The Billionaire's Boyfriend Read online

  As Mrs. Mulroney, Tilly and I piled into the back of the cab, Mr. Banks excitedly asked the driver, “Where are we going?”

  “You tell me,” replied the confused cab driver in a thick Chinese accent.

  “Right-o, then!” Mr. Banks exclaimed merrily, having just been given the helm. “Kansas City it is.”

  “No!” I shouted from the back. “The Guggenheim Museum, please. We need to get to the Guggenheim.”

  “And step on it!” added Mr. Banks.

  “Actually, you’re not supposed to tell a cab driver to do that,” I warned quietly.

  “Are you kidding?” said the driver. “I’ve only been here a week and this city is crazy. It’s kill or be killed out there! ‘Stepping on it’ is the only way you survive in this town.”

  With that the tires spun and the cab squealed away from the curb and out into the traffic.

  In the backseat, Mrs. Mulroney, Tilly and I were thrown to the left, then squished all the way to the right, then jerked forward as the driver slammed on the brakes before the cab rocketed forward once more.

  In the front seat, Mr. Banks seemed completely unfazed as he gave the driver a running commentary. “That apartment up there is the place where I was born, I was the fifth baby in a set of triplets… and there’s the statue that was built in my honor, although to this day I still believe they got the profile of my nose wrong… oh, and over there, that’s where I first kissed a boy. And I liked it.”

  Not a second too soon we skidded to a halt outside the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue.

  “Oh, thank God we made it in one piece,” I breathed to myself.

  “Don’t thank him just yet,” Mrs. Mulroney said. “We may have a few more favors to ask before this is over. Here, let me get this.”

  Pulling her last notes out of her purse, Mrs. Mulroney paid the driver before the four of us piled out of the cab and raced into the Guggenheim, bunny slippers and all.

  We got all of five feet inside the building when I heard a woman calling after me.

  “Excuse me! Excuse me, sir!”

  I turned to see a rather stern-looking woman behind the ticket counter gesturing for me to approach, her hair pulled up in a bun so tight it had given her a free facelift.

  “Excuse me, sir. But you have to pay to enter the museum.”

  As the other three raced into the atrium ahead of me, I hastily unburdened my wallet of every last note I had. Unfortunately, all I had left were Euros.

  “Sir, this is European currency,” the woman said.

  “It’s all I have. If it makes any difference, we’re not really here for the exhibitions.”

  “Don’t tell me—you’re here to look at the building, not the art, so you can tell your friends back home that you visited the place where they filmed that scene from Annie. Mr. Kandinsky will be rolling in his grave right now.”

  “Oh, um, please apologize to him for me.”

  The woman looked at me humorlessly. “He’s dead. That’s why he’s in a grave. You clearly have no interest in the art. What are you even doing in an art museum?”

  “I’m trying to find the man I love,” I said. “I broke his heart, and in doing so I broke my own. I need to fix things. I need to find him, before I lose him forever.”

  The woman rolled her eyes. Then paused a moment and said, “I was in love once. He was an abstract artist. He’d siphon his own blood from his arm and use it to paint with. Oh, how he used to make me laugh.”

  “Love is love,” I said, not really knowing what else to say.

  “It sure is.” Suddenly she glanced left and right to make sure nobody was looking and said, “You’ve got five minutes, then I’m calling security.”

  “Thank you! Thank you so much.”

  I raced to catch up with the others.

  The building was like a giant, white corkscrew with a single walkway lined with works of art spiraling all the way to the glass domed ceiling. There was an elevator that went all the way to the top.

  I turned to Mrs. Mulroney and said, “You and Mr. Banks take the elevator and work your way down, Tilly and I will go up.”

  “We’ll meet you in the middle,” Mrs. Mulroney nodded. “Come on, Mr. Banks. Get your bunnies into gear and follow me!”

  As Mrs. Mulroney shoved Mr. Banks into the elevator, I grabbed Tilly’s hand and together we sprinted up the spiral walkway.

  “Cal?” I called, attracting the attention of everyone in the gallery. I didn’t care. “Cal, are you here.”

  “This is all my fault, isn’t it?” Tilly asked as we ran up the spiral walkway together. “I’m the one who told you to ask about Angus.”

  “No, Tilly. It’s my fault for not trusting in Cal. It’s my fault for not trusting in love. But that’s all about to change… all we have to do is find him.”

  “He’s bound to be here, I just know it,” Tilly declared, her voice confident and positive. “Cal? Cal, where are you?”

  We raced past tourists and art lovers and crazy installations fixed to the walls. The spiral incline and the fear of losing Cal combined to put my head in a spin. By the time we ran into Mrs. Mulroney and Mr. Banks coming the other way, I doubled over with my hands on my knees, panting for air.

  “There’s no sign of him up that way,” Mrs. Mulroney said.

  “There’s no sign of him down below,” Tilly replied.

  “If he’s not here, then I know where else he might be,” I said. “We have to get to the Met.”

  As the four of us bolted out of the Guggenheim, Tilly immediately began whistling for a cab. But her previous luck seemed to have run out, and one yellow taxi after another simply sped by us along Fifth Avenue.

  “We’ll have to run,” Tilly said.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Mrs. Mulroney, pointing across the street to a horse and carriage waiting to be hired for a leisurely and romantic trot through Central Park.

  As we raced across the street and clambered into the open carriage, the driver pushed the peak of his top hat all the way up his brow and eyed the desperate, sweaty expressions on our faces.

  “Are you people all right?” he asked, somewhat concerned.

  “Move over, I’m riding shotgun,” said Mrs. Mulroney, hitching up her skirt and climbing onto the front seat before snatching the reins from the driver. “Let’s see how fast this filly can go, shall we?”

  “Is this a carriage-jacking?” the driver whimpered.

  “No,” said Mrs. Mulroney. “This is a rescue mission. Now giddy-up!”

  With a snap of the reins the horse whinnied then broke into a gallop that pushed everyone back into the seat.

  The driver held onto his top hat as Mrs. Mulroney gave a surprised hoot. “Would you look at that? There’s life in the old girl yet!”

  “She’s from purebred stock,” the driver said, bouncing in his seat.

  “I was talking about me,” replied Mrs. Mulroney. “And trust me, there ain’t nothing purebred in my blood. Just a whole lotta whisky!”

  As the carriage careered down Fifth Avenue, we soon found ourselves overtaking the traffic alongside us. Within minutes the Met loomed large ahead of us. Mrs. Mulroney steered the carriage toward the museum and pulled the horse up to halt at the front steps with a “Whoa, Nelly!”

  Hurriedly I looked through my wallet for money to pay the driver, but I had none left.

  The driver saw my empty wallet and simply waved his hands at me. ““Forget it. I’m just happy to be alive.”

  I smiled apologetically and raced up the steps into the Met to catch up with the others. Tilly was already emptying her pockets of change at the ticket counter to gain us entry.

  “I was going to use it to buy a pepperoni pizza later, but this is way more noble… and fun!” she said.

  In the wing that housed the Temple of Dendur, light poured through the glass wall and cast a majestic glow over the reconstructed Egyptian ruins. The moment we entered the seemingly deserted gallery, the four of us stopp
ed and stared in awe at the ancient structure.

  “It’s quite impressive, don’t you agree?” said Tilly. “Dismantled from its original location in 1963, it was given to the United States as a gift and rebuilt, stone by stone, for exhibition in the Met.”

  “Thanks for the history lesson,” said Mrs. Mulroney. “Now let’s find Cal, before Matthew’s chance at love becomes history too.”

  We raced through the entrance way of the temple, about to start calling for Cal, searching for him behind the columns and walls etched with ancient inscriptions and hieroglyphs, when suddenly an enormous guard with arms as thick as the temple’s columns stood in our way.

  “Slow down, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a baritone voice so deep my mind boggled at how colossal his kahunas must have been. “What seems to be the hurry?”

  “Don’t mind us, Barry White,” said Mrs. Mulroney. “We’re on a mission to find this man’s boyfriend. You wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a poor romance writer and the man he loves, would you now?”

  For a moment, I thought the guard was going to laugh us off, but instead he gave us a sincerely concerned look. “No ma’am. But there’s nobody else here.”

  “Are you sure a guy didn’t wander in without you noticing?” I asked. “He likes to lose himself in here, just to escape the world outside.”

  “No sir. There’s nobody in here but us. But that’s not to say he isn’t somewhere else in the museum. Perhaps I can help.”

  The ginormous guard took the radio mouthpiece clipped to his shoulder and spoked into it. “Vanessa. Vanessa it’s Raymond here, do you read me? I need you to patch me through to the main PA system. It’s an emergency. A man’s heart is on the line, here.”

  “Patching you through now, Raymond,” said the female voice over the radio without hesitation.

  Suddenly Raymond’s deep, masculine voice came not only from the man standing in front of us, but echoed from the speakers throughout the entire museum.

  “Attention. Attention all museum patrons. Is there a man by the name of…” Raymond covered his mouthpiece and asked me, “What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Calvin,” I whispered.

  “Is there a man by the name of Calvin in the museum? If so, could you please make your way to the nearest information desk.”

  “Please tell him I’m sorry,” I urged Raymond desperately. “Please tell him I was a fool to be so stupid.”

  Raymond gave me a truly sympathetic look and nodded… Then repeated my words almost verbatim, his baritone voice filling every gallery from the ancient Greek nudes to the medieval tapestries. “Calvin, I’m sorry. I was a fool to be so stupid.”

  “Tell him I love him, and I’ll do anything to have back.”

  “Calvin, I love you,” Raymond sniffed, getting a little teary now. “I’ll do anything to have you back.”

  “I know we can work things out,” I begged Raymond. “If you just please give me a chance.”

  “Oh Calvin,” cried Raymond into the mouthpiece. “I know we can work this out. I’ll be good to you all the days of your life. But right now, I’m gonna fight for your love with all my heart, till the day I die, I swear to you this! Just come back to me. Come back to your one true love.”

  Mrs. Mulroney gave a surprised look. “Geez, talk about Chinese whispers.”

  Vanessa’s voice came back over the radio, herself a little teary. “Raymond, I’m so sorry. Nobody by the name of Calvin has reported to any of the information desks.”

  “Thanks Vanessa,” said Raymond, using his free hand to blow his nose into a handkerchief. “We did all we could.”

  He looked at me and shook his head like he’d just lost a patient, then offered me his hanky in case I needed it.

  “Ah, no, thank you. But don’t worry, all hope’s not lost yet. There’s still one place left to look.” I turned to the others and said, “We have to get to Strawberry Fields. It’s the last place he could be.”

  We turned and raced from the gallery to the sound of Raymond shouting with all the hope in his heart, “Long live love! Long live love!”

  Into Central Park we ran, knowing we had to get all the way from the east side to the west.

  That’s when Mr. Banks suddenly stopped in his stride and announced, “Oh dear, I seem to have lost one of my rabbits. I’m afraid there’ll be no stew tonight, children. It’s bread and dripping for all of you.”

  We turned around to see that one of his bunny slippers had disappeared somewhere along the way.

  “He can’t walk through Central Park with one shoe missing,” Mrs. Mulroney said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I can carry him.”

  I hurried up to Mr. Banks and squatted in front of him so that he could climb on my back.

  Mr. Banks just looked at me oddly. “What on earth are you doing, young man?”

  I suddenly realized that coaxing him onto my back for a ride might be something of a challenge. “Um, well, remember the time you won that ostrich race across the Sahara to the sea? It’s the anniversary of that day, and it’s tradition to celebrate by re-enacting the race through Central Park.”

  “Tradition? Why of course it is!” With a spring in his rickety old legs Mr. Banks launched himself onto my back and gave my ass a good slap. “Ride on, Nabunga! That coconut trophy is ours for the taking! Tally-ho!”

  While Mr. Banks almost strangled me with excitement, I staggered along the path to catch up with Mrs. Mulroney and Tilly, and together we continued our mad dash.

  Mr. Banks ducked low as we made our way under stone bridges. He yahooed as we abandoned the path for a quick detour over a wooded knoll. He even snapped a low-hanging twig from a tree and began using it as a riding crop.

  Eventually I couldn’t carry him any further.

  I slid him off my back and leaned against a tree, gasping for air. “I’m sorry… I can’t… run… another… step.”

  Tilly pointed excitedly up ahead. “Why run at all… when we can row our way across the park?”

  A short distance away was the lake filled with rowboats, and beyond that loomed the skyline of the Upper West Side.

  I found just enough energy left in me to stagger to the rowboats.

  At the lake’s edge, we scrambled to board a boat, the tiny vessel pitching and rocking and threatening to tip us all in until Mrs. Mulroney plonked Mr. Banks down to try and steady things. Tilly took an oar and I took another, but before we could untie the line the boat keeper came running up to us.

  “Oy there, are you trying to steal one of my boats?”

  My head was in such a swirl that I didn’t even think to pay for the boat hire before we jumped in. “God, I’m sorry,” I said, patting down my pockets and looking to the other three. “Does anyone have any money?”

  Tilly shook her head. “I spent the last coins I had getting us into the Met.”

  Mrs. Mulroney shook her head. “I spent my last few dollars on the cab ride.”

  Mr. Banks wriggled the toes inside his last bunny slipper. “I spent all my money on my tango shoes, and look where that got me.”

  “Here,” I said to the boat keeper. “Take my watch. It’s not worth much but it’s all I have.”

  The boat keeper took the watch, unimpressed, then kicked the line loose with his foot, setting us adrift.

  Immediately Tilly and I dipped the oars in the water and began rowing as fast as we could.

  While others paddled lazily or drifted leisurely over the calm waters of the lake, our little rowboat splashed its way from east to west in a desperate frenzy as though we were being chased by sharks, while Mr. Banks sang at the top of his lungs, “Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah!”

  Soon we bumped into the far shore and I helped everyone off the rowboat without losing anyone to the lake.

  We scrambled through the trees, came over the crest of one last hill, and there we saw Strawberry Fields with its dozens of flowerbeds and meandering pathways.

  “Let�
��s split up,” I suggested. “Mrs. Mulroney, you take Mr. Banks to the left. Tilly and I will go right.”

  We broke away from each other, and through the crowds of tourists and people strolling casually through the park, we called Cal’s name.

  I tapped the shoulder of a man who looked like him from behind. Tilly tugged on the hand of a man with the same length beard and brown hair as Cal. We both looked in hope at a man who seemed to wave in our direction, only to realize he was waving at someone else in the crowd.

  None of them were Cal.

  There was no sign of him anywhere.

  As we reached the famous Imagine mosaic where the paths converged, we found Mrs. Mulroney and Mr. Banks, their faces exhausted and full of sorrow.

  “We can’t find him anywhere,” said Mrs. Mulroney. “Oh Matthew, I’m so sorry. Perhaps it’s time to go home.”

  I felt the hope slip from my heart like the trees and flowers in a watercolor painting trickling away in the rain.

  I tried not to cry.

  I tried not to buckle to my knees in despair.

  Instead I wrapped my arms around Mrs. Mulroney and whispered into her shoulder. “Take me home. Please take me home.”

  Chapter Eight

  As a taxi pulled up, I realized I needed time alone. Mrs. Mulroney, Tilly and Mr. Banks all caught a cab home from Central Park. Mrs. Mulroney said she could pay at the other end with money from the till.

  I opted to go alone.

  Slowly I walked home by myself through the chaos and clamor of New York City, feeling strangely separate from the bustle that so easily sweeps people up and carries them unquestioningly to where they need to go.

  I knew I needed to go home to my apartment above Mrs. Mulroney’s Little Flower Shop. But as for my destination in life… I once again had no clue as to where I was headed.

  When I reached the flower shop, I stepped inside to collect my backpack and make sure the others got home all right.

  Mrs. Mulroney was inside the shop, pruning stems and tossing the ends aside. When she saw me she said, “So you finally made it home in one piece. Any longer and I was about to send out a search party.”