A Million for Eleanor · A Contemporary Story on Love and Money

SUMMARY

A retired cocaine tycoon takes complicated psychological revenge on the woman he loved since they were college students.

QUOTE

“Eleanor, do you agree to marry me, Richard Charlester, tomorrow at two fifty-two past noon in exchange for one million dollars?”

EXCERPT

When Eleanor returned, wearing a dark blue dress and sapphire earrings, he was still reading, looking like a monk immersed in the Bible. For a couple of seconds she stood still, waiting for him to notice her, but, even though he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he did not move, fearing he wouldn’t be able to meet her eyes in the way he wanted.

“I am ready,” she said finally, having grown tired of waiting.

He closed the book and looked at her.

“You sure are,” he said.

He didn’t believe what he saw, but that very fact was the most reliable reality check he could have. In a mere hour, Eleanor had transformed herself from a housewife forced to deal with an uninvited guest into a heroine of a suspense thriller which had to end in at least one horrific death. Judging by how much sharper her facial features shined, she must have put on a lot of makeup, but, had it not been for his sister’s words that suddenly surfaced in his head, it would not even occur to him to seek the roots of Eleanor’s stupendous beauty in artificiality. She looked like an empress preparing to step into the center of attention, her every move showing that she was ready to rule anyone and anything, with or without mercy, and the sphere that duly stirred inside, this time around the solar plexus, reminded him there was only one man who could match this unconquerable image of hers.

“Excellent choice, darling, but isn’t this blue shot with violet?” he asked in mock urgency.

She gave her dress a quick look.

“Is there something wrong?”

“Of course not. Everything is just perfect.”

Suddenly he realized that he was blinking slower than usually, trying to imprint her image on the backs of his eyelids. Even disappointed, she still looked royal and, much as he tried out of his irresistible perfectionism, he couldn’t spot a single blemish in her appearance, seeing only Perfection incarnated in female flesh and outlined by the smooth contour of blue satin. The dim shine of its glossy surface seemed electrified and, surrendering to the maddening impulse, he stepped toward her, put his palms on her waist and slid them down the sleek slopes of her hips, feeling the heat of her body under the fabric. She stopped his hands at once with hers, but as she did so he leaned forward and, having moved aside a lock of her hair with his nose, kissed her on the lips as gently as if it were a rose bud with petals still bearing drops of morning dew.

“Not now.” She took a step backwards and pushed him away with a palm of her hand. “We’ll be late.”

“I had to do it,” he said with a reconciling smile. “I never saw you this perfect. And we wouldn’t be. Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss and not an invitation to bed.”

“Not when it comes from you.”

He was still standing close enough to her to smell her perfume, feeling every breath saturate the insatiable sphere that began travelling around his lungs again, until he realized this was the first time he ever kissed her. Baffled by this epiphany, he took an involuntary step backwards, trying to restore his disarrayed thinking, and Eleanor, having caught on to his dismay and possibly sensing its reason, ran her palms over her hips, as if ridding herself of the memory of his touch, and said:

“Can we go please?”

“Give me a moment,” he whispered coarsely, walking away