“Okay. You’re sending me some pretty mixed signals here, Casey. Is something wrong?”
“No,” I lied. “Nothing’s wrong at all.”
***
I didn’t see Mick for a few days after that. Both of us were crazy-busy with work. It gave me time to think. When he said he felt like he knew me--every time I thought of it, my heart squeezed in my chest. You do know me, Mick, I wanted to say. Why didn’t he see it? I must not have meant anything to him at all, seven years ago, or he would have remembered my face. I knew I looked different, but did I really change that much? I had seen his face in my mind so many times--I’d have recognized him anywhere, anytime, no matter how many years had gone by.
Still, when a wonderful thing happened at work, the first person I wanted to tell about it was Mick. I called him at his office right away. I had to talk my way past two secretaries to get to him, but I finally did.
“Hey Casey! I’ve been meaning to call you all day. How are you?”
“I’m fantastic! You’ll never believe what happened!”
“What?”
“We got a grant! My non-profit got this huge grant! I am going to be able to hire people; I am going to be able to help so many kids and families with so many good programs! I want to scream from happiness!”
“Wow! How big is the grant?”
“Oh Mick. You won’t believe it. It’s for an obscene amount of money.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Ten million dollars.” I whispered the amount--it just didn’t seem real!
“Are you kidding? Ten million dollars?” Mick had no problem shouting out the amount.
“Yes! Isn’t it insane?”
“It’s pretty amazing. Of course, the companies I sue have huge cash reserves, so maybe it doesn’t seem as insane to me as it does to you. Who’s the donor?”
“Well, that’s another strange thing. The donor is a foundation, but I can’t find out anything about it. It looks like it was just formed the same day as the grant. It’s just the River Foundation.”
“Huh.
“Isn’t that weird, though?”
“Mm, I don’t know. Foundations give donations to environmental groups all the time, and they come and go pretty quickly sometimes. I wouldn’t worry about it too much if I were you.”
“Another weird thing is, I didn’t even apply for this grant. It’s a brand new grant, and we’re the only recipients. And there are no strings on the money, no pet program we have to use. I don’t get it.”
“Huh.” He was silent for a few seconds and then said, “Let’s celebrate! I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. How about Paris?”
I got a good laugh out of that one. “Very funny, Mick. I can’t spend this money on stuff like trips to Paris! This money is for the kids!”
“I know, Case. Just kidding. Still, I’d love to see you, even if it isn’t in Paris. Where do you want to go?”
“Oh gosh, I don’t know. Are we talking dinner?”
“Sure! Or wait. Shit. I have a deposition that might run late and then some errands I can’t get out of. Let’s meet for a drink later. And then this weekend, we’ll paint the town. Sound good?”
“Yes! I have some stuff to do too, so it works out perfectly.”
“Eight o’clock okay?”
“That’s good.”
“And Case....” He paused for a long time and my heart stood on tiptoe, waiting to hear what he had to say. He lowered his voice like someone was listening and said, “I love hearing your voice at work. Call me anytime you want. Goodbye.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mick
“Woohoo!” I said to Jim, who had walked in while I was on the phone with Casey. “Thanks a million for setting me up with that girl. Thank Shannon for me too.”
“Sounds like it’s going great! What’s she like?”
“Ah, what’s she like…. She’s sweet. She’s unbelievably hot. She’s smart. She’s a really good person. She makes me want to be a really good person.”
“Damn, she sounds like a miracle worker,” Jim said.
“Very funny.”
“So, I take it she’s cool with the whole billionaire thing? What did she say whe
n you told her?”
“Uh. I haven’t told her yet.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? It’s been like a month, I know you’ve seen her a bunch of times. You haven’t told her?”
“No I have not. It’s...complicated.”
“What’s so complicated about it? ‘Hey, you know how I said I was an environmental lawyer? I’m really in product liability. Isn’t this wine great?’”
“No, it’s like.... She’s really into the environmental thing. She has this image of me...I can’t explain it.”
“So what are you going to do, just keep pretending?” He laughed. “Or, I know, just switch to environmental law!”
“Ha, ha. No, I can’t keep pretending. It’s starting to be a problem.”
“You don’t like the Prius?” Jim was certainly getting a lot of entertainment out of this.
“No, as a matter of fact I do not. But that’s not the point. I want to take her to Paris. I want to buy her a Monet. I want to wine her and dine her and pamper her in every way possible. But I can’t. At least not so she knows it.”
“Huh? What does that mean?”
“Well, she was living in this shithole in Addison Hill. Still is living there. But I bought it through a straw man and I’ve had renovations done so the place can be locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. What’s wrong with that?”
“You don’t get what’s wrong with that?”
“No, because there’s nothing wrong with it. Also, the poor girl is working her fingers to the bone because she can’t hire enough staff, and her job is basically to be Mother Teresa to a bunch of foster kids. So I gave an anonymous grant to the non-profit to help her out.”
“Holy shit, Mick. How much?”
“Ten mil.”
“Ten fucking million dollars? What the actual fuck?”