The business card lived in my wallet for a week.
Every day I would take it out, stare at the embossed letters—DANIEL HAYES, HAYES VENTURES, followed by a phone number that probably connected to at least six assistants before reaching anyone important—and put it back. The ritual felt important somehow, like checking that an exit door still existed even if you weren't ready to walk through it.
"You should call him." Priya leaned against the bakery counter, watching me stack croissants with what she called my "aggressively organized anxiety."
"I'm not calling him."
"He gave you his card."
"People give out cards all the time. It's a reflex. It doesn't mean anything."
"Lily." Priya's tone shifted to the one she used when I was being particularly dense. "You spilled champagne on a billionaire and instead of having you fired, he asked about your debt. That means something."
The morning rush was over, leaving Sweet Fortune in the quiet lull before lunch. The bakery smelled like butter and sugar and my mother's memory—she'd developed most of these recipes, perfected them over decades, poured her entire self into this space. Now it was mine, along with the debt that was slowly drowning it.
"Maybe he was just being polite."
"Rich people aren't polite for no reason. They're transactional." Priya had worked for a hedge fund before deciding she preferred flour to finance. She knew things about wealthy people that I found both fascinating and disturbing. "If Daniel Hayes gave you his card, he wants something."
"That's a comforting thought."
"It's a realistic thought." She snagged a croissant from the display—her daily employee discount—and bit in. "The question is whether what he wants is worth what you need."
I didn't have an answer to that.
The truth was, I'd googled Daniel Hayes approximately seventeen times since the gala. I knew he was thirty-three, self-made, famously private. I knew his company had started in a garage (cliché but apparently true). I knew his father had abandoned the family when Daniel was young, and his mother had died of cancer before his first major success.
I also knew he'd been engaged once, to a woman named Victoria, and that the engagement had ended spectacularly and publicly when she sold their private life to a tabloid in exchange for a book deal.
"He probably has trust issues," I said aloud.
"Everyone has trust issues. That's not an excuse not to call."
"What would I even say? 'Hi, you told me to call about my crushing debt, and I've spent a week psychoanalyzing you based on Wikipedia, so what's your offer?'"
"That's honest. He seemed to like honest."
The bell above the door chimed. I looked up, ready to paste on my customer-service smile, and froze.
Daniel Hayes stood in my bakery.
He wore different clothes than the gala—jeans, a sweater, the kind of casual that still probably cost thousands but at least attempted normalcy. His driver waited at the curb in a car that cost more than my annual revenue.
"You didn't call," he said.
"I was going to." The lie came automatically. "Eventually. When I figured out what to say."
"You could have said hello."
"Hello seemed inadequate given the circumstances."
His eyes swept the bakery—the worn wooden tables, the vintage display cases my mother had rescued from an estate sale, the chalkboard menu I rewrote every week because it was cheaper than printing. I watched him catalog each detail, and wondered what he saw. Charm or desperation? Potential or lost cause?
"This is what $80,000 in debt looks like," I said, because apparently I was still incapable of filtering my thoughts around him.
"This is what passion looks like." He picked up a croissant from the counter, turned it over in his hands like it was evidence. "You made these?"
"Every morning at 4 AM. Laminated dough requires dedication and self-hatred."
"They're better than anything I've had in Paris."
"Now you're just flattering me to get information."
"I'm telling the truth because you seem to value it." He set down the croissant. "I have a proposition for you."
Behind me, Priya made a sound that might have been a gasp or a laugh. I ignored her.
"I don't know you," I said. "Whatever you're about to offer, I can't accept it from a stranger."
"Then let me explain." Daniel glanced at the door, at the empty tables, at Priya who was very obviously eavesdropping. "Privately."
This was insane. I knew it was insane. Billionaires didn't show up at struggling bakeries to make propositions to women who had assaulted them with champagne. This was either a con, a prank, or the beginning of a true crime documentary.
But the card was still in my wallet. And the debt was still in my ledger. And sometimes insane was the only option left.
"Priya can handle the counter," I heard myself say. "Let's talk."