HER CONVENIENT MILLIONAIRE

A Synopsis

by Gail Dayton

Sherry Eloise Nyland, age 26, blond hair, blue eyes, 5’7”, slim, athletic build. Sherry was raised by her rich, alcoholic mother—who named her daughter after her preferred drink at the time. Following her mother’s death shortly after Sherry turned eleven, she was shipped off to her father and his second wife in Palm Beach, Florida, where she was mostly ignored. Her sole ally in the family is her younger half-sister Juliana. Her father has made arrangements for Sherry to marry a wealthy creep—probably financial arrangements, but she doesn’t know for sure. Rather than go through with it, she leaves home, but despite her junior college education, she’s unable to get a job—she’s never held one. Her credit cards are cancelled, she doesn’t have a bank account of her own, and she’s down to her last fifty. She takes refuge in a restaurant/club to figure out what to do next.

Micah Thomas “Mike” Scott, age 34, brown hair, gray eyes, 6’ tall, lean and muscular. A native Floridian, he earned his millions the hard way after getting out of the Marines, buying failing businesses—mostly restaurants and clubs—turning them around and selling them for many times what he paid. He makes more money through his successful investments these days, but he likes to keep his hand in. He owns the Palm Beach building where he lives and a club on Ocean Boulevard that’s rising steadily in popularity and profitability. He doesn’t have much respect for those he calls “trust fund babies,” considering them useless, and he’s wary of women. He’s been burned by too many who were more interested in Micah’s millions than in Micah.

The Story:

At his club one evening in late spring, the bartender calls Mike aside to point out a young woman who’s been sitting in the bar all day and ordered nothing but two glasses of wine. Mike immediately suspects she’s come looking for a rich sugar-daddy to take care of her. Except she hasn’t paid any attention to the other patrons of the club and she turned down an offer of a drink from one of the richer locals. She’s a puzzle. Still, she’s not doing any harm, so he let’s her stay till closing when she turns down his offer to call a cab.

As he’s driving home, he sees he walking down the beach. Concerned, he stops to offer a ride home, but she refuses to cooperate. After a lengthy “discussion”, involving the destruction of her purse and Mike’s retreat to his car to follow her to her destination, she finally accepts a ride. But at the address on her driver’s license, her key won’t fit the lock and the maid insists she doesn’t live there any more.

Defeated, Sherry reveals that was locked out for refusing to marry someone chosen by her father, a man she couldn’t abide. Her father is attempting to force her into compliance. Micah offers her a place to sleep at his apartment. One night only. Nothing more. Just to keep her safe. Sherry eventually agrees. It's better than the beach.

The next morning, Sherry wakes in Mike's guest room to the sound of someone knocking on the front door. A close encounter with Mike, emerging from the shower wet and towel-clad at the same moment she comes out of her room, prevents either of them from reaching the front door before it opens. A frail elderly woman, Mike's mother Clara, enters, come to visit from her home in the apartment next door. She tries to leave again, obviously hoping Mike and Sherry will get back to whatever hanky-panky they might be indulging in.

Sherry prevents Clara’s departure on Mike's behalf, and while he cooks breakfast, contributing to the conversation from the kitchen, they explain Sherry's situation. Clara immediately insists Sherry stay with her. Sherry expects Mike to argue against it, but he agrees. His mother needs a keeper. She never remembers her oxygen, and needs someone to stop her from overexerting herself.

Sherry won’t accept payment for staying with Clara—providing her a place to stay is payment enough. She still needs a job, so Mike offers to put her to work at the club. He encourages her to believe he’s just the manager, and that he can afford two apartments in this very pricey building because he also manages it for the same owner, who gives him a price break on the rent. He convinces Clara to keep his exact financial status quiet as well, though she believes Sherry won’t care.

Sherry’s first day as hostess is miserable. Not because of the actual work, but because of all the people who want to gossip about why she’s working there. They keep telling her to run home to daddy and daddy’s money. However, her first night with Clara is delightful due to tales of Micah's childhood mischief and Sherry's first cooking lesson. Then she gets a call from her half-sister.

Juliana found the number on their father's desk after hearing him shouting on the phone about Sherry. One of the customers at the club apparently called and gave him her location. Sherry worries that her father might somehow harm Clara by accident. She realizes he won't stop hounding her until she does what he wants or she puts herself completely out of his reach, and the only way she will be out of reach is if she is already married.

When Mike gets home shortly after midnight, Sherry is waiting outside his door with a proposition for him. He invites her in for the talk she wants, but isn't prepared for her verbal bombshell. She wants Mike to marry her.

The ensuing discussion is heated, her explanation confusing, involving her trust fund, her father, and her twenty-fifth birthday just a few months away. Mike won't do it. He can't. He once got deeply involved with a Palm Beach socialite only to get dumped when she found a man with more money. Sherry was bred in the same hothouse. He likes her stubborn spunk and knows he could fall hard if he let himself, and that would be disastrous.

Angry, Mike tries to frighten her out of the idea with sexual demands, but she responds to his fiery kiss by melting into it. Then she tells him that if he wants sex, it's okay with her. Now thoroughly confused, he asks why she's willing to marry him for business reasons when she won't marry "Vernon the Geek" as she's dubbed her father's choice.

Because Mike is a good man, and Vernon isn't. The tiny row of old bruises along the inner surface of Sherry's upper arm, put there by Vernon, convince Mike. He won't marry her, but he will protect her.

With Clara tucked away at Mike's sister's, he's free to play bodyguard for Sherry, though he believes it won't be necessary. He's proved wrong when Sherry's father comes into the club looking for her. The confrontation is brief but ugly. Mike ends it when he announces that Sherry can’t marry Vernon because she’s already married to him. Both Mike and Sherry are shocked by his statement. He never expected to say any such thing. When she asks what happens next, Mike says they get married. She’s right. It’s the only way she’ll be safe. But it’s a business arrangement only—just a paper marriage.

The arrangements are quickly made through a judge Mike knows and the next day, with his mother and Sherry's sister as witnesses, they are married. Clara insists that Sherry move back into Mike's apartment, refusing to listen to any talk about "marriage of convenience." In her eyes, the marriage is real and she has no qualms about using her heart condition to make the youngsters go along.

Mike carries Sherry over the threshold to convince his watching neighbors of the reality of their marriage—if they believe, they can help convince her father—then insists Sherry stay inside with him for at least an hour to further the charade, let the neighbors think they’re making love. He’s tempted into a no-holds-barred kiss, but breaks it off to explain that sex isn’t just a pastime to him. It should mean something to both people. Sherry’s insistence on defining just how much it should mean drives Mike to insult her just to stop the conversation.

Harassing phone calls from Sherry’s father continue, keeping her on edge. He still believes he can convince Sherry to get rid of Micah and marry the man he prefers. Sherry insists on continuing her job at Mike’s restaurant because he’s short of help. Besides, if she’s going to be independent, holding down a job is a good way to start. Mike has trouble believing Sherry intends to stick with such a low paying job.

They are invited to the wedding reception for Sherry's sister. Mike talks her into attending it as a way of demonstrating to her father, to Vernon the Geek and to the world that they are married and no one had better interfere. She doesn’t want to go, especially since she saw her father possibly following her in his car during the week, but she recognizes that Mike is right.

Mike is uncomfortable at the reception, feeling very much like the token peon. He didn’t grow up in these surroundings, even though he now has as much money or more than the others at the party. He dances with Sherry, telling himself it’s part of the show of affection required to demonstrate that they are deliriously happy together. But he gets lost in the dance and the woman in his arms. Until Juliana cuts in and carts Sherry off for a sisterly chat.

While waiting for them to finish, Mike’s discomfort increases when Sherry’s father comes for his own little talk. He informs Mike that if he and Sherry stay married, Mike will get nothing. Then her father offers to make it worth his while if he will divorce her now. Mike’s temper flares. He warns the man to stay away from Sherry, setting off her father’s temper. With surprise on his side, the older man punches Mike in the face twice before Mike can stop him, easily holding him helpless with skills learned years ago in the Marines. Mike’s ease in holding him convinces Sherry’s father to back down and leave his daughter alone.

Sherry hurries across the room to see how badly Mike has hurt himself. She takes him into the guest house across the yard for privacy while she tends his cuts, plentiful but shallow. Her careful attention, the anger he felt at her father, the sight and scent of her tending his bruises all force Mike to recognize his feelings for her.

It’s not love yet, but the pieces are there. The instant she finishes, he pulls her into his lap and kisses her. He can’t fight it any more. Somehow he gets her out of the bathroom to the guesthouse bed where they make love for the first time.

Sherry is stunned by the emotion he rouses in her with his tender care. No one has ever shown her so much care before, which is why she’s afraid to trust it. She’s spent her life turning herself inside out, longing for love she never got. She can’t fall back into that trap again.

Mike is equally stunned. He doesn’t know how he can let her go, though he knows he must. He begins to wonder if he can convince her to stay, but he doesn’t dare take the chance. He believes, he knows, that Sherry's just biding her time till she has control of her own money and can do as she pleases, and what she pleases will most certainly not involve Micah Scott. They both agree that this can’t happen again.

Which means he has to stay away from her. He manages, since he puts her on the day shift and he works nights. Then one night at work, he gets an incoherent phone call from Sherry that Clara  is in the hospital. When he arrives, he learns that his mother fainted and Sherry blacked her eye hitting the kitchen island trying to break Clara’s fall. Clara will be fine—once she gets the pacemaker she needs and doesn’t want. Mike’s not so sure about himself. Sherry sacrificed herself for his mother’s well being. How can he not care for her? He’s beginning to think about staying in the marriage, but first he has to discover what she really wants, money or Mike.

He takes her to paint his parents’ rent house—the house he grew up in—to get it ready for new tenants, sure that she’ll hate the hard messy work. Instead, she seems to enjoy it. And when he offers to let her paint the apartment any color she wants, she surprises him with an enthusiastic kiss. The kiss ignites the passion he’s never managed to kill, and h e bears her down to the sheet-covered floor. But he can’t make love to her, because it has to mean something to both of them. Sherry is shocked to realize that Mike believes she doesn’t care about him. She proceeds to demonstrate just how much she cares by making love to him the way he did to her.

Mike can’t let her go. He realizes finally that he’s in love with her and has been for some time. Somehow, he has to convince Sherry to stay in this marriage. And his first step is to learn what her father meant by his insinuations at the party.

Micah discovers that the trust fund Sherry was so proud of was emptied out years ago. She’s engineered this whole charade to get to him and his millions. He goes home to confront her, to send her away. She’s shocked both to discover that Mike has lots of money and that she has none. She’s devastated to learn that her father has looted her trust fund, not because she has no money, but because the fund was the only thing she had from her alcoholic mother, the only proof that her mother cared anything for her.

On top of that, Mike lied to her, pretending he was—if not actually poor, at least far from rich—and on top of that, he’s accusing her of scheming to marry him in order to get her hands on money she never knew he had. Her only mistake was falling in love with him. She runs to Clara for refuge. But Clara refuses to let Sherry stay. She and Mike must patch up their quarrel. Sherry hugs the old woman goodbye, while making plans to disappear. She’ll get by. Somehow.

Mike tries to tell himself that he doesn’t care where she’s gone, she didn’t mean anything to him, she was just a gold-digger. But he can’t stop thinking about her, can’t stop wondering if she’s okay. Then do-it-yourself divorce papers arrive from Sherry. All he has to do is sign and file them, and their marriage will be over. But he can’t do it. He still loves her. He realizes that their marriage had never felt like paper and begins to wonder if he might have been wrong.

Sherry would have to be the best actress in the world to fake her reactions when he showed her the statement of her empty trust. He was too hurt and angry to see it then, but now—now he realizes what he has done.

Three weeks later, Mike comes to the Orlando resort where Sherry is now working. He’s finally tracked her down. He wants to talk. Sherry believes he’s come with new divorce papers and asks for a pen so she can sign them. Mike tells her there aren’t any new papers, and he tore up the old ones. Sherry asks why, and he tells her he wants to stay married. He can’t stand seeing her like this.

Sherry realizes his overgrown sense of responsibility has made another appearance and gently informs him that she really can take care of herself. She’s even moving into management training at the resort the next week. She doesn’t need him to rescue her.

Mike knows that. He’s come so she can rescue him. He needs her to be his wife. Once more she asks why, and finally Micah admits that he loves her. He wants it all, marriage, kids, forever, with her. Almost afraid to believe that anyone could really love her, Sherry asks if he really means it.

Finally, Mike talks to her the way he talks to his mother, pushing the wedding ring back on her finger and informing her that he loves her, she loves him and her only choice in the matter now is whether she walks to the car to go home or gets carried over his shoulder. His outburst convinces Sherry the way nothing else could and she throws herself in his arms. She’s finally found everything she ever dreamed of.

Gail's website