But she didn't. And her smug silence spoke volumes.
She just knew. She was confident. She didn't need to taunt me. I was already in hell, and she didn't care one bit. She just wanted what was coming to her.
I found myself in a sports bar, dangerously close to work. Someone might recognize me here. Hell, someone could recognize me anywhere, but that was a pretty rare occurrence. They'd wonder what the hell I was doing in a place like this, but I just needed the noise. The activity, buzzing around me. It was still happy hour, and everyone was acting like it. Forgetting their troubles, drowning everything that bothered them in half-price margaritas and bottomless tortilla chips.
If any of them knew why I was here, they'd probably punch me in the throat.
Boo hoo, the billionaire might have to give up majority control of his company. What a sad story. And it's his own damn fault.
Cry me a river.
My eyes swept the room, wondering if I could end my troubles right here, right now. If I asked one of these women to fix my problem, would they agree? Would they slap me across the face? Would they think I was joking?
The last one, probably.
I couldn't understand why this was so hard. It had seemed simple enough, back when I signed the agreement. Just find a woman and marry her. Two years. Two years was plenty of time to fall in love.
Just not, apparently, with someone like me.
At first, I started in the circles that made the most sense. Mentally, I began auditioning all the women I knew. The ones I had regular dalliances with anyway, because what could be more convenient than that? Things might get messy, but we were all adults. We could handle ourselves.
As it turned out, it was much easier to meet a woman for the occasional spanking and rough sex than it was to try and date her.
My proclivities seemed to be at odds with my playboy behavior. After all, I was supposed to be into domestic discipline - not random discipline with strangers. But this was the closest I could get, until I found the right woman to be domestic with. And that was seeming more and more like a distant dream, every day.
I'd given up on making it happen for real. Now, all I wanted was someone I could trust to join me in the deception of a lifetime.
Daria was no idiot. This possibility had certainly occurred to her - and even if it hadn't, her lawyer would be expecting it. Now, with time so close to running out, I'd have to work very hard to convince them. All of the pieces would have to fall perfectly into place.
I had four months to find a wife.
One of these random sports bar floozies was hardly the right candidate. Not that I had a better option, at the moment. And it wasn't exactly wise to put my trust in some random stranger.
A pair of eyes burned in the back of my mind.
The memory was hazy, and I had to shake my head a few times to identify them. They burned with anger, and that brought it all rushing back. The girl at the grocery store. She was so mad at me, for some reason I couldn't quite recall.
I vaguely remembered being a little combative with her. Acting a little...dare I say it...entitled. I usually made an effort to bite my tongue, because I knew how people looked at me. I knew the kinds of assumptions people made, when they saw someone who had as much money as I did. I'd discovered a long time ago that it was difficult to hide. People always know. The smell of money follows you everywhere, no matter how you dress it down. And last night, I hadn't made an effort to act like I belonged.
No wonder she hated me. Everyone hated people like me, unless they were lucky enough to become one.
The Chase family had been on the top of the Forbes list since before the Forbes list even existed. We were practically the definition of old money. We had the kind of pedigree that hardly even mattered anymore, these days. But nonetheless, I did take some pride in it. Why the hell not? We'd kept our status for hundreds of years, surely that was worth something.
But not to women like her.
For once, someone other than my ex-wife was dominating my thoughts. It was a strange feeling - exhilarating, like taking a deep gulp of fresh air after being cooped up for a long time. Maybe that was my problem. I'd been looking for someone all this time, but my heart wasn't in it. I'd been motivated, I'd convinced myself I really did want to move on. That Daria's settlement contract was actually a blessing. It would force me to get out there, get back on the market, find somebody who could actually make me happy.
Until now, I hadn't realized how much I was lying to myself. Nobody except Daria had dominated my thoughts in a very long time.
I didn't know what it was about that girl. All she did was yell at me, clutching her ice cream in her hand like it was worth a million dollars. Maybe it was, to her. Maybe she was having just as bad of a day as I was. Maybe that was why she didn't put up with my bullshit.
I grinned to myself. Okay, so I liked that. I liked that I hadn't intimidated her. I liked that she didn't back down. All signs pointed to her being a little bit spitfire, determined, unwilling to bow to anyone's authority unless it suited her purposes.
All the same, I wondered if she fantasized about a man who was strong enough to control her. It would be her choice, but deep down inside, she'd feel compelled. She'd no longer be the master of her own desires, driven by a need she didn't fully understand, didn't want to admit. The same need that drove half the high-powered businessmen I knew into dungeons across the city, begging to be humiliated by women in leather corsets. Aching to have their power stripped away, piece by piece. Needing the release of submission.
I wasn't like them. My release was at the other end of the paddle. I admired those women, understood why they did what they did - but their company wasn't for me. I needed the opposite.
I needed somebody like that girl from the store, kneeling at my feet, begging for my punishment.
Gripping the edge of the bar counter, I shook my head. I couldn't keep thinking like that. The last thing I needed was to trade my obsession with Daria for a new obsession with some random woman I'd never see again. In a city of millions, the odds of us running into each other more than once were pretty slim.
Then again, she probably lived nearby. There weren't many other reasons why someone would shop in that particular store. It happened to be right across from my office, and I hate nothing more than going out of the way. Even if it means being able to shop somewhere that doesn't smell like old fish.
She was new in the city. She had to be. I could always tell, the ones who didn't really belong here - who'd come here on the promise of something extraordinary, the magic that was the Big Apple, only to be terribly disillusioned the minute they stepped out of the cab. She was just another one of the many millions who'd last for about six months before they packed it in, headed back for Oklahoma or Michigan or Texas.