$10,000,000 Marriage Proposal (7 page)

Janey had a
pile of scripts to read that night, and each of them proved to be some variation on the fish-out-of-water theme: a misfit with supernatural powers; a big-city lawyer moves to the country to follow her dream of becoming a farmer; a former beauty queen takes a job as a bounty hunter; and so on. It was well past midnight when she finally threw the last script to the floor and turned out the light.

Exhausted though she was, Janey couldn't sleep. She swept her arm across the empty bed next to her, wishing she had company. But this man of mystery, if he ever revealed himself—would he deign to sleep in her bed? Could a man who lived in a house like that ever be comfortable in her Craftsman bungalow, with its low-slung ceilings, rough floors, and single bathroom? With bad water pressure?

All she could do was have faith in the process. If he were a playboy, making a game out of picking a wife—then he would never have picked Janey. Or Suze or Caroline, for that matter. They were all, in their own ways, down-to-earth. Surely a man who chose them could slum it here in her pad. He would have to, she told herself. She wasn't going to mold herself into his world.

She could see herself having that conversation with him, the one where he'd chosen her, and she was reminding him that she had a career to think of, and he would have to respect that.

“Of course,”
he would say, taking her hand in his. They would be out on his patio, appreciating the sweeping views over a bottle of wine.
“I've been wanting to downsize to someplace more cozy.”

Janey would hold up her hand to stop him.
“Let's not jump the gun here,”
she'd say. “
We have plenty of time for all of that.”

“Only the rest of our lives,”
he'd say, and lean in to kiss her.

Janey rolled over, knocking two pillows off the bed. She looked at the clock. It was 1:30 and she still hadn't slept. She had to get up in five and a half hours! She couldn't function on that little sleep. She reached over and reset her alarm to 9:00 a.m. In her new job, thankfully, she set her own hours.

She pulled her laptop out from under the bed and opened it up. The studies said that looking at a screen in the middle of the night was the worst thing for insomnia, but she didn't care. If this bachelor was going to keep her up all night, she would at least use the time productively. She addressed an e-mail to herself and gave it a subject line:
Story Ideas.

The yard behind
Caroline's mother's house was brown in the porch light. As the person who'd insisted her mother turn off the sprinklers and apply for a water-saving rebate from the city, Caroline couldn't complain, but it was still depressing.

With a furtive look over her shoulder to make sure her mother and sister were asleep, Caroline lit a cigarette. It was an old bad habit, and really her mother couldn't fault her for it, since her own insistence that Caroline be skinny had driven her to cigarettes as a teenager. Now she indulged only once a month, max, and only in moments of stress.

Caroline exhaled. It was ridiculous that she was stressed out about this crazy love contest when she had so many other things to worry about.
Admit it,
she told herself,
you're looking for an easy fix.
She didn't want or expect a gallant stranger to sweep her off her feet, solve her housing and other financial woes, and leave her to pursue a life of charitable work. In fact, that was the opposite of what she wanted. If love was entwined with salvation, could it be trusted?

For the umpteenth time Caroline resolved to pull herself out of the running.

But what if she actually liked him? What if they liked each other? What if they were soul mates?

As weird and unlikely as this whole rigmarole was, Caroline couldn't help but harbor a small, irrational hope that everything would work out. He would pick her, and he would pick her because he saw her for who she really was, and they would live happily ever after. It was unlikely, but it wasn't impossible. No matter what else had gone on and would go on surrounding their meeting, they were still just two people who hadn't met each other, and in that simple equation there was a whole world of possibility.

What if she never heard from him again? How long would he leave her in this maddening state of limbo?

Suze was googling
Mr. Moneybags. She knew it was a useless exercise—she had already googled him, the contest, the corporation that had purchased his house, to death. She'd even checked to see who had registered the domain of the website that was hosting the contest. Her fantasy was to find him on social media or, failing that, perhaps to stumble on a sibling who'd blabbed about the contest. But it was not meant to be. He had total control of the flow of information, and she would simply have to wait. Suze shut down her computer and crawled into bed. It was beyond frustrating to have such big stakes, and no idea of when or how they would play out.

Lying in bed, she stared at the ceiling. And then it dawned on her. She couldn't track down any of Mr. Moneybags' personal information, but the way the contest was being conducted told her plenty. Suze realized, with great certainty, that Mr. Moneybags would contact all three finalists tomorrow. This contest was not slow and drawn out. He was not reveling in the suspense. He wanted to find someone, and he'd used his financial position to attempt to do so as efficiently as possible. Tomorrow her life might change. And yet even tomorrow was too long to wait.

After half an hour of restlessness Suze went to the bathroom and popped half an Ambien. Whatever the news might be tomorrow, she wanted to be ready for it.

The next morning,
when Suze arrived at her desk, there was an envelope waiting for her. Her first name, written in careful calligraphy, was the only thing on the envelope. It had obviously been delivered by messenger, and she had no doubt at first glance that this was it. She was about to find out if she'd won or lost this lottery of love.

After hiding the unopened envelope carefully in her desk drawer, she went to the café and ordered the usual: a regular mochaccino. She brought it back to her office and sat still for a moment, warming her hands on the cup.

She was pretty sure that this meant she hadn't won. There had been many envelopes in Suze's past, and for the most part they had heralded success. She had known without looking that she'd gotten into every college to which she'd applied. The same was true for business school. But the handful of times she hadn't been accepted to a program or landed a fellowship or been offered a job, she had felt doubt. This was a virtue. She never doubted herself, but she could always sense when the match wasn't perfect. Then again, this contest was unlike any she'd ever entered. There were too many variables. Who could say what a perfect match with the presumably unmet mystery man might feel like? Certainly, neither Janey nor Caroline had more reason to feel confident than she did.

Suze took out the envelope. Would she be disappointed if she lost? Did she even want to win? She was 100 percent certain that even if this slim envelope held a check for ten million dollars, she hadn't found her perfect match. Maybe
he
had, but she hadn't. Not only was the process deeply flawed but the odds were simply against it. And yet…ten million dollars was life-changing. She would carefully consider any proposal that came with that bonus.

She tore open the envelope. The letter inside was neither long nor formulaic.

So that was that. Suze folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. She had been right after all. Miguel was Mr. Moneybags. He was the one she had liked best, and she had gambled on that, treating him like her date instead of an interviewer. Now she was left with the same questions she might have any time a guy didn't call her for a second date. What had gone wrong? What had been missing? The letter offered no clues. Suddenly she realized something: this was the first time a guy hadn't called her for a second date.

She hated to lose, damnit. Suze took a sip of her coffee and let the feeling settle. She had wanted to get to know Miguel more than she cared to admit. It was over, no matter what she wanted. In a moment she found a small smile creeping across her face. He was so sure that she would find happiness, he almost had her convinced. Besides, it had been fun.

Suze picked up her phone, thinking she'd text Janey and Caroline to see what they'd heard, but then thought better of it. Let them find out in their own time. She was out of this game.

Isabelle hadn't been
this excited since Caroline was a semifinalist in the Miss Teen Santa Monica Off-Season Fruit Pageant, a questionable concept and perhaps, therefore, the scene of Caroline's all-time biggest pageant success.

When Caroline came downstairs, breakfast was already on the table, a goat cheese and asparagus scramble (her favorite) and glazed doughnuts from the Mister Donut down the street—a much-fantasized-about but extremely rare indulgence. Isabelle's daughters never had processed sugar if she had anything to do with it. Isabelle whistled cheerily as she set a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice on the table. Yes, Isabelle was very happy.

There was a knock at the door, and Caroline went to answer it. A messenger handed her an envelope. “From Mr. Nicholas,” he said, and went back to his car.

Nicholas,
Caroline processed. That was the name of her interviewer. But he was too humble to be a millionaire, wasn't he? And probably too young. Neither Suze nor Janey had mentioned meeting a Nicholas. Was she the only one he'd taken the time to interview? Was that man, that Nicholas, her knight in shining armor? Or were the interviewers handling the communications?

“Is that the electrician?” Isabelle screeched from the kitchen. “Tell him it's the outdoor light near the garage. It's been blinking ever since he quote-unquote fixed it, and I'm not paying him again.”

“Mom,” Caroline tried to stop her. “It's not—”

“You hear me, Caroline?” Isabelle's volume made Caroline wince.

“Got it, Mom,” Caroline called back. She quickly hid the envelope in her robe and went into the bathroom, then sat down on the toilet lid to open the letter.

Reading the letter, Caroline could hear the soft, calm voice of the man she'd met the other night. So he
was
the millionaire! And he had liked her! She couldn't quite tell from the letter, but it seemed like she had, against all odds, won. She'd landed the lead part. And now they were cancelling the show. He was giving up. Without even trying. Caroline bit her bottom lip, willing herself not to cry. Of course she hadn't won anything. She'd never really dared to dream that she would. But now, to hear how close she'd come…and what had she lost? At the very least, a man who could rescue her from this house, her mother, her debt. And if she dared to dream—Prince Charming, a man whom she might love, a man who chose her from the crowd, a man who could help her make real changes in the world. A soul mate.

This whole time she'd told herself she didn't believe in the contest, or care about it. But the mere possibility it presented had forced her to confront the reality of her life. She was twenty-six years old, living with her mother. Her job, which she loved, would never support her. She hadn't been on a date—hadn't even met someone who interested her—in the ten months since Steven dumped her.

Somehow she had managed to spend three years thinking she had a healthy and loving relationship with a man who felt perfectly comfortable breaking up with her simply by never returning her calls. No arguments, no ultimatums, no
We have to talk,
just utter silence. It had been insulting and devastating. How could she trust someone after that? How could she trust herself? For the brief period of this contest Caroline had allowed herself to hope, to believe that someone might pick her out of a crowd and love her exactly as she was. But even the man who'd invented the contest was wise enough not to be so hopelessly romantic in the end. She was the fool who'd been willing to believe in someone else's misguided fantasy.

Nicholas was right, of course. This was a stupid way to find love. Or to make money, for that matter. But it sure would have been nice. And after daring to hope that her life could actually fall into place, fairy-tale style, she now had to face how far from the truth that was.

Brooke knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there? I have to get ready for school.”

“Oh, sure, sorry. Be right out.” Caroline threw water on her face and brushed past Brooke before her sister could notice anything. In the kitchen she shoved a doughnut into her mouth and muttered something about her allergies acting up, just in case her mother noticed any redness around her eyes.

“Enjoy!” her mother crowed. “We're celebrating today, aren't we? You're putting yourself out there, Caroline. The only way to make things change is to change them yourself, and you're doing it. I'm so proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Caroline said. She didn't want to deceive her mother, but it seemed a shame to let her down so soon.