’t considered that a person might train and ride an animal. Jada had always found it fascinating, the way the brain chose to interpret sights it didn’t understand.
That’s what was happening to her. She couldn’t identify individuals in the crowd; they’d merged into one huge, deafening and blinding mega-swarm of flailing arms, tramping feet and flashing lights. She feared the awful creature was going to push forward and flatten her.
Jada did the only thing she could think to do in that moment: she slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt.
On the other side of the door, the volume level rose. She’d angered the throng by shutting it out.
“I need coffee,” Jada said out loud, and half-staggered to the kitchen. A hit of caffeine would jump-start her flatlined brain like a defibrillator.
Within a few minutes, she was seated at the table, a fresh-brewed cup of coffee steaming under her nose. She sipped slowly.
The uproar outside hadn’t died down. The window pounders were back at it, and whoever was on the doors was making them shake. Jada wondered if they’d hold.
Slowly, everything became clear, and details of the crowd on her front lawn began to separate out of the swarm. Those people were reporters, television news crews. They’d been yelling her name and asking her questions about ...
What was it? They’d asked her about ... a wedding? Bizarre. Jada hadn’t been to a wedding in ages, not since a friend forced Jada to be her maid of honor and she’d had to wear a classless hooker dress to the ceremony. Jada still didn’t understand what that was about.
Regardless, it had no bearing on figuring out why there was a crush of reporters on her porch and front lawn.
Now that she had a better grasp on the situation, she was ready to know more. She returned to the front door, engaged the bar lock and released the deadbolt. She opened the door as far as the bar allowed, three-four inches or so, and peered out at the crowd.
The mass exploded again, and surged forward. Had it not been for the lock, they would have overrun Jada and crashed into her living room.
She heard plenty of, “Jada! Jada! Look over here!” and “Jada! Are you Jada Howarth?” and “Where was the wedding?” and “How’d you keep it hidden?” and “Get down, assholes, you’re blocking the cameras.”
Jada gaped. She assumed the comment about the cameras wasn’t aimed at her. As for the others, her only response was, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
There was no way anyone could hear her, not even the two men who were pressed in so close to the door crack that Jada could smell their stale breath.
She took a step back. The crowd roared. “No, don’t go!” “Just answer a few questions!” “Are you Jada?” “Shut up! She said something.” The last came from the men nearest her.
Miracle of miracles, the crowd fell silent, mostly. It was kind of creepy, all those eyes and lenses aimed at her, the rabid expectation.
Jada felt a nibble of stage fright. “Um. Why are you here? All of you. I don’t know why—”
Everyone, literally everyone in the crowd, answered her at once. Jada was finished with it. She shoved hard on the door but couldn’t close it because a man had wedged his foot in the crack.
Jada didn’t think about it, just turned slightly and stomped down hard on his toes with the heel of her foot. He howled, pulled back, and in a split second, Jada slammed the door shut and flipped the deadbolt. She bet he was sorry he’d worn flimsy sneakers.
Chapter Two
JADA REALIZED HER
HEART WAS pounding and she was breathing hard.
“What the hell?” she asked out loud to the empty room.
Somewhere, under the exterior roar, she heard her phone ringing. Great. They were trying to get at her that way, too. She trudged into her bedroom and picked up her phone off the nightstand. At least it was quieter in her room now that everyone was wailing at her front door.
It wasn’t more reporters, after all. It was Marina. Wait, Marina was a reporter, too. Oh well, Jada thought, feeling like she was in a stupor, some kind of bizarre dream where nothing made sense. Marina wasn’t one of the bad reporters.
She answered the call.
Marina’s voice was practically a squeal. “Turn on the TV! Turn on the TV! CGTV channel.”
The Celebrity Gossip channel? Jada would have said that this was no time for spying on the A list, except that nothing made sense anymore, so what the hell?
She grabbed up the remote, sat on the edge of her mattress and turned on the small TV that hung on the wall across from her bed. She flipped until she found CGTV.
Well, that was odd. It was showing a crowd of people in front of someone’s house. It looked like reporters with cameras and other equipment. It was a cute little house, painted blue, neatly kept with a newly-shingled roof and recently-trimmed hedges. It had a lovely carved front door and white shutt—
Hey!
“Oh my God,” she said softly. “That’s my house.”
“I know!” Marina shrieked.
Jada jumped, having forgotten she was still holding the phone. “What’s going on? I just woke up and the world’s gone crazy. Why is my house on TV?”
“It’s not just your house, Jada. A bit ago, it was you on TV, too. They showed you standing in the doorway.”
“What? Oh. This is ...” Jada glowered at the screen when she saw a woman in a short skirt and high heels step on Jada’s just-planted pampas grass, “...making me kind of mad.”