CHAPTER ONE
THE PAINTING AFFIXED to the wall behind my oncologist’s oppressive mahogany desk was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. I would’ve placed half my savings on the assumption that he let his infant daughter finger-paint and masqueraded it as a priceless piece of abstract art from an elusive artist. Was it supposed to be soothing? In what world were shapeless red and black splotches calming?
I had stopped listening to the balding doctor’s prognosis minutes after he told me the news.
My glazed over big brown eyes and slacked jaw failed to clue the doctor into my mind no longer being present in the room. It had taken a trip to dirty la-la land.
I could’ve forgotten the death sentence if he was a hot doctor who took me over his desk and fucked the bad news out of my head for a while. It could’ve worked for at least—well, ideally, thirty minutes to an hour. It was the better alternative to my existing boring plans for the day.
Boring? I never considered my life to be boring.
I lived a jet-set lifestyle. I was the face of my father’s company, Barcel Industries, and known as the cold bitch with no soul, and I gave no fucks. I was a young woman in the tech industry. Enough said. If I were a man, I would’ve earned the label tenacious, a go-getter, or a real standup guy. Being a double minority in the company meant I had a lot of shit thrown at me and had to prove myself. If my tactics rendered me a bitch, so be it.
Now, that hard work seemed unimportant. I wished for the unobtainable; everything I hadn’t done yet.
Those in life or death situations often said your life flashed before your eyes. For me, my unfulfilled fantasies flashed before mine. All the fantasies the slut-shamers would decry as whore-bag antics. I had way too many. From what the doctor told me, they would stay unfulfilled unless I did a serious overhaul of my life in under a year.
Sure, people placed travel plans on their bucket list. I’d been there and done that, and the only thing left on my to-do list was sex, sex, and more kinky sex.
As it was, I had to schedule time for sex. If death was to steal my life at twenty-seven years young, I was going out with an orgasm.
I caught the tail end of the doctor’s one-sided discussion where he gave me my death sentence: six months with chemo and radiation, or weeks if I skipped treatment.
It was usually six months to a year. There was always an oddball whose doctor gave them three years to live. Why couldn’t I have been so lucky?
“Miss Barcel? Are you still with me?” Dr. Ronald Kraye looked at me with a grim expression.
“According to you, if I agree to let you fill my body with poison, I will be for the next six months.”
He wasn’t amused, a line formed on his forehead.
I checked the time on my cell and rolled my eyes. I was late for that other thing I dreaded more than the appointment. “Were you supposed to give me brochures or something? I have to hurry this along. I have a business lunch. A lunchtime business meeting?” I held up my hands weighing my options and decided I didn’t care with a shrug. “What-the-fuck-ever. Just know it’s boring and something I’d like to do less than hearing you talk about this.”
“Miss Barcel, you should take this seriously. We can try experimental methods—”
“Hope in the form of little paper rectangles never works,” I replied, referring to the money others in my position threw at doctors for the latest non-FDA approved treatment overseas, only to be shipped home on a gurney to die. “That’s money wasted. Money I don’t want to waste.”
“Miss Barcel, if you refuse treatment, your lifespan could be mere weeks—”
“My father’s dying, too. The fucking irony, huh? The Barcel family is dropping like flies. Maybe I can race my father to the casket. He’s so fucking competitive, he’ll probably beat me to the coffin because he has to. Have you ever met a man who competes with everyone? That’s my father. He’d compete with God if he could. He’d let go of his obsession with immortality just to say he beat me at death.”
The only reason my father handed me the keys to his kingdom, otherwise known as Barcel Industries, was because he no longer had the mental capacity or physical strength to work from home. He gave me the interim job and told me he thought I was an ill fit for it.
I proved him wrong by moving the company’s focus away from his pipe dream to something more tangible and profitable. Considering the rumors that the company covertly conducted illegal experiments on cloning and genetic mutation, it was necessary. The company had never been in better financial health.
I ejected from the chair as I grabbed my clutch and reached out to shake my oncologist’s hand. “It’s been nice knowing you, Dr. Kraye.”
I WALKED OUT of the six-story building in downtown San Diego to crash into the noisy sounds of the cars and foot traffic. The low hum of rock music from a restaurant next door, specializing in all things deep-fried, did little to help clear my head.
I didn’t know what to think. What I could see of the sun from craning my neck seemed no different than almost every day in sunny Southern California. Nothing was any clearer or prettier. There was no new lease on life. I wasn’t sure if I was angry or sad. I was numb in my denial. I’d continue to be in denial until I looked like a skeleton and couldn’t function. Maybe when I was on the cusp of experiencing my death I’d have an epiphany about my life.
I wasted twenty-seven years of my life being a regimented skeptic without a love life and had shit to show for it other than a kick-ass career I couldn’t take to bed with me at night. In six months or fewer, there wasn’t much more I could do to make up for it.
Fuck cancer.
DR. KINDOUR DRONED on about his research and how it could benefit my father’s company.
Pretending to listen, I juggled my tablet and phone while I tried to put out fires at Barcel and subdue my stepsister, Tana, who had no other occupation other than to guilt me into visiting my father’s deathbed while he was under home hospice care at his beachfront estate in Carlsbad.
The last time we spoke, my father used every second of his breath to tell me I was a disappointment. I did more than he demanded of me; went to a Big Ten university at sixteen, earned the degree, did the internship, took over his company and improved it.
Inside me was a free spirit dying to get out. She became strangled by my overbearing, control-freak personality; a trait I inherited from my father. I was never irresponsible or reckless. It was all business, all the time except for Tuesdays when I scheduled dirty, kinky sessions with a very sexy partner. I was the woman who hardly ever lifted her eyes from a book, project, or whatever impossible goal I set in front of me.
“I know of your father’s search for the fountain of youth.”
“Wait…” I stopped everything to stare up into the reflective glasses of the man with a Ph.D. across the table from me in an overpriced restaurant with horrible food and a stunning atmosphere. “Fuck this, and fuck you.”
“Excuse me?” He hovered his hand over his chest.
“Not you. My father. I’m not sorry, Dr. Kindour, but if you want to work with Barcel Industries you should ask an employee that works there. I quit.”
“Right this minute?”
“Yep.” I turned off my devices and plopped them on the table with a satisfied smile.
Dr. Kindour didn’t know if he was coming or going.
I leaned forward. “Seriously. You can go.” I nodded to the door to hurry him along.
On the cusp of Dr. Kindour’s harried exit, the scenery in the restaurant caught my attention. One particular couple made my eyes settle on them for a little too long. The man was gorgeous, and while the woman was ageless, she was an odd fit for the man accompanying her. She was clean-cut and buttoned-down. She could’ve been the perfect mold of an old-school librarian, with a chain on her glasses and a fuzzy sweater.
I caught her eye for a moment and tipped my glass to congratulate her on the fine piece accompanying her. A smile tightened her lips, coated in a demure pink gloss.
I couldn’t say what it was about her. Maybe I saw myself as her in the far future and realized that future would not happen. By the end of the year, I would be dead.
I choked and tried to recover by drinking my glass of red wine.
She and her companion left the table and veered in my direction to head for the exit. Her soft brown eyes settled on me with a purpose hidden behind them. She moved like the small, narrow path was her runway. The surrounding people parted, giving her room to walk without a glance or a muttered word from her. She clutched the arm of her companion and whispered to him. The words exchanged forced him to leave the restaurant.
Approaching me, she extended her hand toward the empty seat in front of me. “Is it okay if I join you?”
I nodded my head and placed my glass on the table.
“Are you all right?” She leaned forward, eyeing me with what I thought was a worry. “You seem down. Is it the news buzzing around the restaurant of a serial killer?”
“No. I didn’t know there was one.”
“Haven’t you heard? A killer is loose in Southern California.”
I had heard something about a man on the radio and didn’t pay it any mind. It stated that the killer was taking the organs of his victims and setting the bodies on fire in public places.
“Sounds…heavy.” My words were airy as I wondered if the serial killer would put me out of my misery.
She transformed her mood into a palpable concern with a wave of her hand. “What has you down?”
“I have cancer,” I blurted out. “Inoperable. Terminal.”
She paused for a moment, and I thought she’d do an eye roll-worthy act by expressing her sympathy. Instead, she grabbed her handbag and stood. “There’s a bar that sells stronger drinks around the corner. Seems you need someone to vent to, and I want to be that person.”
AFTER TWO DRINKS in a dive downtown half full of hipsters and white collars searching for an authentic urban experience, my new friend allowed me to vent to her. Less venting, more drinking and questioning her about vapid things.
I deflected and avoided until I couldn’t any longer. The look on her face told me she had waited long enough to play therapist as I pretended to be an airhead whose most troubling thought was how often she thought the height of shoes was a double-edged sword.
“I don’t want to dwell on it,” I said on a heavy breath. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. There are more important things to freak out over. A madman is stealing people’s organs.” My gaze darted to the busy foot and street traffic. “Hell, maybe I can find him. The crazy guy might do me a solid by killing me instead of leaving me to shrivel up and die in agony.”
She slanted her eyes at me. “I don’t think being murdered is a better way to die,” she stated, relaying things in a nicer way to veer me off the path to self-pity. “I know you’re scared. What you’re feeling is normal. You should put things in perspective. Make a list of the things you want to do and do them one by one. Keep your mind off your disease and on your life while you still can.”
“It’s silly.”
“You don’t have a list of things you’d like to do before you die? Everyone does.”
“That’s not what I meant. Because I’m a disbeliever and an occasional tight ass, the things I want are silly.”
She wrestled a piece of paper and a pen from her handbag. “Write them down, and if you don’t want to share them with me, don’t. Just get them out into the world. It might make you see that what you want isn’t silly at all, but unique to you.”
I circled my finger around the rim of an empty martini glass, delaying the inevitable. Sliding the pad and paper toward me, I tore off two sheets of paper and passed one to her.
She pushed her paper aside and downed her fourth shot of the night in two swallows. The woman could put it away and remained unaffected by the straight scotch shots she’d drunk. Buttoned-up librarian? Fuck no. She was very deceptive. “I live every day as though it’s my last. There’s no reason to have a bucket list. I have a daily to-do list, and I accomplish my goals every day.”
“Gloater,” I mumbled, half-joking.
I wrote out the craziest fantasies I could dream up, making a mockery of the idea.
“Well?” She tapped her long nails on the bar table and shot a glance in my direction. “Want to share?”
“Keep in mind, I know most of this is impossible,” I began, “that’s the point.” I took the paper in both hands, preparing to read off my list as though I was reading a book report in front of a class. “Smoke. Marry a complete stranger. Have sex in public. Be punished in public. Get stuck in a scary situation. Have a threesome. Find a man who will tame my alpha, make me his bitch in a torrid sadomasochistic relationship, and push my limits. Buy a crazy expensive and limited edition car. Travel and fuck all over the world with a sexy companion.” Then, I added with a schoolgirl giggle, “Fuck a vampire.”
I waited for her to laugh.
She cracked a small smile on her ‘is she or isn’t she wearing makeup’ face.
“You’re not going to make fun of me?”
“Never.”
I glanced at her bag, calculating the amount she likely paid for it. “What do you do for a living?”
Her white teeth gleamed against her tan skin and glossy pink lips. “I’m glad you asked. Allow me to properly introduce myself. My name is Michelle, and I work for a company that can make sure you complete everything on your bucket list, for a reasonable price.”
I slapped my hand across my forehead. “I should’ve guessed with the guy you were with that you were a Madame. Look, I appreciate your offer, but I don’t need an escort service—”
She moved her head in a robotic manner and held me in her gaze while she passed off a digitalized business card. “I work for an exclusive fantasy fulfillment service.”
The second my thumb swiped across the LED screen, a message in red read: Executive Suites with an address. The address was in downtown L.A.
Since when had business cards gone digital?
“Please consider it. I want you to have the time of your life. You deserve it.” She didn’t signal or say a word, yet somehow the bartender approached her on his own accord. They exchanged nods, and he cleared the area of the bar in front of her and went to the cash register to enter a series of numbers, closing out her tab.
“You’re all set, Miss Mastin. Enjoy your evening.”
With a nod, she covered my hand with hers. “It was good to meet you, Regan. I hope to hear from you soon.”
An unseen pressure pushed me to follow her out of the bar.
At the curb, a driver dressed in a tailored suit waited for her at the open back door of the black Maybach. Michelle glided onto the cream leather upholstered backseat and cast a brief look in my direction.
I stood on the sidewalk in a trance, watching the taillights disappear into the downtown San Diego traffic.
Blinking out of my daze, I returned to the overcrowded bar and grabbed my clutch, ready to go home.
Prepared to settle my bill, I waved my hand to get the bartender’s attention.
He took five minutes to approach me and told me that Michelle had done it for me.
Stopping on the sidewalk, dense with people, I grabbed the card. I realized during the entire conversation, I had never told Michelle my name.