The Billionaire Game

by Lila Monroe

  Oh right, this meeting. Where I still had to convince my superiors that even if I was wasting company time, I wasn’t doing it to look at porn. And that I definitely wouldn’t ever do it again, at least not in a way where they could catch me.

  “I’m sorry, am I supposed to be getting off on this?” I said, trying to laugh it off. “Because there’s nothing sexy about an inaccurately sized shoulder strap.”

  “They are scantily clad,” Sarah hissed in the shocked tone of voice most people would reserve for they are having a blood orgy and worshipping the devil while listening to Nickelback CDs.

  “Yeah, scantily clad ladies,” I said. “Like, what, am I supposed to be imagining the dudes in these pictures?”

  Sarah opened her mouth to say something, checked herself, glanced backwards at the silent HR golems for support, and then tried again. “Devlin Media Corp prides itself on being an open, supportive, and tolerant workplace. We do not discriminate based on race, class, gender, or…other things. Nonetheless, we cannot tolerate use of company time and resources for your own titillation. This has nothing to do with your…proclivities, or preferences, but—”

  And then the penny dropped.

  And I started to get mad.

  “Are you allergic to the word lesbian?” I asked.

  Sarah sputtered like a malfunctioning water fountain. “What—I didn’t say—I assure you—don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Lesbian,” I said, slowly, just in case she hadn’t understood me the first time. “You have heard of those, right?”

  Sarah’s face was turning red, and even the HR goons were looking everywhere in the room but at me. “I really must protest the implication that I insinuated—”

  “This isn’t about insinuation. This is about harassment.” An idea occurred to me, one that wasn’t exactly playing fair but which could save my ass. “You know, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee for—”

  “This is not discrimination!” Sarah looked like her body couldn’t decide between a heart attack and apoplexy. “This is strictly about company policy, which you have violated repeatedly. We’re not interested in your—”

  That little ray of hope died, and I could hear the funeral march starting up. I may have gotten defensive. “You’re not interested in anything I have to say, are you? You do seem super invested in this being porn, though. Which it is not. Do you get a pay raise every time you catch someone?”

  Sarah was propping herself upright with one hand now while she fanned herself with the other. “That’s not what’s happening!” She took a deep breath. “Kate, you’re deliberately getting this conversation off course. Regardless of whatever we’ve discussed—which has been closely monitored by my colleagues here, and will not be ammunition for you in any sort of civil suit—this is inappropriate material for you to be looking at on your workplace computer.”

  And she had me there. I mean, I thought the really inappropriate part was the third picture from the left, because whoever had the idea of making a bra out of polyester should have been burned at the stake. Preferably while wearing polyester themselves.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t think, and I misused company resources, and I’m very sorry. I’ll sign whatever stuff I need to and take the appropriate punishment—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sarah interrupted. There was a hard hateful gleam in her eyes. I began to regret some of my less professional word choices during this conversation. Whatever this punishment was, it was going to be a doozy, probably a pay dock or maybe even a suspension—

  “You’re fired.”

  “But—” and then the argument withered on my tongue. But what? But my best friend is running this company, and how dare you deign to fire me? But I will get Grant Devlin on your ass if you think you can treat me this way? I’d be just as much of an entitled asshole as any other entitled asshole if I thought I had a right to pull anything like that.

  FOUR

  Dumped and fired, all within the same week. So basically I was batting one hundred, right?

  Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t actually understand baseball.

  (And who needs to, am I right? The way those socks grip those calves, I understand all the things I need to. Dear Santa: please send me Derek Jeter, and a spoon to eat him all up with.)

  Some girls wallow with chocolate ice cream. Some girls wallow with soppy romantic movies. Normally, I like to wallow with a sexy ex-boyfriend of mine named Jorge, but unfortunately he got an investment banking job back home in Brazil, so booty calls were not an option.

  I did the next best thing and wallowed by clicking through fabric websites and binge-buying every bolt of cloth that had the word ‘decadent’ in the product description.

  Thankfully I had a fitting on Monday, so after two days of pouring my bank account into the black hole that is the Internet, I turned off my computer, dragged myself out of bed, and began to make both myself and the apartment presentable for clients. Oddly enough, this actually made me feel better than anything I had done—or more like, not done—all weekend. I was moving around, being active, accomplishing things! Okay, so the things I was accomplishing were on the scale of ‘getting that nasty stain out of the bathroom tile,’ but still. It was something. It made me feel like I might be able to do even more.

  The bell rang just as I put the finishing touches on the living room, the black babydoll draped just right over the mannequin. “Coming, Julie!” I called.

  And I opened the door right in the face of Asher Young.

  #

  I am nothing if not a smooth professional, and I responded in a classy and accommodating manner.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Well, for a certain value of classy and accommodating. A low one.

  Asher looked startled for a second, but then, when you’ve got a face that looks like the real project that Michelangelo was slaving over while he knocked off the Pieta as a fun distraction, you probably don’t get a lot of people angrily demanding that you explain your presence. When he showed up, most people probably took one look at him and decided, you know what, life is short and this guy is beautiful, let’s just not question it.

  “I’m here to see you, of course,” Asher said. He looked my body up and down slowly through those knee-weakening eyelashes. “Somehow, you just keep pulling me back.”

  “Don’t quit your day job to join Comedy Central,” I shot back, trying to keep my knees from knocking together. “Dove isn’t due for two more days.”

  “And yet here I am,” he said with a maddeningly sexy smirk, and strolled into my apartment like he owned the place, sprawling on the couch so that his T-shirt stretched up and revealed those deliciously rock-hard abs, and just a hint of dark hair trailing down. “I know you like detective stories. Deduce this, Sherlock.”

  I looked out the window and saw the red convertible I knew belonged to my client Julie—and there was Julie herself, climbing out of the car, her long blonde hair whipping in the breeze—

  Ah. Blonde. And thin. And with the IQ of a walnut. It all became clear now.

  “Well, you certainly have a type,” I told Asher. “Are you starting a singing group? The Two-Timer’s Trio?”

  “I’m going for a barbershop quartet, actually,” he said with a lazy grin like a jungle cat.

  My heart sped up without my permission.

  Julie blew into the room like a particularly glamorous storm, and for a little while I was able to ignore Asher, setting her up behind the changing screen and slipping her into the babydoll for her final approval. I’d wanted to go for blue to match her eyes, and I still mourned that missed opportunity, but classic black looked good on her too, and maybe after she saw how well it fit, she’d come back and we could revisit the issue.

  “This is so adorbs!” she squealed, when she looked at the finished product in the mirror. “Oh wow, this is literally the best thing that has ever happened to me!” She shimmied out of
the lingerie and back into her jeans, peeking over the screen. “Asher baby, I gotta jet to this shoot. Can you pay the nice lady? I left my wallet in my other car.”

  Great. More time with God’s gift to the blonde and bereft of brains.

  As Julie blew him a kiss, Asher counted bills into my palm. I tried to take my hand back as soon as he was done, but he closed his fingers over mine, caressing my skin. “Any particular reason you’re so grumpy today?”

  I raised an eyebrow and yanked my hand away. “Any particular reason you’re going for blondes? Entering a dog show later, maybe?”

  Asher just chuckled, leaning against the wall in a way that accentuated the muscular ripple of his shoulders under his tight T-shirt. I licked my lips without meaning to. “I hear they have more fun.”

  “Well, gingers have plenty of fun too,” I shot back, silently cursing myself for not managing a better comeback.

  Asher leaned in. His voice was a low, intimate rumble. “Well, you’ll have to show me sometime.”

  We were just a few feet from my bedroom…I would just have to drag him in there, and throw him down on my bed, running my hands under his shirt and across that broad chest, letting his elegant fingers unbutton my skirt, our passion letting me forget his girlfriends and how terrible I felt about Stevie and the job and my whole life…

  No. I was not going to be just another one of his conquests. Not even the sole redhead.

  “Not a chance,” I told him.

  He shrugged, nonchalant. “If you don’t, I might just assume you’re blonde after all.” A wicked grin split his face. “After all, how do I know that the carpet matches the drapes?”

  “Dude, if your lady’s ladyhairs look like a carpet, then I think you have bigger concerns. Like, maybe a shampoo.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with my girlfriends?” he said, lounging against the wall in a way that would have incited riots if he’d been in public.

  “I’m not obsessed! You just keep bringing them around here and throwing them in my face!”

  “You should be happy,” he said. “I just recommended you to another girl last night! Your designs are the best I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen a lot of lingerie.” He winked. The nerve.

  “I’m surprised you have time before they kick you out the door,” I shot back.

  “Are you in stores?” he asked, suddenly serious. “I know a hundred more women who’d love to wear them.”

  “Gee, only a hundred?” I rolled my eyes, ignoring the compliment. “Dude, if you haven’t already, maybe think about getting an STD check.”

  Asher looked nonplussed for a second, as though he’d been startled out of a pose. “You never do let up, do you?”

  “It’s one of my most sterling qualities,” I snarked.

  “It is,” he said. He caught my gaze and held it, and for a moment—

  And then he pulled out his card and pressed it into my hand along with the money, and took the opportunity to slide close enough to me that we were breathing the same air, and I realized it was just another move in his playbook.

  “If you ever want any…business advice…” he murmured, maintaining eye contact.

  “Business advice?” I chirped. “Wow, thanks. You sure are sweet to offer that to little old me—”

  He leaned even closer, encouraged. “We could meet up sometime and…talk. I know a nice little Italian place…elegant, intimate…”

  “—who definitely didn’t found this whole business herself without no help from anyone or anything,” I finished. “What an altruist!”

  And smiling as sweetly as apple pie, still keeping eye contact, I tossed his business card right out the window.

  You could have framed the look on his face and sold it for a million dollars.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Young.”

  As he slunk away, I went back to my designs with a vengeance. So he liked them? Well, that meant they needed to be even better.

  Ha, ‘business advice!’ Not if he were the last man on earth.

  FIVE

  “No freaking way!”

  Lacey slammed her appletini on the table in disgust, and then shot the waiter an apologetic look as he rushed to mop up the results of her indignation. Then she got right back to being indignant.

  “That’s just completely unnecessary!” Lacey said. “It’s a complete overreaction! I can’t believe they fired you, I’m calling HR right now—”

  She actually managed to get her cell phone out of her purse and the number halfway dialed before I could grab her wrist. That girl is a like a do-gooder ninja.

  “Whoa whoa whoa! I mean, I was looking at lingerie,” I said soothingly. Lacey’s intensity was starting to unnerve me a little bit. I love that girl, but sometimes she gets this noble crusader look in her eye and there are not enough chill pills in the entire universe to get her down off her high horse and back into the real world. I didn’t need a knight in shining armor; I could take care of myself.

  But Lacey with a cause is like a dog with a bone—specifically a starving pitbull with a bone fresh off the butcher’s block. She sipped her appletini angrily, shaking her head with her brow creased. “It’s discrimination. Total double standard. Marvin in accounting was looking at porn constantly—real porn, you don’t even want to know some of the search terms he was using—and they had to go through this whole process with verbal and written warnings for months, and they still didn’t fire him! They probably never would have if he hadn’t accidentally clicked the wrong button during a meeting with a client!”

  “Ha, I remember that!” I said. It was all people had been able to talk about at Devlin Media Corp. for weeks. Someone had even redownloaded the video and made an autotune parody. I hadn’t been able to eat yogurt for a month after watching that.

  “But you come along, looking at just a few dozen barely suggestive pictures, for perfectly legitimate reasons even if it is on company time—”

  “Yeah, but isn’t Marvin’s dad, like, some big hotshot on Wall Street?” I interrupted, trying to bring the good starship Lacey back down to Earth before she began roaming the universe in search of new life and new civilizations. “That probably had a lot to do with that.”

  “Well, I’m technically just a wedding away from owning half the company,” Lacey shot back. Her face cleared. “That’s it! I’ll just get you rehired! With an even better contract.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I don’t want to take hand-outs or special treatment.”

  “Or even promoted!” Lacey said, not hearing me through the haze of blissful charitable planning. “There’s that position in—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses. Hold those horses still! Do not let those horses leave the stable.” I set down my drink and made Lacey look me in the eye. “Don’t be all going mad with power now. I do not want to have to interrupt my job search to depose you from a benevolent dictatorship, and let’s be real, I am the superhero the people would call on in their time of need.”

  Lacey pouted. “Okay, maybe I was jumping the gun a little with the promotion. But not much! You’ve been there for years! You have tons of experience, and if you just had some challenges to be passionate about—”

  “But am I ever really going to be passionate about receptionist-ing?” I argued, and quickly went on before Lacey could point out that ‘receptionist-ing’ wasn’t a word: “I mean, is anyone? Does anyone wake up in the morning and go, ‘oh boy, another day of answering phones and scheduling appointments and being yelled at! Maybe there will be a really difficult appointment to schedule and I can challenge my mental abilities to the fullest! I can’t wait to see what gross old man uses the fact that I’m trapped behind a desk to tell me that I ‘sure do got a good breeding figure’ and offer to take me back to his place!’”

  Lacey waved her hands in surrender, trying not to snort her appletini out her nose.

  “You know, maybe this was a blessing in disguise,” I reflected.

  “How do you fig
ure that?” Lacey asked, getting the appletini situation back under control.

  “Well…” I took a breath. “Maybe this my chance to really focus on something I can be passionate about. Maybe this is the chance to really launch my business.”

  My stomach lurched as I spoke the words, the sounds of them solidifying into terrifying reality. Once they were out there, there would be no going on—I would have to go forward and try to live up to them. Could I do it?

  “Maybe Asher was right,” I said. “Not about being a horny asshole, obviously; but maybe he was right about how I should expand my business. I’ve been asking other people to treat it like more than just my hobby, but have I really been treating it like more? Maybe this is my chance to just go balls to the wall and really go for it.”

  Lacey set her drink down. “Really?”

  I held my breath and braced myself for disappointment. Like, if even my best friend didn’t believe in me, would I really be able to stay strong and believe in myself? I flashed back to a memory of my mother’s face, puzzled, as seven-year-old me wailed about her throwing away my refrigerator drawings. But Katie, they were just scribbles, they weren’t that good…

  But then Lacey was grinning so wide I thought she might sprain something. “Oh my God, I have been waiting forever for you to make this move!” she gushed, grabbing my hands and squeezing them in delight. “Oh Katie, I cannot even say how excited I am for you! This is going to rock! You are going to rock! So many good things are going to happen for you, oh my God, what’s your first move?”

  I blinked back my tears of relief and tried to maintain my cool, casual demeanor. I’m the sassy, no-nonsense best friend, and we don’t cry; it’s written into our contract.

  “I want to get a real studio space,” I said, “with enough room for equipment and a good backlog of materials so I don’t have to rent or contract out parts of orders. If I’ve got the numbers right I can maybe even train some seamstresses”—and that would really be the icing on the cake, to help nurture some new talent on top of this. I had a happy little daydream I often secretly dreamed, of mentoring young girls who would one day start their own businesses, or providing money to destitute older women to help keep them afloat. “Before that, though, I have to get a loan.”