Longing (Billionaire Venture Capitalist #7): A Billionaire Romance

by Ainsley St Claire

  We walk into the courts and are told which team we are on, and we play hard for over an hour and a half—no talking about Bella, our jobs, or college teams. It’s a great workout, and after we’re done, we hit the showers. I think about Bella and wouldn’t mind trying to catch up with her tonight. I don’t want to push her. I know she has a lot on her plate, and I don’t want to be another hassle for her.

  Scotty’s Bar isn’t far from the Y. It’s crowded with the downtown hipsters, but we score a table in a good spot. “What’ll you have?”

  Dave looks at me and considers his options. “I was thinking the microbrew they have on tap.”

  “I’ve got the first round.” After placing my order, I check out the bar. There are some cute girls, but I’m not really interested in any of them. At the table next to Dave, I see a woman who looks familiar. I can’t quite figure out what it is about her. She has dark hair, huge dark brown eyes, and a cute figure. She’s not as beautiful as Bella, but she’s definitely beautiful. It hits me like a thunderbolt. I think she’s the birthday girl from the night I met Bella.

  I pay for our beers and take them to my table. I can’t help myself. I stop at her table. “Hi, I’m Christopher Reinhardt. Aren’t you friends with Isabella Vargas?”

  She looks me over carefully. “Yes, have we met?”

  “I think we met at The Church for your birthday party? I became friends with Bella that night.”

  “Oh, you’re that Christopher?”

  I’m not sure what Bella has said to her friend. “I guess I would be that Christopher. What’s your name?”

  “Elinor Richardson, but you can call me Ellie.”

  “Great to officially meet you.”

  I see Dave checking Ellie out, but he sits and just watches.

  “You know, you really knocked her off her feet,” she informs me. “I’m really grateful to you for making her have a personal life.”

  “Well, I think I should be thanking you for having a birthday party and getting her out.”

  “I like the way you think, Christopher.” She looks over at Dave and smiles.

  “Here, let me introduce you to my friend. This is Dave Marshall. He and I went to school together, but I should warn you, he’s a Michigan basketball fan.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you. Call me Ellie, and I’m a Duke fan.” I groan internally, knowing she’s going to hate me in a few seconds.

  “Ellie, I love you already. Christopher went to medical school at Carolina,” Dave gushes.

  She groans. “That’s disappointing. He’ll have to break up with Bella then.”

  While they’re giving me a hard time, I look up, and who do I see? Annabelle and some woman. I don’t know what’s worse, hearing how great Duke and Michigan are or talking to Annabelle and her friend. I guess I don’t have a choice when they march up to our table.

  “Christopher!” She gives me a hug that lasts a few seconds too long and kisses me on each cheek. From the corner of my eye, I see Ellie stand back and watch me carefully.

  “Annabelle, so good to see you. Let me introduce you to my friends. This is Ellie and Dave. Ellie is my girlfriend’s best friend.” I see Ellie visibly relax. “And Dave and I went to the University of Minnesota together.” Turning to Ellie and Dave, I explain, “Annabelle is the girlfriend to the managing partner at my firm, Mason Sullivan.”

  She preens like a peacock. “And this is my friend Amanda. It’s so wonderful to see you someplace other than that boring dinner on Sunday nights. I’ve wanted to introduce the two of you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Amanda.” Turning to Annabelle, I say, “You know, if you don’t like Sunday night dinners, it isn’t mandatory for you. You don’t have to come. I’m not sure I’d enjoy them if I didn’t work for SHN.”

  “Mason requires it, so I go and pretend to have a good time. They’re just dreadful.”

  She’s not a very good actress. Everyone knows she doesn’t enjoy these dinners.

  I smile and nod. I don’t know what to say to her.

  “How serious is it with your girlfriend?” Annabelle asks. Ellie is still watching me and waiting to hear my answer. It’s definitely piqued her curiosity.

  “It is serious. I’m quite smitten.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I think you’re really missing out with Amanda,” she singsongs to tempt me. It doesn’t work.

  “What brings you here to Scotty’s Bar? You don’t seem the type to slum it.”

  She doesn’t get my dig. “We’re meeting a couple of friends for drinks. Do you come here often?”

  “Sometimes after we play basketball at the Y.”

  “That’s nice.” She points to a tall blond man who’s just walked in. “There they are.”

  She waves, and he walks over. “This is Christopher. He works with Mason.”

  I extend my hand. “Nice to meet you.” He doesn’t share his name, and I find it a little odd. “My friends are over there.” He points to a group of less-than-savory-looking characters and wanders off. Apparently, he has no manners.

  I’m ready to ask his name when Annabelle says, “Well, I’ll see you on Sunday night.”

  “See you then.”

  I turn back to Dave and Ellie, finding them deep in conversation about college basketball. Dave’s a goner. They are hitting it off, and I’m kind of starting to feel like a third wheel.

  I text Bella.

  Me: You’ll never guess who I ran into?

  Bella: Who?

  Me: Ellie. We’re here at Scotty’s Bar downtown.

  Bella: Don’t let her tell any stories about me. All she tells are lies. :)

  I look up at Ellie. “I just told Bella that I ran into you, and she says you’re not allowed to tell me any stories. Apparently, ‘all you tell are lies.’”

  Ellie laughs and says, “You tell her I’m telling the story about what happened to us in 10th grade.”

  I typed out Ellie’s threat.

  Bella: If she even thinks about telling you that story, tell her she will be dead to me and I mean it. Dead.

  I read the text out loud to Ellie, and she laughs. “It’s really not that entertaining of a story. It’s just really funny at her expense.”

  Me: She’s going to tell me the story. Better be ready. I’m going to lord it over you for the rest of our lives.

  Bella: I swear to God, I’m going to kill her.

  Me: It’s all lies anyway. Why would I believe her over you to start with?

  Bella: I knew there was a reason to like you.

  Me: That’s the only reason?

  Bella: I can think of a few more.

  Me: Well, I can think of a lot of other reasons. I’ll be happy to show you. What are you doing tonight?”

  Bella: Working. What else is new?

  Me: I just played basketball with my buddy Dave from undergrad, and I’d love to see you tonight if you want to get together???

  Bella: To have sex?

  Me: Well, that’d be a bonus, but I’m happy to watch a movie, go to dinner, paint your toenails… whatever it takes just to spend time with you.

  Bella: Paint my toenails?

  Me: Whatever it takes.

  Bella: I’ll see what I can do.

  Me: Let me know what you decide. I’m going to hang out here for a little bit with Ellie and Dave before I head home. You’re welcome to meet me here, my place, or of course I can pick you up in Berkeley or wherever you’re at. I’d just love to see you.

  Dave and Ellie seem to be getting along really well, so after another drink, I decide to head home. I say my goodbyes and wave across the bar to Annabelle.

  As I ride home in a rideshare, I text Bella to tell her I’m headed home, but I can meet her wherever. I sound desperate, and maybe I am. It’s been two days since I’ve seen her, and I want to look into her big, dark brown eyes.

  Bella: Give me 20 minutes, and I’ll meet you at your place. Are you up for dinner?

  Me: Dinner would be great. Order in or go out?
<
br />   Bella: Order in something simple. Pizza or something. Whatever you want.

  Me: Other than you for dinner, I’ll take any scraps I can get.

  Bella: 20 minutes.

  There’s a really good pizza place not too far from where I live, and I order up a pizza with everything on it with a nice thick crust. I open a beer and try not to get too anxious. When my doorbell rings, I’m excited but also calm knowing she’s arrived. Opening the door, I see her standing there in a pair of jeans and a blue sweater that hugs all the right places. She takes my breath away. “You made it.”

  She leans in, her soft lips touching mine, and I swear my cock is hard already.

  “I brought my overnight bag. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course it is. I’ll take whatever time I can get from you—even if its sleeping next to you. Pizza will be here in about ten minutes.”

  “Is it okay to tell you I’m exhausted?”

  I’m not sure if she’s testing me, but I don’t care. “We don’t even have to have sex tonight. I’d love to hold you and spend the evening with you and just be together.”

  “Everything is overwhelming right now, but I’m glad to have you to spend time with.”

  Chapter thirteen

  Isabella

  “You do realize that you’re late again today,” Dr. Johnson bellows when I arrive.

  “Dr. Johnson, as a reminder, this semester I teach class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in Berkeley at nine and ten. I come in after I’m done with my class schedule.”

  “Ms. Vargas, that isn’t what was discussed. You need to be better at setting an example for your staff. Where are you with analyzing the data? We need to be able to move on to the next phase of our study.”

  “I agree. I’ll check in with Jim.” I stop and say in a low voice, “Dr. Johnson, this is all set up in your contract with me. As a reminder, you’re a 49 percent owner of this company. I own the majority share, and you work for me. I won’t tolerate your insubordination.”

  He steps back, not liking to be reminded of who the boss around here ultimately is. “We need to have a discussion about the contracts, but I don’t have time for that now. I need to know where you are with the data. Everyone is waiting for you. This is completely unacceptable behavior.”

  That man is going to drive me absolutely apeshit. I’m spread too thin, and I have too many things going on. Black Rock is doing great, and we’re ahead of schedule. We’ve got SHN looking at us and seeming pleased with what we’re doing. It looks like they’re going to give us the money and will help set up for what I hope is an advancement in the treatment of Parkinson’s. Today it takes over 2.5 million dollars to get a new drug developed, tested, and to market. We need SHN to get us there. Plus, I like that the SHN operations team might be able to control Dr. Johnson much better than I seem to be able to. What is his deal anyway?

  I put my bag down inside my office and look around the lab. It’s a ghost town. Where is everyone? Walking back to reception, I see Dr. Johnson is still there. “Where is everybody?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he grumbles, obviously still smarting over my reprimand. Whatever. Act like you’re seven. You don’t care about them, but you care about me? What the hell?

  “Okay, thanks.” It isn’t worth the fight. He runs the day-to-day operations, and I need him here. I head back to my office and open the file on the cloud drive. I notice that half the experiments that were supposed to be completed by today are incomplete. I wander over to my lab manager’s office, finding it dark, but run into one of the lab techs in the hall. “Gayle, do you know where Jim is?”

  She doesn’t look at me or make any eye contact. “No, he quit.”

  “Quit? When did he quit?” I’m stunned. Why didn’t he call me and tell me he was quitting, or why didn’t Dr. Johnson tell me knowing full well that Jim is an integral part of our research.

  “I don’t know. He told Dr. Johnson, and he walked him out the door immediately.”

  “Why isn’t anybody telling me these things?” I muse aloud.

  She looks at me with a bored look. “I have no idea.” She turns away and goes back to whatever she’s doing. I’m not completely clear what her job is here, but I don’t have the time to figure it out right now.

  Rolling up my sleeves, I look around the lab and determined there are a few things that I can do to keep things going. I’ve worked in labs for almost five years. Doing research requires you to document the hell out of everything. It takes me a little over an hour to figure out where Jim was with the experiments and our initial trials. Now I know what needs to be done next.

  By the time I’m finally getting the data, I look at my watch. It’s been four hours and my stomach growls. I have a fleeting thought of having dinner with Christopher, but then Dr. Johnson comes into the lab. “What are you doing in here? Why aren’t you going through the data?”

  I look at him and wonder how he thinks data is acquired. “When you chose to walk Jim out after he quit, he didn’t finish what he was doing. There was no data for me to analyze, so I have to pick up his job until we replace him. Why did Jim quit anyway?”

  “Who knows, who cares? And we can’t afford to replace him anytime soon.”

  “I care, and I’m curious why you decided to walk him out as soon as he resigned instead of trying to figure out if there was something we could do to keep him. He’s vital to this project. He’s been with me since the beginning.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Get it done. We need to be ready to show our results during a meeting with the investors.”

  “I thought SHN was already up to speed?”

  “We’re probably not going to go with them. They’re going to want to be too involved in our business, and they don’t understand biotech. We’ll never be successful under them.”

  “Deciding how much equity to take on is a joint decision that you and I will make. I’m not sure that they’re out of play. I’m interested in how they run things over there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I did some research, and the success rate of their investments either being sold or purchased is well over 90 percent, which is 20 percent higher than any of their competitors.”

  “I think we’ll do some angel funding that I’m looking at. We’ll see what happens. I’m not committing to anybody. I have a good idea here, and everybody’s going to beg us for this information to be part of this amazing cure for Parkinson's.”

  What did he just say? “You have a good idea?”

  “Yes. You’d be playing in your lab across the bay if it wasn’t for me.”

  I nod while I consider how I’m going to respond in such a way that I don’t end up pummeling him to the ground. “I’d think twice about how you speak to me and how you treat our team.” Just because you won the Lasker Award, and all of those that have won the Lasker before are shoo-ins for a Nobel prize doesn’t mean anything. You’re such a fucking ass.

  My cell phone pings soon after six.

  Christopher: Hey, you want to get together tonight?

  Me: Can’t. Overwhelmed, and I got in late for work since today is a teaching morning. Somebody quit in the office. And I have to be ready to do my own work tomorrow, as well as try to get caught up here at Black Rock.

  Christopher: No pressure from me. If you change your mind, even if you just want to come and cuddle, I’m good with that. No sex required.

  Bella: Thanks, I’ll keep you posted.

  I just don’t have time for a relationship. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I run my hands through my hair, and there are more strands than normal laced in my fingers. Now I can worry about becoming bald. The stress is incredibly high, and I don’t know how to minimize it except to just take it one thing at a time.

  It’s after nine, and I walk to our kitchen to stretch my legs and take a break. I need some caffeine. The office is deserted. Looking around, I notice coffee in the pot. It’s cold, and I’d bet it
was probably made this morning and is tar at this point, but maybe it’s enough to keep me going. I pour it into a mug and put it in the microwave to heat. Not my first choice, but it will check all the boxes—hot and caffeine.

  I hear my phone ringing in my office, so I return to answer it. “Hello?”

  “Sweetheart, it’s your mom.” I roll my eyes like I’m fifteen again. Of course, I recognize her voice. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the lab trying to get through some things before I can head home. My lab manager quit.”

  “Why did he quit? Is your team having to keep these crazy hours you’re keeping?”

  “No, Mom. I don’t know why he quit. I wasn’t here when he gave his resignation. He just walked out the door and kind of left us holding in the bag.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s never good. I just wanted to remind you that we have your cousin’s birthday party coming up. Maria hasn’t received your RSVP, and I wanted to make sure you were going to be there. Alejandra’s really counting on you.”

  “I haven’t RSVP’d, but I plan on being there. What’s really going on? I always do my best to be at family events. What’s everybody worried about?”

  “You know it’s a chance for us to bring the whole family together. Your grandmother is getting old, and we want everyone there for Alejandra and her.”

  “I promise, Mom, I’ll be there. But you do know that the only thing Alejandra and I have in common right now is that we are cousins. She’s sixteen, and I’m twenty-five. She couldn’t care less about me being there—you do know that, right?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, she probably doesn’t care about you being at her party, but your aunt and I care about you. We’re worried that you’re just spending all of your time working and not out there dating or having fun.”

  “Actually, I’ve started seeing somebody. His name is Christopher. He went to medical school and works for a venture capital fund.”

  “How is his Spanish?”

  “I haven’t asked. We speak only English to one another.” Trying to put my annoyance in check, I add, “And I find it funny that you are worried about my work ethic when I inherited my drive to work hard from you.”