Arielle didn’t go to her parents’ house for dinner the following Wednesday. They didn’t even text her to invite her or tell her what time, so she knew she wasn’t welcome.
When she arrived in New York City on a private jet the following Friday evening, a limousine picked her up from the airport to take her to The Plaza Hotel, where she was checked into a lovely room that overlooked a park.
A limousine picked her up. Not Mitchell.
At the reservation desk, the clerk’s expression became very bland as she handed over an extra key card. “Mr. Saltonstall is waiting for you to arrive and asked you to join him in his penthouse suite. He’s expecting you. You are to proceed to his suite right away. One of our staff will put your luggage in your room.”
After an elevator ride, Arielle knocked on the door of Mitchell’s suite.
Using the key card and walking in unannounced was a bad idea. She’d learned that lesson with Nick.
Mitchell opened the door while he was talking on a cell phone. “Tomorrow at the four o’clock press conference,” he said into the phone. “Make sure the lighting is good. I don’t want to look like an up-lit horror movie when I propose. The pictures need to look good for the magazines.”
Arielle took a seat on the white couch with a curvy back edged in gilded wood like something out of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Mitchell walked around the suite like he had his phone glued to his ear. He snagged a piece of paper off his desk and dropped it in her lap as he paced by.
The title said, Proposal Speech – Rough Draft.
Arielle’s heart crumbled in her chest.
She read it anyway.
It began, Arielle Grace Carter.
At first, she was impressed that Mitchell knew her middle name. However, as CEO of Match Play, he had access to her employment records. He could look up her Social Security number and maybe her blood type if he wanted to.
When we Matched on the golf-related dating app, Match Play, on March twenty-first at two o’clock, I swiped right like a wicked banana slice. This wasn’t surprising because seventy-two percent of Match Play members are Matched with two or more partners and meet up for at least one first-round date within eight days.
When we met for a first date round of golf, as all Match Play members do, my heart bounded up the fairway, and I knew I was hooked.
It kept going on like that.
It was the saddest thing she’d ever read, a cheesy commercial thinly disguised as a marriage proposal.
The page blurred, and a drop splashed on the paper, smearing the ink.
Mitchell hung up his call and asked brightly, “What do you think?”
Arielle wiped her face before she looked up. “I don’t know if they’re going to buy it, Mitchell. It sounds like you lifted half of it from the Match Play membership brochure.”
He sat down in a chair across the coffee table, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees. “I know it’s not everything you would want from a proposal, but this is how it has to be done. It’s just business.”
Arielle placed the paper in the middle of the coffee table and stood to leave. “It wasn’t just business for me, but I’ll make it look real tomorrow.”