The Billionaire Dating Game: A Romance Novel (33 page)

“I don’t know for sure,” I said, hesitant to say anything that might turn out badly for him. I hoped that Kate wouldn’t choose the money over him, but I wasn’t sure. “She’s pretty crazy for you. That’s what she told me.”

“Awesome!” Dylan grinned broadly.

We walked through a dark hallway. A murmur of voices grew louder and louder as we headed down the hall. Stage technicians dressed in black hurried around us.

“Where are you taking me, anyway?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Dylan said. “Piers planned it all out.”

“A surprise?”

The hallway opened up, and I realized we were in the back of a large stage. Dark black curtains hung down in parallel drapes, and wires snaked across the floor. The voices I’d been hearing were now a loud hubbub. As we walked to the edge of the stage, I could glimpse the audience, a thousand dim faces past the edge of the stage.

I knitted my brows together. I had way too much to deal with right now to think of anything besides Arlen and Emma. But something in my heart nudged me forward. If there was any chance…

“Hey. I’ll talk to you later,” Dylan said, pushing me down in a chair just off the side of the stage. “You stay right here, okay? Piers doesn’t know I brought you here.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“Shh. It’s going to start!”

Dylan bounded onto the stage. I peered around the edge of the curtain. Kate and Mia were both sitting at the other end of the stage, and Piers was standing in front of a microphone, doing a sound check. The audience erupted into cheers when Dylan raised his hand and waved to them.

“Well, look who decided to waltz in at the last minute,” Piers said. “It’s Dylan Chase!”

The screams of the audience rose to a deafening roar.

“Alright, looks like we’re ready to start,” Piers said. I recognized the smooth voice of his stage persona. “Are you ready, Dylan?”

“Sure thing!” Dylan pumped his fist in the air. “Let’s get this show started!”

“Welcome to the last and final competition for
The Billionaire Dating Game
,” Piers said. “We’re so glad that you all could join us, and I hope you’ve all been following along at home. If you have, you’ll know that these are the last two competitors in the show. First: Mia Firenze, the beautiful model who rocked our last photoshoot!”

Mia stood up and waved. A cheer went up from the front row of the audience.

“And Kate Penrose, the waitress who charmed Dylan with a Batman-inspired dress in a previous contest!”

I might have been biased, but there was no denying it: the cheers for Kate were more than twice as loud as the ones for Mia. I clapped loudly and let out a wolf whistle. Piers turned to the side to see where the noise had come from, his dark eyebrow arched. I pulled the curtain in front of me, ducking away from his sight. When I looked back around, he was back at the microphone with Dylan next to him.

“For our last episode, we’re doing a live taping,” Piers said. “And this episode is all about what it means to be a billionaire.”

“Part of being a billionaire is charity,” Dylan said. “As Spiderman might say,
With great power comes great responsibility.
And that includes the power of money.”

“Lisa Forrester was eliminated from the competition in the last round,” Piers chimed in. “And in the elimination interview, she admitted the real reason she had joined
The Billionaire Dating Game.
”

My tearful face came up on the screen behind the stage.

“My sister’s kid—Piers, she’s sick. She has cancer. I need money to pay for her treatments.”

I pressed my hands to my face in shock. What were they doing, showing this?

“Having money isn’t all about using it to buy fancy cars,” Dylan said. “Although fancy cars are pretty awesome. What’s more awesome, though, is being able to help people.”

No.

It couldn’t be.

Was it?

“Tonight,” Piers chimed in, “we’re going to be doing a fundraiser drive to cover the medical costs for Lisa Forrester’s niece Arlen, who has just been diagnosed with leukemia.”

The crowd hushed, and a sob rose in my throat. This was what Piers had planned?

I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to jump up and scream. I wanted to run on stage and give him a hug. But I sat frozen, completely in shock.

“Reality TV isn’t always important,” Piers said, and he had dropped the glib persona. He was speaking as a real person, as the person I knew and loved. “Sometimes it’s meaningless.”

He paused, looking out into the audience.

“But not tonight. If you’re out there watching, stay tuned. Because right now, we’re going to make
The Billionaire Dating Game
something much more than just a reality TV show.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Kate and Mia will be taking turns up here on stage to ask our viewers to donate, and we’ll track the donations as they come in. Any extra will be donated to cancer research in Arlen’s name.”

My hands held my head tightly, as though if I let go I might explode outward. As Mia stepped up to the front of the stage and began to speak, I couldn’t help but look at Piers standing calmly next to Dylan, his hands clasped loosely in front of him.

“…and so I want to start off by saying that any donation you send in right now will be matched one hundred percent by an anonymous donor I recruited to help us with this charity,” Mia was saying. “So call or text and make a donation to Love for Arlen - your gift will be doubled if you call in right now!”

Piers whispered something to Dylan, and Dylan shrugged, shaking his head. An anonymous donor? I wondered who it would be that would donate to a child they didn’t even know. It was then that I noticed the donation tally pop up on the screen at the back of the stage. It was a huge counter, and it was already well into the hundreds of dollars. I watched, agog, as the numbers spun upwards in bursts of activity.
Two thousand, then three thousand, then four thousand.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.

Mia was doing a dramatic reading of a poem about cancer survivors now at the front of the stage. I had to admit, she was really good at getting the crowd worked up. As I peered into the audience, I could see some people crying, and lots of them were on their phones—I didn’t know if it was them making the donation counter rise, but it didn’t matter. She was getting results. I watched the counter spin up and up.
Thirteen thousand, fourteen thousand.

I’d hated Mia before. I’d thought she was a horrible person, a catty bitch. But I couldn’t even be a little bit mad at her now. She was throwing herself into her performance, and whether she was doing it just to get Dylan or to help Arlen, it was working. She read through an article about childhood cancer, and how hard it was to treat certain kinds. Every other paragraph, she would remind people of the number to call in. She had assistants going down into the audience with baskets to collect cash donations.

And the donations just kept coming.

Seventeen thousand. Eighteen thousand.

When she finally finished, the donation tally paused at the total:
Thirty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars.

“Thank you, Mia,” Piers said. “That was an impressive total.”

“It’s doubled,” Mia said earnestly. “My—the anonymous donor will double it, remember?”

“Can we get that tally doubled?” Piers called out. He only had to wait a second before Mia’s donation tally was updated on the screen.
Sixty-four thousand…
the rest of the number blurred in my vision. It was enough. Even with just Mia’s donations, it was enough. We could do the treatments. I could have kissed her right there on stage.

“Thank you, Mia. And now, Kate, you have the stage and you’re the one running the charity. Your time starts… now!”

Kate walked up to the microphone. Before she even got there, her donation tally had jumped up to over five thousand. Apparently a lot of people had been waiting to call in for their favorite contestant. My heart soared, not just at the money but at the thought that Kate might actually win this challenge, despite Mia’s anonymous donor.

“Thank you,” Kate said. She took a deep breath, and I could tell she was nervous, looking down at a slip of paper in her hands. “Cancer is something that affects us all, and I was very sad to learn that Lisa’s niece was diagnosed with leukemia. Right now, I’d like to take a moment to remember all of our friends and family who have been affected by this awful disease, whether they are here today or no longer with us. Let’s think of them.”

She paused and bowed her head. The entire theater went silent, completely silent. And for a moment, all I could hear was my heartbeat pounding. I thought of Arlen, adorable Arlen, waving her arms in the air and hiding under the coat racks when we went shopping. Tears slid down my cheeks.

I wouldn’t know what to do without Arlen. It terrified me to think about coming home to an apartment that wasn’t covered in applesauce and crayons. She and Emma were the only family I had. I sat there in the darkness and the silence, and my fear came out in sobs, choking my throat. I didn’t hold them back anymore.

“Now,” Kate was saying, “I want all of you to message someone you know, someone who might want to help a little girl who needs help now more than ever. And if you haven’t donated already, please pick up your phone and give anything. A dollar, if you can. If all of you just gave a dollar, it would be enough, I know it would. It could be the most important dollar you ever give away.”

I couldn’t see through my tears anymore.

“There’s something else,” I heard Kate say. “I know that this competition is about fundraising for a charity. And so far we’ve got a lot of donations. You’re all so amazing!”

A burst of applause and cheering came ringing through my ears.

“But for the last few minutes here, there’s something else I’m going to ask you to do. Because I talked with someone who works with leukemia patients, and there’s something they need even more than money. And that’s the promise of a lifesaving bone marrow transplant.”

Again, I could see people moving through the audience. This time, though, they weren’t carrying baskets for donations. They were carrying—

“I’m asking all of you in the audience, if you’re willing, to get tested as a bone marrow donor. Right now, the only thing you need to do is swab a little Q-tip in your cheek. We have assistants coming around with the swabs and the sheet of information to fill out. And if you’re a match with Arlen, or with another cancer patient, we’ll let you know—and you might just be able to save someone’s life.”

An assistant came up to Kate on stage.

“I’m going to get tested right now,” Kate continued. “So you can all see how easy it is. And everybody at home, you can get tested too—just go online to BeTheMatch.org and they’ll send you a kit to see if you’re a match for someone who needs it.”

She stepped away from the microphone. I glanced up, and my heart twisted in my chest. The donation tally was up over fifty thousand. I couldn’t wait to tell Emma about it. But Piers was talking again, and my attention went back to the competition. That’s right. This was still a dating game. I had almost forgotten.

“And that’s the final tally!” Piers said. “We’ll continue to accept donations for Arlen, so keep them coming. Right now, though, it looks like the winner of the charity competition is… Mia Firenze!”

The audience clapped, and Mia was jumping up and down. I wiped the tears from my eyes and stood up shakily, my mind suddenly reeling. Was she really the winner? The final winner? How could Dylan let this happen? He didn’t want to date her!

“As the winner of the Billionaire Dating Game, you can choose to leave with your billionaire…or take the money and run,” Piers said, sliding back into his TV host voice. “If you decide to leave, you’ll get a hundred thousand dollars.”

Kate smiled a trembling smile and gave Mia a congratulatory hug.

No!
I wanted to shout.
This isn’t right!

Mia didn’t need the money. Kate did. And Kate was a better match for Dylan anyway! What the hell was going on?

“This is your moment to decide,” Piers said. “Take the money… or take the billionaire?”

“Thank you, Piers,” Mia said, stepping forward to the microphone. “That’s a hard choice.”

She cleared her throat, and looked out into the audience.

“But first, I have something to confess.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Confess?” Piers asked.

He had a small hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and I realized that he knew more about this than he had let on. What was happening here?

“Yes,” Mia said. “I have to take the money and leave. Dylan, I’m sorry. But my heart belongs to someone else.”

A collective gasp came from the audience. Dylan, though, didn’t look surprised at all.

“You see, my parents really want me to date a billionaire. They were the ones who pushed me to come on this show. And since I’ve been financially dependent on them, I’ve done whatever they told me to do. But not anymore.”

A burst of noise came from behind me, backstage. I turned to see one of the producers pushing through the hallway, the woman with dark hair. A security guard was holding her back by the arm.

“Let me go!” the woman cried out. “That ungrateful little
bitch
! Does she really think she can do this to me?”

My jaw dropped as I realized that the producer was Mia’s mother. At the picnic, she’d been hidden under her hat and sunglasses, but now I recognized her.

That’s how Mia had gotten onto the show. That’s how she had won immunity and gotten through all of those competitions.

Mia’s mother had been pulling all the strings this whole time.

“You can’t go on stage,” the security guard was saying. Another guard came to pull Mia’s mom back. She was right behind me.

“This is my show!” she screamed. “This was all my idea!”

Mia turned slightly, hearing the commotion offstage.

“Mom? Is that my mom?”

Piers looked over and saw me standing in the wings.