DMITRI: Are you about to fly to Vegas to corner CulinaryVision’s CEO at a TED Talk?
ME: I’d prefer to think of it as a friendly conversation
DMITRI: Of course you do.
DMITRI: The board is going to lose their minds.
ME: Only if they find out first.
I pocket my phone and look out the window. We're crawling past Rockefeller Center, where they're setting up the Christmas tree even though it's not even Thanksgiving yet.
Tourists everywhere, taking photos, looking happy and carefree and completely unaware that somewhere in this traffic jam, a CEO is having fucking meltdown.
Vegas.
The word sits in my brain like a loaded gun.
Mere weeks ago, it gave me a fake wife and the biggest PR gamble of my career. Now it might give me the one opportunity I have left to salvage the CulinaryVision deal.
As if he weren’t this way already, since his Vegas arrest, Richard Francis has become even more private, stubborn, and impossible to schedule.
But Vegas? Vegas is chaos.
And chaos is where rules stop applying.
And if I can get Richard Francis alone for ten minutes in Vegas, I might still save this deal.
Which means my fake marriage might accidentally turn into the most useful business decision I've ever made.
The car finally pulls up to the boutique on Madison Avenue—the kind of place that doesn't have prices in the window because if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
My assistant Gina’s arranged everything: the appointment, the stylist, even the "suggestion list" of appropriate evening wear for the wife of a tech CEO.
I'd approved it all without thinking.
Now, standing outside the shop, I'm second-guessing everything.
This is excessive. Harper can dress herself. She doesn't need me micromanaging her wardrobe like some kind of controlling?—
My phone buzzes.
HARPER: Your stylist is terrifying. She just called my current wardrobe "charming but insufficient."
HARPER: I think that was an insult?
HARPER: She's making me try on dresses expensive enough to trade for livestock
HARPER: I clearly can't afford any of this.
ME: You're not paying. I am.
HARPER: That's not how this works.
ME: It's exactly how this works. You're doing me a favor by attending this event. Consider it compensation.
HARPER: Compensation is a paycheck. This is Pretty Woman territory.
ME: Pretty Woman had a happy ending.
