Have Gown, Will Wed Read online

  HAVE GOWN, WILL WED

  SKillian McRae

  2013

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright ©2013 by Killian McRae

  All Rights Reserved. Except as specified by U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this publication may be reproduced, dis-tributed, or transmitted in any form or media or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior written permission of the author.

  This work represents a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real

  Dedicated

  to Robert M. Gray, and to all the brilliant minds he has inspired and mentored.

  The Deal

  Tonight’s agenda would feature lots of high-priced, high-spirited, celebratory drinking.

  She’d done it, she’d actually closed the biggest deal of her life with one of the biggest corporations in the industry. Now, half the laptops, smartphones, and cheese graters in the world would carry BetaHouse applications, with an easy option to upgrade to the pro version with just a few clicks and a credit card. Already, she was looking forward to the huge bonus she’d be able to give her employees this year. The hundred or so people she employed had really been working their tails off, pulling sixty hour weeks without any time off for months. She was committed to making sure each and every one of them shared in this victory. For the moment, however, she was going to celebrate her own success in sealing the deal.

  Had she really thought eight years ago when she left Stanford, wide-eyed and clutching a dual master’s degree, that she’d come so far, so fast?

  Of course she had; that’s how she’d planned it, after all.

  The click-clack of Rosalind Betters’s Prada pumps laid down a driving tempo for the victory parade through San Francisco airport. In typical fashion, the moment the captain flicked off the seatbelt light, she had her iPhone in hand, catching her up on all the news she’d missed in the twenty minutes since the in-flight WiFi had been cut off. A small time in the grand scheme of things, but enough time for the world to change in the Pacific time zone.

  However, this time reports about the goings on of her competitors and the latest stock prices took a back burner, atypical for Rosalind. The big clock on the wall in the terminal read three fifty-eight. Two more minutes until the embargo passed, and the news about her deal went out in an automated press release. Two minutes until she was officially the toast of the industry and, oh yes, no less than a little wealthier for the exchange.

  Top shelf liquor tonight. And tapas. For some reason, she really wanted tapas.

  Like all breaking news, Twitter caught fire first. At four-o-six, @TechBizTimes declared “Bigger and Betters gets bigger and better in $30 million contract from leading industry firm.” Then slowly at first, but with growing momentum, the headline infected all the ping-pong accounts, creating leader links which harvested readers to advertising-cluttered websites, each echoing the details of the deal with further clarity, a new angle, a deeper, more exclusive snippet. BetaHouse was hotter than celebrity trash, in the right circles, that was.

  Rosalind was just about to shove her phone back in her bag when she felt it buzz against her palm. The text message made her grin like the cat that got the cream.

  Kam: OMG, is this true?

  Rosalind had been bursting to tell Kamakshi the news since the ink was on the paper earlier in the day. She’d had no doubt her best friend of over a decade would be surfing the news streams to see what had Rosalind’s Facebook emoticon showing a toothy smile.

  A driver waited just outside the baggage claim, holding a placard on which Rosalind’s name was printed in clinical text. Rosalind held the phone to her ear as she maneuvered through the crowd, her other hand insistently pulling her roller carry-on bag as though it were an unruly child out of a candy shop. Somewhere between Washington and California, she’d misplaced her earpiece. Her neck would remind her of the injury all night. After depositing herself in the backseat, she dialed Kamakshi’s cell.

  “You think news programs lie?” she asked before her best friend had even had time to say hello.

  There was no reply from the other party.

  “I mean about something like this,” Rosalind clarified. “Kam, I wanted to call you and tell you this morning right after I got out of the meeting, but they convinced me someone might be listening in on the call. I had to wait until it went public.”

  “No, I understand. Sometimes you have to keep things confidential. Do you really think that someone might have bugged your phone or tapped your signal, though?”

  “Your brother told me he hooked me up proper when he outfitted BetaHouse’s cells, but with everything you see in the news these days…” Her voice tapered off as she remembered the look on the executives’ faces when they had made the request. “To tell the truth, I think they were just pissed that I had an iPhone. Apple is their biggest competitor, but it wasn’t as though half of their corporate office didn’t have them either. Geesh. You want to test it to make sure?”

  Kamakshi giggled. “Sure, how?”

  “Say something you think would make Perez Hilton or the bloggers on CNET salivate.”

  “Naked Justin Bieber!”

  “Salivate, not squirm!” The squawking laugh drew a raised eyebrow via the rearview mirror from the driver. “Seriously, though. About me.”

  “Rosalind Betters hasn’t had sex in two years!”

  Rosalind’s hand slapped over her mouth, a mixture of surprise and incredulity. “Kam!”

  It wasn’t untrue, though it wasn’t like she’d marked the date and kept track. Scanning through the Google calendar in her mind, however, she supposed the math worked out about right. Her brief fling with Craig Ipswitch counted as just another statistic in the graveyard of dead-end relationships, a scenic scattering hosting more than one unkempt and overgrown crypt. All serious suitors had been killed off or seriously maimed—metaphorically speaking—by the growth of her startup the past few years.

  C’est la vie. Every silver lining had its cloud. One thing Rosalind knew for sure: unlike scores of literary inventions and hallmark movie heroines, no empty place in her heart existed where a widget called “man” would fit. It wasn’t as though she and Craig had parted on bad terms, either. They had a few months both had enjoyed, a few rounds of sheet tag, and then they parted with best wishes to the other. She just couldn’t seem to convince herself the benefit of the relationship justified all the effort and time it took to keep it going.

  “I’ve had Carmen clear my schedule tonight,” Rosalind blurted out suddenly, not wanting to echo her momentary internal gnashing over the phone and in the presence of Nameless Driver. “You and I are going out to celebrate. The question is where. Four on the Floor or Fault Zone? The crowd at Fault Zone is a little shaky, but the drinks at Four are so overpriced.”

  “Fault Zone?” Kamakshi repeated the name of the club as though it were a foreign phrase. Which everything sort of sounded like anyway through her muted Indian accent. “It shut down six months ago.”

  “Really? Well, Four then.”

  “I don’t know…” Kamakshi sounded unsure.

  Rosalind took up the hint. “Fine, we can get blitzed just as well at someplace rated by Michelin as we can at a dive bar in the Mission. The important part is that we do something. I can’t have it written in my memoirs that the day I scored the first huge deal of my life, I stayed at home alone with my dog and watch
ed Klondike Annie again.”

  “How about I come over and pick you up? We can head down to Sutro’s for dinner.”

  Smoothing some lip balm onto the dry skin around her mouth, Rosalind smacked her lips before answering. “Absolutely! Sutro’s sounds great. You want me to ask Carmen to make a reservation for, what, seven o’clock?”

  “No, no. That’s okay. I’m sure with all the new business coming in, Carmen’s got enough on her plate.”

  “Congratulations, Miss Betters. Welcome home.”

  Carmen met the car at the curb and pushed a folded note to the driver through the passenger side window before Rosalind could intercept. Rosalind had told her assistant not to worry about such things, that she was not that kind of boss. However, Carmen insisted. “Whatever makes your day a little easier, that’s my job,” she’d argued. The well-tipped driver set the bags on the curb, thanked both the ladies, and bussed back into the driver’s seat.

  “Thank you, Carmen. Though I have to admit, without your tip on Yomiko Kinsi, I might not have closed the deal at all. He was the total inside man. Once I won him over, the rest of them fell like dominos.”

  When the headhunting agency had found Carmen a few months ago, the fact that she had come straight from a position as the assistant of Seatech’s VP of Development didn’t hurt. The stout but soft-featured Latina in her early forties was able to fill perfectly her role as Rosalind’s PA, but also was able to give her new boss a rundown of the personalities with which she’d be negotiating. Not only that, but because of her, where there had been chaos in Rosalind’s life, there was now… Well, less chaos. She wasn’t the Messiah, after all. Nonetheless, Carmen did possess a steadfast sense of organization and a diplomatic repartee. Of course, she wouldn’t disclose anything negative or personal, but she had mentioned to Rosalind that gearing a presentation toward Mr. Kimsi’s area of expertise and passion probably wouldn’t hurt her chances.

  Carmen followed Rosalind up the corridor of the South of Market residence with a gate that could’ve been cited by West Point staff as a demonstration of proper charging technique. “Well, the rumor always was, he has a hard time saying no to a pretty face. But, Miss Betters, I don’t think that was it at all. BetaHouse makes a great, highly-marketable suite of applications. Yomiko-san has always understood the value of giving the consumer what he wants. He would have picked it up even if you were forty-three, balding, and had a beer gut.”

  “Maybe, though maybe not if I looked like that and still wore this skirt.”

  As the two women boarded the elevator, Carmen pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. She illuminated the screen and handed it to her boss. “Thought you should see this.”

  This was—frankly—a very complimentary photo of Rosalind under a headline on Yahoo! Finance that read, “It doesn’t get any Betters than this.” Rosalind gave her eyes permission to roll. Having such an easily mocked name meant she had heard it all in her time. It saddened her that so few people could surprise her with anything original any more.

  The blurb summed up the publicly available facts. Clicking through, she couldn’t help but notice how the brief article closed out with a mini bio:

  Rosalind Betters (31) holds master degrees from Stanford University in both Computer Science and Business, and founded BetaHouse two years ago with the help of several prominent Silicon Valley capital venture investors. She is unmarried and lives alone in San Francisco, CA.

  “You ever notice how they never do that for men?” She pointed accusingly at the offending text.

  Carmen leaned over and read it, giving it a disapproving glare. “As if to say, ‘well of course she’s successful in business, she has no social life’,” she concurred as she took back the phone. “Still, you are the headline of the day. That’s got to be something, right?”

  “Hell yeah. Oh, did you get my dry cleaning this morning?”

  “Yes. I put it in your bedroom closet. I also picked up your mail from the front desk and sorted out the bills to hand off to your financial manager. There’s a few I wasn’t sure were right, so I left them on the table in the entryway.”

  “What about Strudel?”

  “Out with the walker right now, but he’ll be back soon. He settled in to my place without a problem.”

  Rosalind gave her a warm smile. “You know you didn’t have to do that. The boarder I use is very accommodating and Strudel’s been going there for a few years now. I’m sure they could have snuck me in last minute.”

  Carmen waved away her concern. “What’s the point of putting him in a cage for hours a day when he and my Paco could be sunbathing on my patio instead? Besides, I think Paco’s got a crush. My dog’s really fitting in in San Francisco. Not that he’d be able to do anything.” Carmen held up her hands and acted out snipping scissors. “Plus, how a basset hound would have his way with a German Shepherd is beyond me.”

  “Assuming you don’t have a stool Paco could stand on.”

  The keypad’s digits beeped and blinked under Rosalind’s finger. Unlike the other units in the building, the Penthouse occupied an exclusive floor, and yet, also had a traditional front door entryway and vestibule outside the elevator doors. The super had explained that just because you wanted to have someone come to your loft didn’t necessarily mean you wanted them inside the second they stepped off the elevator. The first Chinese delivery episode, complete with a sleazy, greasy delivery boy who eyed her when she’d open the door in just her yoga pants and a cami, convinced her why that was actually a superior idea.

  “I’m going to be heading out to celebrate with Kamakshi tonight,” Rosalind explained. “Any chance you could take my clothes from the bag here and drop them at the cleaner?”

  “More than happy to.”

  It was then that Rosalind noticed that not only was Carmen following her, it was odd that she was about at all. “Wait, why are you here?”

  Carmen’s eyes darted toward the floor indicator light as it moved from three to four. “Just wanted to make sure you got in all right, is all.”

  “No, really?”

  The smile Carmen was laboring to suppress didn’t elude her.

  “Oh my God, Carmen. Is there something upstairs you’re not telling me?” Bubbles may have been bursting around the corners of her mouth. At least that’s what it felt like.

  “Maybe.”

  So when the door opened on the fifteenth floor a moment later, Rosalind sprinted. It had been a lifelong dream of hers to walk in to a room and unexpectedly find it filled with balloons, streamers, and friends. As it was, she had wondered why there weren’t more calls right after the news broke. The fact that all her friends must be waiting for her above suddenly solved that mystery.

  Throwing open the door, she ran inside and blinked rapidly.

  No streamers, no banners, no twinkling lights.

  Just Kamakshi, who beamed from her position in the middle of the entryway, a bouquet of daisies at the ready.

  “Congratulations!” she shouted as she rushed forward and took her best friend in her arms, jumping up and down like she’d just won the Showcase Showdown. “I knew you were up to something great. This is awesome. I’m so happy for you!”

  “Thanks.” Rosalind tried not to sound like she’d just had one of the biggest let downs—albeit self-imposed—in her adult life. Instead, she just lifted an arm, put it around her friend, and hugged her back, sighing again, “Thanks.”

  Carmen shuffled in behind, her head turning left and right, searching. “Where is everyone?”

  “Everyone?” A beam of hope lit Rosalind’s features as she pulled back and dashed her head in ten directions.

  All it took was Kamakshi’s inability to meet Rosalind’s gaze to answer that question. As though realizing she’d disappointed her with the response, a string of rushed explanation burst from Kamakshi’s mouth.

  “I knew wh
en you said you were going for a potentially game-changing meeting in Washington, you meant it. But I didn’t want to plan anything too extravagant, just in case it all fell through. Plus, I’ve barely seen or talked to you in weeks in I didn’t know how stressed you were or if your home was in complete chaos. I mean, I sent out texts to everyone in the gang, but I only had an hour’s notice when I knew for sure and—”

  “Kamakshi, you are the most anal retentive person I know when it comes to planning out each moment of your day,” Rosalind declared by way of cutting off her friend. “You schedule your dentist check-ups a year in advance. Just, tell me the truth, when did you really plan this?”

  “A week ago.”

  She may actually cry. Okay, her friends all had their own lives and jobs and some even had families now, if she remembered correctly. But still, there was a whole office of workers just a few miles away that should be just as happy about this. “And my team from BetaHouse?”

  “I didn’t want to involve them too early. I was afraid they would blab,” Carmen admitted. “I did give the office manager a call on my way over here to see if anyone could come, but they said they had already clocked out for the night to celebrate and most of them were three bottles in. I didn’t think you’d want them stumbling over here half drunk.”

  “Okay, okay. That makes sense.” Rosalind planted her hands on her hips and looked at the floor, as though she were lecturing her feet about the importance of staying under her. “But… none of the gang said they’d come over?”

  Kamakshi diverted her gaze. “Well, not without cause.”

  Her long, silky black hair fell against Rosalind’s shoulder as she guided her toward the living room. Carmen closed the door to the elevator lobby and dashed off to the kitchen, reemerging a moment later with a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  “Jamie’s at home taking care of the baby. Lani couldn’t fly up from L.A., she and Jack are leaving for a cruise in the morning. Angie really, really wanted to be here, but she’s visiting her in-laws in London this week. And Nichole. Well, you know about Nichole.”