Thursday morning, Arielle was sitting at her desk for work, trying to integrate one of the new forms for their healthcare plan into their system, and she received a text from an unknown number that read, This is Mitchell Saltonstall. Please arrive at the private terminal at the Phoenix airport by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We have a full day planned.
Holy cow, the presumption of this guy.
Arielle texted back, How did you even get my phone number?
I have information on every employee of Match Play. I’ve been in the database for months, figuring out which employees should be terminated first. Shall I send a car to your home to pick you up? I have your address.
She almost yelled at him over text for the invasion of privacy.
But on the other hand, if he sent a car, she wouldn’t have to pay for parking at the airport while she was gone for three days.
Yes, please. I would appreciate that, she typed.
She had no clue whether that was a genuine offer or not, but she was sure as heck going to take him up on it if she saved three days’ worth of airport parking.
The following day, a black town car coasted to a stop in front of her apartment building and then deposited her at a private airport terminal that she hadn’t even known existed. Concierges hurried her past the thriving plants and white leather seating areas to a small dart of a plane and slammed the door behind her.
Arielle looked around at the blond wood and six caramel leather seats. “Mitchell? Um, Mr. Saltonstall?”
A woman’s voice called from the back of the plane. “Welcome to your flight to Los Angeles with GetJets, Ms. Carter. You are the only passenger on this flight. Can I make you some coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please?”
“You may sit anywhere you like. We’ll take off in just a few minutes.”
Mitchell Saltonstall had sent a private plane just for her and hadn’t even bothered to ride on it. Rich people were weird.
When Arielle disembarked in Los Angeles, more concierges whisked her through that terminal so fast that she barely registered an impression of gleaming glass and blue upholstery before she was standing on the warm LA sidewalk and a chauffeur was holding the back door of a car open for her.
She thanked him and climbed in.
Mitchell Saltonstall was already in the back seat, typing something into his phone.
“Oh, hi!” she said, trying to sound bright and happy because he had done a lot of stuff for her that morning. “Hey, I really appreciate—”
Mitchell didn’t look up from his phone. “I’ve had you booked into a spa for a full makeover, wardrobe consultation, and elocution lessons. Your first appointment is at nine. I’ll pick you up at six tonight. Our first outing as a couple is tomorrow morning at a moderately sized golf trade show here in LA. We will be leaving the hotel at nine tomorrow morning for the show.”
Arielle looked down at the chipped pink polish on her fingernails. “I didn’t know there was that much wrong with me that it would take nine hours at a spa to fix.”
Mitchell frowned, still staring at his phone and swiping on the screen. “You need to have more of a certain look if we’re going to pull this off. Think of it as an actress’s costume and makeup for a role. I’m certainly not famous, neither in real life nor in the internet sense of the word, but I’m known in certain circles. Perhaps notorious is a better word. If I walked into a party or gathering with you as you are,” he gestured with a hand flip toward her business-casual slacks and shirt, “people would suspect something was amiss. You don’t fit the type. There would be questions. We can’t have people asking those questions.”
“So I’m not your type.”
Mitchell dropped his phone in his lap and turned to look at her. The California sunlight glinted off his razor-sharp cheekbones and jawline, and the brightness illuminated his green eyes. “A business partner of mine, Jericho Parr, is a gourmand of women. He has a new girl on his arm every month, to the point where we expect it. I’m more of a gourmet. I only sample the best. Some assholes would call them trophy girlfriends, women who are stunningly beautiful and accomplished actresses or doing something else interesting. There’s nothing wrong with you, but you don’t fit what people will be expecting when I show up with a woman. We cannot have people asking those questions.”
“Yeah,” Arielle argued, “but love is blind. You’re dating all these trophy girlfriends and you’re not married yet at, what, thirty?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“If you’re not married by twenty-nine, then maybe you’re dating the wrong kind of women.”
“I do not want to settle down yet.” His voice had become a little more starched, like he had just the faintest trace of a British accent. “I’ve been working on our business for years, and now there’s this damned bet to take care of. When I get married, if I do, I want a home and a family, and I want to be there for it. I don’t want to be nothing but a paycheck that pays for my wife to raise my kids while I work myself to death and never see them. How the hell did we start talking about this?”
“Just noting that your trophy girlfriends don’t seem to be the type to raise your kids.”
“The point was that you don’t fit the mold of the women I’m usually with. People have to believe that we are in a real relationship and that Match Play brought us together. The only thing worse than a single CEO who knows nothing about relationships and love would be those damn reporters figuring out that it’s all fake. If they find out this is a sham, they will destroy Match Play with their smug journalistic revelation of the lie, and I can’t let that happen.”
Arielle had been sure that Mitchell would have the car drop her off and speed away, but Mitchell got out of the car and opened the door for her as they walked into the glass cube of a building that housed the spa. “Allow me.”
He even came to the initial consultation with her, which seemed overbearing, and then he proceeded to tell the aesthetician what he wanted them to do to her.
The most shocking thing was that the aesthetician wrote it all down and asked him questions specifically about how Arielle should be changed. The woman didn’t even look at Arielle, except to occasionally assess her hair and body and tell Mitchell whether or not what he wanted was feasible.
Arielle felt like a fixer-upper house that wanted to be a home, but instead she was getting flipped.
When the meeting was finally over and Arielle had been gaping too much to even say a word, the three of them walked out of the office.
Arielle said to Mitchell, “I feel like this is a factory, and they’re going to manufacture a trophy girlfriend for you.”
He shrugged and looked off down the hallway. “I don’t usually book my dates into a spa for a makeover. They already have their own style. I don’t try to make women into what I want, but this is different. You have to act the part, and you have to look the part in order to play it. So I’m making sure you look the part.”
Arielle glanced down at her ratty outlet shoes that had probably been out of style for years, but she didn’t even know if that was true or not. “I guess, yeah. I guess I’m not enough to even pretend to be your girlfriend. People wouldn’t believe it all.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mitchell raise his hand, and his fingers hovered near her shoulder before he dropped it. He looked back to the aesthetician and said, “When you do her wardrobe, make sure there’s plenty of red.” He touched Arielle under her chin and lifted her face to look into his deep green eyes. “She looks stunning in red.”
Nine hours at a spa is a long time to be primped, pampered, tweezed, waxed, bleached, highlighted, blown out, made up, consulted, and have some guy with a prissy accent come in and try to teach her how to say words correctly.
Arielle had no idea that she’d been pronouncing half of what she said wrong her entire life, and then her teeth felt too big and her tongue tripped every time she tried to repeat what he said.
The aesthetician who had coordinated her day delivered her to the waiting room precisely at six o’clock, along with a luggage cart stacked with new cosmetic cases full of the makeup they had taught her how to apply and products for her newly styled, bleached, and highlighted hair, plus garment bags holding an entirely new wardrobe.
Arielle’s hair had always been a dark dun, a particularly dull shade of ashy brown, neither auburn-warm nor highlight-streaked, and she hadn’t ever taken the trouble to change it. Her eyes were dark brown, and she’d always thought going lighter would look weird with her brown eyes. When Mitchell had been telling the spa people what to do to her in the beginning, he’d only mentioned “highlights or something.”
The hairdresser had lightened Arielle’s hair to a rich honey blond.
Arielle had nearly fallen out of her chair when she’d realized that she looked pretty good as a blonde. It was different, sure, but the lighter color made her skin look less pasty-gray by contrast. Arielle actually had pink in her cheeks that she’d never noticed because her hair had overpowered everything.
The clothes that had been selected for her in the morning and tailored in the afternoon somehow pinched her waist, lifted her boobs, and made her look twenty pounds lighter, when she’d thought she’d needed to lose weight. Actually, she’d just needed clothes that fit properly.
Mitchell was waiting for her in the office.
She said, “Hello, Mr. Saltonstall,” just like the speech therapist guy had taught her, with her voice half an octave lower, slower and more deliberate, and creamier than her normal speaking tone.
When Mitchell looked up from his phone and glanced at her, he blinked and shook his head as his phone fell to the carpeting and bounced twice before he managed to grab it. “Hello, gorgeous.”
The aesthetician presented him with the bill on a clipboard, saying, “The rest of her wardrobe will be delivered to your hotel tomorrow.”
Mitchell signed the bill without even glancing at the paper because he kept staring at Arielle.
He offered her his elbow as they walked out, and opened the door for her. “Allow me.”
So, she wasn’t vastly inferior to his trophy girlfriends. She just needed a little bit of paint and some highlights. Plus, she hadn’t known that expensive clothes really did make people look better.
In the backseat of the car, Mitchell slid his phone into his pocket. “We don’t have anything on the schedule for the evening, but the hotel has a good restaurant. Would you like to try it?”
Arielle nodded. “It’s probably good for people to see us together outside of the trade shows. I imagine that some people might be staying in the same hotel as we are.”
“Sure.”
Considering that Mitchell Saltonstall was a pillaging venture capitalist who’d ripped her father’s lifelong dream away from him and only dated women who looked a certain way, he was an unusually charming dinner companion. When he was off the clock, he might even be considered a nice guy. He gently joked with her while they discussed TV shows and movies, and he smiled and listened to what she said.
During the supper, Arielle gestured to her newly lightened hair and couture wardrobe. “All this seems pretty specific.”
Mitchell shrugged. “Sort of, I suppose.”
“It seems like this makeover was designed to make me your ‘type.’”
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell them anything specific, and I’ve never taken a woman into a spa for a makeover before.” He glanced around the restaurant. “It’s only because you’re playing a role, and you have to look the role.”
“Do you have a type?”
He shifted in his seat and gazed at the ceiling before answering. “Not that I can discern. Like I said, I haven’t dated a herd of women because I tend to have longer relationships with time between, so I’m not sure we have a significant sample size. If I remember correctly, I can count thirteen women I’ve dated with at least somewhat serious interest.”
“Thirteen is a lot of women,” Arielle said, comparing the thirteen to her single, solitary ex.
“But they were spread out over fourteen years, since I was fifteen. That’s less than one per year. I’m not a player.”
“Are you—um.” Dammit, she’d started the sentence, and now she was committed. Arielle dropped her voice to a hiss. “Well, um, are you seeing someone now? Since this isn’t real, do you have a girlfriend I should know about? Because I’ll tell her it’s just business for you.”
“Oh, dear God, no,” Mitchell said, wagging his head back and forth as he said it. “Of course not. If I would’ve been dating someone, this wouldn’t have worked. I wouldn’t have pulled you out of the crowd at Match Play.” He paused. “Well, probably not. But I certainly never would have so much as kissed you, not even that first time, because I would never do that to someone I was with. I wouldn’t even pretend to cheat.”
“Oh,” Arielle said. “Okay.”
“Besides, if I’d had a girlfriend, I would have just told them I’d met her during the beta test and trotted her out this weekend in Los Angeles.”
“Right. That would’ve been easier than rolling the dice on a woman standing in the crowd, not to mention a lot cheaper than paying me off.”
“Exactly.”
“And she would’ve already been your type. You wouldn’t have needed to take her to a spa to do all this.”
“I’m still not sure I have a type. If we’re only quantifying hair color, there was one natural blonde, a blonde-by-choice, two brunettes, an auburn redhead, five women with black hair, and three with aposematic coloration.”
“They had—” Arielle stopped, trying to figure out the word. “They—they were albinos? Three of them?”
He chuckled. “Not albinism. Aposematic coloration is what Aisha called her neon blue and green locs. That’s when plants or animals are brightly colored to warn predators that they’re poisonous, like monarch butterflies. Monarchs feed on digitalis and are highly toxic, and their colors advertise that poison. Birds won’t even look at monarch butterflies.”
“So their hair was—”
“Pink, blue, ombre. They changed it a lot.”
“The poisonous coloration didn’t scare you off?” Arielle asked him.
Mitchell smiled and shrugged. “I’m not a predator.”
“Yeah, so you didn’t have them dye my hair to make me your type?”
He squeezed his eyes shut as he shook his head. “I don’t seem to have a stereotypical girlfriend type, although—” He tapped his chin as if pondering. “Maybe I do.”
“Oh?” Arielle asked, making an encouraging sound to keep him talking.
“Yes, they all had one particular look, now that I think about it.”
Arielle raised her eyebrows at him, waiting.
He chuckled. “Expensive.”
She laughed at him. “So you actually did make me into your type. I mean, you spent a lot of money at the spa on the tune-up. I look expensive now.”
He grinned. “I like spoiling women. I might have to do this sort of thing more often.”
“The massage was incredible,” she admitted. “I’d been having a shoulder problem from typing at the office, and the masseuse fixed it.”
“Good. Perhaps we should add spa privileges to the contract.”
Arielle touched her hair. “I’m kind of worried about keeping all this up. You know, roots.”
He shrugged. “We’ll be traveling to hotels every weekend. Almost all will have spas or at least a hair salon. I get haircuts all the time while I’m on the road. Charge it to the room, and I’ll take care of it. I guess that would be spa privileges. Get massages while you’re at it.”
“Oh, that’s a deal.”
Afterward, he walked her to her hotel room and offered her his hand. “An ardent handshake to close the evening?”
She laughed and shook his hand.
He winked at her as he turned away. “Until tomorrow, gorgeous.”