Chapter4
Six hours later the alarm went off incessantly, and Regina reached her hand from beneath the sheet, blindly fumbling over the bedside table until she found the clock and pressed the button to turn off the repetitive noise.
Rolling over with a quiet groan, wishing she’d had much more sleep, she sighed and opened her eyes, pulling the pillow from on top of her head. Her bedroom was brightly lit with early morning sunshine. The buttercream yellow walls seemed to glow, as did the white lacy curtains over the windows.
Her bedroom was simply decorated with a pretty wooden dresser and mirror, her bed, and a small cushioned bench. There was a closet that was partly filled with nice looking clothes, though nothing fancy or expensive hung on any hanger in the small space. There was a bedside table where the annoying alarm clock sat beside a small lamp. It was a functioning space, suited enough for its purpose, but nothing more than that.
There was a picture on the wall of a white sandy beach and palm trees, and she promised herself that someday she was going to see a place like that, but she knew that it wouldn’t be for a while, and definitely not before she graduated from school.
She had lived there for two years, though it looked more like she might have moved in two months before. She was as settled into it as she was going to be, at least for a while. Regina knew that it wasn’t a permanent home, but it was somewhere to live while she was working and going to school, and with her busy schedule she was hardly ever home, so she hadn’t seen much point in making it any homier than it was.
Regretfully pushing herself up from her bed, she stretched and yawned and tried to make herself come to life. In the span of half an hour she brushed her teeth, showered, and pulled her red hair back into a messy bun. She slid into a pair of jeans and a blouse, and gave herself a last glance in the mirror.
Her lips gloss was good and her makeup had managed to successfully hide the fact that she needed more sleep than she’d had. Regina stopped in her small kitchen long enough to make herself a turkey and swiss sandwich and grab some fruit for lunch, she picked up her bag and hurried out of her front door.
She lived in a small house that she rented. It was only one bedroom, a bathroom, the living room and the kitchen, and it was enough to get her by. She didn’t need more than that just then, and she told herself that by keeping things in her life simple and living beneath her means, she would be able to give herself much more later on, particularly after she graduated.
She kept her dreams and goals in sight, she focused on them every day, and she worked hard every chance that she got so that she could reach them. As long as she made progress, whether it was a lot or a little, she considered it a success, and she bolstered herself up by every success she could measure.
It made a difference, and though sometimes she wished she was further ahead, it was enough that she was continuing to work hard to get where she wanted to be. She knew that with dedication and determination, it would happen, and the sooner it happened, the better.
Regina closed the door of her old car and closed her eyes, praying that it would start for her. It had been a gift from a well-meaning friend, but it hadn’t been the most reliable vehicle and she kept hoping that it would last her at least until her graduation when she would be able to find a better job and have a chance at earning the money to afford a better car.
After a few attempts, the engine finally turned over and she breathed a sigh of relief and put it in gear, turning it onto the street and heading toward the college. Forty-five minutes later she was pulling into a lucky parking spot and hurrying to make it to her first class of the day. She wished she could use the train and buses to get to school, but it took too long for her to get where she was going, and with her tight schedule between work and school, it wasn’t enough time. The expense of using a vehicle in New York City was enormous, but it made her chaotic schedule possible.
Regina stepped into her classroom and made it to a desk just before the professor entered the room, and her day of education began. One class after another after another soaked up the minutes and hours of her day until the day was gone and the evening began.
She got her car started again and made her way home through thick lines of traffic, finally getting to her own place, though she couldn’t get a parking spot any closer than six blocks away from her front door. She took it, and walked the long distance with her bag of books on her shoulder.
Setting the heavy bag down on the floor next to her kitchen table, she headed for the sink and made herself a pot of tea. With the steam rolling off of the surface of her drink, she set the mug down on the table and let herself relax for a few minutes.
Reaching for the stack of mail she’d dumped there the night before, she began to sort through it one by one. They were all bills, most of them overdue and demanding payment that she knew she didn’t have. She didn’t want to even open them, knowing that there wasn’t much she could do about paying them all in full.
A few envelopes into the pile, she stopped, finding a single sheet of folded paper in the stack of mail. She stared at the folded paper in her hand and her stomach tightened. The word ‘urgent’ was written on the outside of it and highlighted in yellow marker, and it was stapled closed.
She pulled the paper away from the staple carefully and unfolded it to give it a look, but everything in her froze when saw what was written on it. It was an eviction notice, and it had been dated two days before.
With a gasp, she held her hand to her mouth and blinked as tears began to fill her eyes. She was seventeen hundred dollars behind in her rent. She knew that she had owed some back rent, but she hadn’t taken into account any of the late fees and compounded interest, and looking at the sum total before her, she felt as if the entire earth had just fallen out from beneath her.
There was no way that she would be able to come up with seventeen hundred dollars in what was left of the week that she had to pay it before she would be kicked out of her home. She laid the paper on the table and couldn’t take her eyes off of it for a long while.
The other bills only made it worse, and it seemed to her as if it was a never ending black hole of debt, sucking her in until she was destroyed. Her tea cooled as she sat there and closed her eyes, lowering her face into her hands and sighing heavily. Tears formed in her eyes and her throat tightened as she tried to hold in the anguish she felt.
It was like a slow and deliberate suffocation that she couldn’t stop or even pause. She couldn’t fit another job into her schedule. She couldn’t find another night job where she would be making more money than she was in tips at the strip club, yet the tips there weren’t quite enough to take care of all of her bills and her rent, even though she was living beneath her means. It was an uphill battle. She had planned to take on another shift at the bar, but as it was she had chosen to give herself two free nights a week so that she could study and try to get good grades.
There was no time and there was no other way to make more money. She’d thought about taking on a roommate, but unless someone was interested in sleeping on the sofa in her living room, there was no space for anyone else.
Her back was up against a solid wall, with no way out of her troubles that she could see. She felt helpless and defeated, and that made it even harder to find any kind of hope or idea for how to get out of her situation.
Tears leaked through her fingertips and she finally sobbed, as the emotion overwhelmed her. Regina wept until there were no more tears to weep, burying her head in her arms and resting it on the table before her.
When she had cried herself out, she wiped her eyes, pushing the tears away and trying to dry her cheeks. She picked up her mug and finally sipped at the cold tea that still filled the cup to the rim. The taste of it was soothing, though only slightly, and she did her best to take a deep breath and calm down.
Regina knew that no good could come of focusing on the negativity of her problems. She was going to have to do all that she could to find way out of her troubles. Setting the mug of tea down, she leaned over and reached into her bag and pulled out her cell phone. Swiping her finger over the screen, she hoped that the woman at the other end of the call would answer. The other woman had been more than a best friend to her for most of her life, she’d been more like a sister. She was a confidant, a trusted loved one with whom Regina could share nearly everything, and with whom she could talk about her troubles without fear of judgment or humiliation.
“Hey girl!” Marie answered with a bubbly voice. “How are you doing?”
“Not good.” Regina answered in reply.
“Oh no! What’s going on?” her best friend’s voice was genuinely sympathetic.
“I got an eviction notice two days ago and I just saw it.” She sighed as she looked at it, perusing it again for what might have been the hundredth time.
Marie gasped and Regina heard the horror in her voice. “No! Oh honey… what’s going on? Are you late on your rent?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty far behind, and I knew that I was. I was hoping to catch up on the back rent after this weekend and next weekend, if I can make the tips, but there are extra charges on here and interest… they stick it to you every way that they can. Now it’s too much for me to try to pay.” She closed her eyes and sniffed as the tears threatened to return. She placed the notice page back down on the table and drew in a long slow breath, trying to steady herself.
“There’s no way that you can come up with the money?” Marie asked with moderate hope.
“Not any realistic way. And on top of that, I have a big stack of other bills here that are also overdue, and there’s nothing that I can do to get caught up on all of them either. I’ve been trying. You know I was working six days a week until last week. I had to change that so that I could have some extra time to do homework. Then I dropped it down to five nights a week, but even working that extra night before didn’t get me enough in tips to catch up on anything. I’m just drowning in debt here, and now I’m going to lose my home.”
She swallowed hard and struggled to take another breath. Talking about it with her best friend was at least a comfort, even if there was nothing that either one of them could do about it.
“I’m just… just working so hard to pay the bills and go to school, and I feel like my life is coming apart at the seams. I’m slaving at the club five or six nights a week, I’m in school five days a week. I even started doing my homework at the bar to try to save some time, but that’s not even helping.
I don’t have any time to relax or do anything fun; I never take any personal time for myself. I don’t even get any time with you, either.” Regina furrowed her brow as she spoke, thinking of how difficult it had all gotten. It was never supposed to be that way; it had just changed and developed over time and there seemed to be no way through it or even around it.
“I know and I understand. I do. We haven’t gotten to spend much time together at all, and I know how hard you’ve been trying to hold it all together. I wish it wasn’t so hard for you.” Marie’s voice was filled with kindness and compassion.
“I don’t want to quit school, but if I can’t get this taken care of, then I’m afraid that’s just what I’ll have to do. I can’t let myself give up like that, but I can’t lose my life for my education. I just can’t seem to make it work. I don’t have time for a second job.” Regina bemoaned miserably.
“Maybe it’s a good time to buy a lottery ticket?” Marie offered with a gentle half-laugh.
Regina groaned and pulled her ponytail out of her hair as she rolled her eyes and the shadow of a laugh escaped her. “You know the real irony of that is that I can’t even afford a lottery ticket.” She gave her head a shake and sighed. Tipping her cup back, she swallowed more of her cold tea. It was helping a little, and she was grateful for it.
“You know, something kind of crazy happened last night at the bar.” She thought back to the evening before and it felt like a million years before that moment.
“What was it?” Marie asked with a welcome lightness to her voice.
“Well, these two guys came in and had a few drinks, and while they were in there, they had me sit down to talk to them. One of them made me the most ridiculous offer I’ve ever heard of in my life.” She rolled her eyes as she thought about it.
“Yeah? What did he want from you? I can’t imagine what anyone there could ask you that would seem more farfetched than what’s already going on there.” Marie laughed a little.
“It was stupid. He wanted to hire me to be a fake wife for him. I told him off, but he did tip me a hundred bucks, so that was something.” She laughed softly thinking back on it.
“A fake wife? What the heck is that? I’ve never even heard of anything like that.” Marie was shocked.
Regina sipped the last of her tea and put the cup down. “He said that his dad wanted him to get married but he’s not ready to tie the knot. I guess in order to get his inheritance, he has to get married, so he wanted me to pretend to be his wife, then he gets his inheritance, and then he would pay me for doing it.”
Marie’s laugh was deep and long before she managed to get to her next question. “Yeah? How much was he going to pay you to be his fake wife?”
“That was the most ridiculous part of all of it. He said he was a billionaire and he’d pay me a million dollars to do it.” She laughed just thinking of it.
“What would a billionaire be doing in your strip club? That’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard.” Marie sounded thoroughly disgusted.
“Yeah, it was crazy. You know what was weird though, you’d think that any guy looking to hire a woman to be a fake wife would be gross looking or old or that he’d have something wrong with him. Like, really wrong with him.
Well, he didn’t. This guy was gorgeous. He knew it, too. He was beautiful and cocky and I guess he had a little money to throw around. I shouldn’t be surprised. We get some weirdos in the club now and then. What else could you expect in a place where people pay money to see other people dancing naked?” She shook her head and sighed.
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone and Marie finally spoke in a curious voice. “You don’t suppose that the guy was serious, do you?”
Regina shook her head and frowned. “He looked serious, to be honest, but that couldn’t be possible. His friend was in on it with him too, and they both looked like they meant it. I told him no and he still gave me his number and told me to call him if I change my mind.”
“Really?” Marie asked, intrigued. “Do you still have the number?”
“Yeah, I do, actually. I haven’t had time to clean out my bag from last night yet. I get a lot of numbers and other things, and I don’t bother to clean any of it out until a day or two later, usually. I do still have it. Why? Are you thinking of calling him?” Regina chuckled at the idea.
“No, but I think if you’ve still got his number then maybe you should call the guy and check it out. I mean, really… what could it hurt? If he’s being straight with you, then a short and fast marriage for a million bucks isn’t a terrible idea, you know.” Marie sounded as if she was being serious and it surprised Regina.
“You must be kidding.” Regina told her, wondering if her best friend had lost her mind.
“No, I’m not kidding. Think about this. If he’s really rich and he’s really looking for someone to marry him for money; just a quick marriage, it might not be a bad thing to actually consider. I mean, people get divorced when they say they’ve gotten married for love and they aren’t planning the end of it when they tie the knot. If he’s serious and you two tie the knot for money with every intention of getting divorced, then it’s really more like a business plan, isn’t it?
You might as well look at this like a job and think about taking him up on it if he’s serious. You’d certainly never have to worry about money again. You should at least look into it and give it a try.” Marie definitely sounded as if she meant every word that she was saying.
“Wow… you’re serious.” Regina was surprised. “Well, if I looked at it like a legitimate offer then I guess it would be something like a business arrangement.” She began to wonder what it would be like if the guy had been serious. What if he was truly a billionaire and he was looking for someone to hire as a stand-in wife and marry him just so that he could get his inheritance. She would just be there long enough to marry him, make sure he got whatever he had coming to him, and then she’d be free to leave, and she’d have a million dollars. If it was true, but she was fairly sure that it wasn’t.
“I think it might be at least worth looking into. I mean… what if he’s really serious about it? Could you actually turn down a million dollars if it was real? I wouldn’t want to lose that chance if it was me, and you could definitely use the money. Think about that,” Marie told her earnestly.
With a sigh, Regina acquiesced. “You know what, you’re right. I at least owe it to myself to see if he was actually serious. I’m sure he’s not, because it’s honestly the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but truth is stranger than fiction, and you’re right. I’m in no position to be turning down money right now. At least, not if it’s legitimate and real. I guess I should find his number and call him. Maybe give him a chance and see what happens.”
“I think that’s a smart move. You’re probably right, and he’s probably just some nut case who wants to get you into bed and is trying to come up with a seriously unique and weird way to do it, but if he’s not, you can’t take the risk that for this one time, truth is stranger than fiction and you could get a million dollars.” Marie giggled a little.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Regina agreed with her. “I’d better at least try. I’d be no worse off than I am right now and at best I would be a millionaire for the easiest job ever.”
“If you become a millionaire, I expect you to buy me dinner for talking you into this job in the first place.” Marie laughed out loud.
Lightness crept into Regina’s heart where despair and darkness had been. “Dinner? Marie, if I become a millionaire we’re going to Hawaii, and I’m buying.”
Marie laughed again. “That’s a deal!”
“I’m going to see if I can find his number and give him a call. I’ll let you know what happens,” Regina told her with a genuine smile forming on her lips. “And Marie, thank you so much. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“You would have failed at becoming a millionaire. I’m always going to be here for you, sister, no matter how much money you have. Now go poke that guy and see what’s really going on.” Marie
“I’m on it.” They told each other good night and ended their call. Regina felt a million times better than she had when she’d first dialed the number. Maybe there was a miracle in her future and she wouldn’t be facing the nightmare that lay between her elbows on the table.
Reaching down to her bag, she unzipped the inside pocket and pulled out the small wad of cash tips she had made the night before and a few pieces of paper with phone numbers on them. She nearly always went home with a few men’s phone numbers each night she worked, and they all ended up in the trash can, every single time.
She sorted through them and pushed the other numbers away, leaving only the possible one before her. His name was printed on a card in bold letters. Ryder Carrington. Beneath it was his phone number.
Holding her breath, without even really thinking about it as her nerves danced wildly, she slid her fingertip over the screen of her cell phone and prayed that she was about to be granted a miracle.