Chapter 7 – Penny

“– incredible,” Charlie whispers.

He just stands there, open-mouthed. I can’t tell if he really means it, or if he’s just playing with me. I’ve never been good at reading men, and Charlie Thorne is no exception. In fact, he might be the most inscrutable man I’ve ever met.

His icy gray eyes flash, advertising his powerful intellect. Every time I see that look on his face, I start to question everything I’m doing. If I was going to pick a man to con, why did he have to be one of New York’s most intelligent men – as well as one of her most eligible bachelors..?

I bite my lip and turn away, hiding behind my main of red hair. “Stop messing around,” I mutter.

Charlie clears his throat. “Hey,” he says. “I tell it like it is.”

“Can you do me a favor?” I ask. I’m looking at the wall so I don’t have to look at my husband. My husband! I only caught a glimpse of him as he walked in, and I have to admit that he looks unbelievable. His evening attire clings to his body as though it was sculpted for him and him alone.

I have no doubt that it was.

The material hides everything, and yet leaves nothing to the imagination. I can almost pick out each of the individual ridges on Charlie’s abs. His shoulders are marked out like a man carved from stone, or smelted out of iron.

“Sure,” Charlie breathes. “I’m at your service.”

If only.

If Charlie Thorne really was at my service, if he would do anything I asked of him, then that would change things considerably. I know precisely what I’d request – just not exactly in what order.

I would ask for money to pay for my father’s treatment. I would also ask for the touch of his fingers on my naked skin. I lick my lips, and try to hide from the image that thought conjures. As for the order …

“Can you do me up?” I say. “I can’t reach.”

Charlie’s leather soles whisper against the thick cream carpet as he walks toward me without another word. I don’t realize he’s arrived until I feel his hand touch where my hip kinks into my waist. It settles there, light, like a man’s touch on a first date.

I shut my eyes.

Even though this is all a charade, I can’t help but regret that we’ll never have a first date. We’ll never have a first kiss. We’ll never have –

“There, how’s that?” Charlie asks. His breath kisses the back of my neck, and sends a couple of my long red hairs dancing through the air.

“Perfect, thank you,” I whisper. I wait for Charlie to lift his fingers from me – from my hip, and where his right hand now rests, just beneath my neck – but he doesn’t.

I shiver.

“What?” I asked. “What are you looking at?”

Charlie turns away. It’s a quick, jerking movement. It’s almost as though he’s afraid he’s been caught.

“Nothing,” he says. “I’m just – just surprised this is what Ella picked out.”

“Miss Casey bought this?” I squealed, spinning on my bare feet.

Charlie shrugs. A wide grin splits his cheeks. “Sure did. I guess the old girl’s got style.”

I sit down on the guest bed. As I do so, I kick out at Charlie. I look up at him, pouting. “And what if she hadn’t? What if she’d –”

Charlie dances away from my ill-aimed blow. I miss him with feet of air between us. He’s so light on his feet. I wonder if he was a gymnast as a kid, or if he played football. I bet he was a quarterback, if he did. He’s got that easy balance, that almost predator-like grace.

He glances down at his watch. “Are you done?” He winks. “I can’t wait around for you all night.”

I grimace, slipping on a pair of Valentino heels that are miraculously my size. I’m more of a Footlocker girl, ordinarily. Not out of choice, but because that’s all I can afford: even that just barely.

“Then let’s go,” I say. I stand up and stick out my arm. I’m just doing what I’ve seen in a thousand movies, but somehow it feels right.

Charlie loops his arm through mine, and leads me gently to the elevator. He presses the button, and the doors slide open. We step inside.

As the doors hiss closed behind us, I can’t help but feel that everything feels right: too right.

***

Charlie’s chauffeur driven car pulls to a halt outside the ballroom. I blink. It’s like the whole journey passed by me in a daze.

“Where are we?” I ask as I step out of the car.

“Guastavino’s, on 59th,” Charlie replies. “Ever been?”

I disguise a laugh. Clearly Charlie Thorne knows very little about me. Fancy charity balls are definitely not my scene.

“Oh, it’s gorgeous,” I say.

I stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk, looking up to the ballroom’s glittering façade. The ballroom is built out of beautiful nineteen twenty stone, and fronted by delicate, green-painted metal work.

The sky overhead is dark and light floods through the huge glass windows. Just looking at it, I know that I’ve never been to a place like this in my entire life.

A bouncer stands at the entrance. I slow, expecting to have to hand over ID – and realize that I’ve been such an idiot. When it comes to drinking with Robbie, or my other friends, my age is no big deal. No one in Brooklyn cares about serving underage kids – and when you grow up homeless, alcohol isn’t exactly a big deal.

Charlie gives me a questioning stare and tugs me along. “What are you waiting for?” He asks.

“Good evening, Mr. Thorne,” the suited bouncer says. He lifts up a small velvet rope and lets us through without so much as a word of complaint.

“Nothing,” I say, half-stumbling by Charlie’s side.

My heart thuds in my chest.

I feel like I’m being so rebellious: as if I’m pulling off the heist of the century, not heading to a fancy society event on the arm of one of New York’s wealthiest men. I’m such an idiot. I should have realized that no one would’ve stopped me – but this isn’t my life. I don’t know the rules here. I don’t know how this rarefied world works.

A concerned look flickers across Charlie’s face. He hides it quickly, and winks at me. “Don’t be nervous,” he says. “Trust me; no one here’s going to have a problem with you.”

“How do you know?”

A smile breaks on his face. “Because they all want my money, that’s how,” he says. “And they sure won’t get it by insulting my wife…”

I’m still processing that sentence when Charlie starts walking again: his wife. That’s what I am, and no matter how I got here – I need to act like it. I haven’t met many, but I doubt that billionaire’s wives act like nervous little schoolgirls.

We walk through a small, but beautiful garden. Thousands upon thousands of tea lights flicker everywhere: hidden in the bushes; ringing each section of the grass. My expensive Italian heels click against the asphalt path.

“Charlie,” I mutter quietly.

My eyes dart from person-to-person as we thread our way through a group of people my date appears to know. They all greet him.

“Yes… Honey?” he replies. I can’t be certain, but I think he deliberately raises his voice.

I elbow him. “Don’t do that,” I say. “Do we have a story?”

“– a story?”

“Yeah, you know. Like how we met. Have we been on holiday together? What’s our favorite show on Netflix –?”

Charlie’s eyebrow wiggles upward: “Netflix?”

The question rocks me backwards. For the first time, I truly feel like Charlie and I are from entirely different worlds. “You can’t be serious?”

The corners of his lips kick upward. “I’m just playing with you, girl,” he says. “Of course I know what Netflix is.”

A whoosh of breath escapes my lips. It’s more than just Charlie’s joke: it’s everything. A wave of nerves overcomes me. I cling to Charlie’s arm. “Well, I didn’t know,” I mutter. “For all I know you fly the actors in and –”

Charlie’s face wrinkles in feigned confusion. “Doesn’t everyone? How do you meet the actors if you don’t?”

“Shurrup,” I groan. “You’re not as funny as you think, you know that?”

Charlie shrugs. “That’s cool,” he says. “As long as I’m as funny as I look, I’ll manage.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I say. “What’s our story?”

Charlie grins. It’s a wicked, mischievous smile that makes my heart sink. “You tell me,” he says. “Let’s play a game: anything you say, I’ve got to go along with.”

I shake my head. “No. That’s a terrible idea. You want this whole thing to unravel? I’m no good at thinking on my feet.”

“Are you sure about that?” Charlie replies. “Sure didn’t seem to stop you deciding that we were married…”

“Are you going to hold that over me for the rest of my life?” I say.

“As long as you’re my wife: at least,” he admits. “Wouldn’t you?”

I stop dead. This is too unsettling. We’re acting like a couple who’ve loved each other for years – not known each other for days, yet Charlie doesn’t know the truth. He doesn’t know that I’m only here because I’m after his money.

It doesn’t matter why I need it – just that I do.

“Fine,” I grimace, covering the momentary pause. “You made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it.”

Charlie’s eyes rake my body. If I wondered whether he was checking me out before, now I know for sure. The heat of his stare travels from my heels up the slit that runs down the side of my dress, and lingers at my plunging neckline, before finally meeting my eyes.

“That’s the plan,” he growls.

The sound of Charlie’s voice and the masculine certainty of his stare combine to send a shiver running up my spine. My inner thighs tingle, too, and I clamp my legs together to stifle the sensation.

We walk inside. The ballroom is vaulted; arched ceilings soar up above us. I know it isn’t cool to stare, but I can’t help myself. The room is dazzling. It’s laid out for at least a hundred and fifty people, and a fifteen-piece band is playing at the far end.

A waiter hands me a glass of champagne, and I sip at it greedily. Like I said, I’m no stranger to alcohol. Maybe that isn’t right, and it’s definitely not legal, but that’s just the way it is. When you’re trying to keep warm on the streets of the Big Apple in mid-February, anyone trying to take the fifth of vodka out of my hands had better bring a knife…

“Like it?” Charlie asks as he leads me through the sea of people. Some are dressed for dinner, just like we are, but most are servers.

I nod. “Are we early?” I ask.

“A little,” Charlie allows. “I’ve got a few things I need to sort out, first.”

I don’t ask why. My eyes linger on some signage for the Pediatric Cancer Fund. “I’ve never heard of this charity,” I say.

“You wouldn’t have,” Charlie says. “That’s the whole point. We don’t advertise. Every penny we raise goes to the kids.”

I arch my eyebrow; “every penny?” I say pointedly.

“Every one, Penny,” Charlie says. He smiles to himself – pleased with his play on words.

“Then what about tonight?” I ask. “It seems like renting out a place like this must cost a whole heap of cash. Shouldn’t that go to the kids as well?”

I’m spoiling for a fight. I can sense it. I don’t want to be a bitch – I really don’t – but sometimes I feel like that side of me is lingering just underneath the surface, waiting for an opportunity to escape. I look around this room and I see obscene wealth. I see rich people buying their way to an untroubled night’s sleep.

I don’t see charity, I see people playing at being generous.

“Every penny,” Charlie repeats. “You got to spend money to make money,” he says. “It’s just the way the world works.”

“You couldn’t just donate it instead?” I reply. “Or is it not the same if people don’t see you doing it…”

Charlie’s gray eyes flash with a glimmer of hurt. However, he hides it quickly. “Maybe you’re right, Penny,” he says. “Maybe there are better ways of doing it. But you see all this?” He gestures around the spectacular ballroom.

I nod.

“I’m paying for it. Every… penny,” he adds, unable to help himself. “And I’ve invited anyone who’s anyone in New York. You know there are more billionaires per square foot in this city than anywhere else on the planet?”

I shrug, pretending that I don’t. In truth, I do. I know that fact very well. Robbie and I did our research before selecting Charlie as our – my – target. Now, though, the evidence is stacking up. We didn’t do our job properly: first I find out about Tilly, and now I discover that Charlie’s a bleeding heart philanthropist as well.

It was easy enough to talk myself into lightening Charlie Thorne’s pockets when I thought of him as a big bad billionaire. But now: it’s not so easy.

“Hey, earth to Penny,” Charlie says, with a quizzical half-smile; “anyone home?”

I shake myself out of my trance. For some reason I’ve got Kanye lyrics playing in my head. What’s fifty grand to a motherfucker like me, will you please remind me?

Except instead of Kanye’s angry rap, I’ve got Charlie’s gravelly bedroom voice in my head. I rationalized stealing millions of dollars from a heartless, ruthless billionaire. I thought his money was just going to knocking down homeless shelters. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

But I know one thing for sure – if I go through with my planned con –

“Sorry,” I freestyle. “I lost myself in my own head. I didn’t realize you were paying for all of this.”

Charlie brushes the comment aside. He takes me by the waist and spins me. It’s a delicate, first-date touch that sends thrills running up my spine, and sparks running down to – well, you know where.

“You see all these rich guys?” He says, pointing out a sea of gray-haired men with platinum blonde, twenty-year-old hopefuls around their arms. I’m still recovering from his touch when he pulls me in to his side. He does it without thinking, but it’s all I can think about.

“Sure,” I whisper.

I swallow, and drag my tongue across suddenly dry lips. I try and concentrate on what Charlie’s saying, but it’s hard. The sharp, springtime scent of his aftershave invades my nostrils. My skin is on fire.

“They’re assholes, all of them.” Charlie speaks with a tone of scorn to his voice.

“Rich assholes, though: they don’t want to give their money away. If it was up to them, they’d let their accountants stash it in some Panamanian bank account where Uncle Sam can’t get his hands on it. That’s why I do this.”

“Do what?”

Charlie’s hand rides up my lower back. I pay attention to every nerve ending as they fire in delight.

He grins. “Fleece ‘em, of course. Lighten their pockets so they can show off to the hooker they booked for the night.”

“What do you mean?”

“They can’t help themselves,” Charlie says, wincing with distaste. “These guys will drop fifty grand on a painting they don’t want in the charity auction just so they feel like they’ve worked for the hooker’s lips around their cock. But I don’t care how filthy the money is, and the sick kids don’t either.”

I don’t know why, but an overwhelming urge to rest my head on Charlie’s shoulder washes over me. My hair brushes his shoulder when I’m interrupted.

“Charles,” a low, patrician voice says.

It brings the temperature in the ballroom down a dozen degrees, and a morbid shiver running up my spine. I feel like I’ve stepped into an abattoir. Charlie’s body stiffens.

“How positively lovely to see you; and who is this wonderful… young girl?”