Sleeping with a Billionaire - Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story)

by Nella Tyler

  VOLUME II

  Chapter Eleven

  Natalie

  Katie typed something on her computer quickly, nodding to herself as I waited. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Let’s get this meeting underway.” I smiled. Every week, I met with my boss to discuss my progress with clients. Usually we used it as an excuse to grab a coffee, and this week was no different; Katie had gotten me my usual from Starbucks, and I took a sip of my mocha before setting it down and pulling my tablet onto my lap.

  “It’s been a week of breakthroughs,” I said tartly, unlocking the screen and pulling up the first report. “Tanner Hodges has finally come to the conclusion that maybe—just maybe—he should actually listen to the things his date says, especially what she says she wants to order.”

  “You have been working hard,” Katie told me with a grin. I laughed.

  “It only took me, what, five dates with him to get him to accept the idea that women are human beings?” I shook my head. Some of the clients I was responsible for coaching were quicker than others and some were much, much slower.

  “I appreciate your patience with him,” Katie said, giving me a sympathetic smile. “What do you think in terms of timeframe?” I considered that question.

  “It’s going to take him a while to be date-ready,” I said, taking another sip of my mocha and looking over my notes. “He’s finally got that basic truth of women being human beings drilled through his thick skull, but I feel like it’s going to need lots of reinforcement before he can actually pull off a date without offending someone.” I thought about the question a little more. “Give it another five dates and re-evaluate from there.” She typed a note into her client form on her computer and nodded.

  “Next one,” she prompted me. We went through the list of clients I was working with. Katie asked about specific issues with some—issues I had made note of either in their preliminary meetings or in subsequent practice dates—and for others, she just asked for my impressions. I almost never had fewer than eight clients at a time. When we’d been short of personnel, I had managed as many as twelve or thirteen coaching clients.

  I sighed as I came to Asher’s name. “I feel like maybe it’s almost time to cut Asher loose.” I pressed my lips together in distaste, shaking my head slowly. I hated to admit defeat or give up on any of my clients, but sometimes it was just obvious—a client wasn’t going to actually do the work that they required to get the result they wanted. There was no point in wasting time with them.

  “I know you’ve been working hard with him, but based on your reports, I’m…reluctantly going to side with you,” she said. If I hated giving up on a client, Katie—whose bonuses depended on getting clientele to the point of being ready to date their pre-screened matches—hated it even more. Usually if one coach couldn’t handle a particular man or woman, she’d rather just switch them out, as opposed to cutting anyone loose. She shifted in her seat, shaking her head.

  “It sucks, but I think it’s likely he’s just not ready,” I told her, shrugging. “No matter how many times I go over it with him—or what I suggest—I get the same thing. It’s always like talking to a brick wall, and I’m not convinced that anyone else would be able to get through to him, either.” Katie nodded slowly.

  “I think I’ll have a meeting with him and tell him that he’s going to be on a break for a couple of months—farm him out to a couple of the bigger seminars, see if he can’t absorb at least a little bit of information,” she said, typing something into the notes on Asher’s file. “There is no reason for him to be this hopeless—it’s not like he’s got any learning disabilities or anything like that.”

  “My personal diagnosis is ego,” I said. “He’s so used to being labeled smart and clever and important that he doesn’t know how to take advice from anyone else period—especially someone who he views as potentially ‘lower’ than him.” I bit my bottom lip. “Put him in the speed dating seminar and give him some practice talking to people until he learns how to ask questions instead of answering ones that were never voiced.”

  Katie snorted. “I’ll schedule him for the active listening workshop, too, while I’m at it,” she told me. “Along with ‘How to Connect’ and ‘First Date Topics.’” I giggled. I knew I probably should struggle to feel some empathy for Asher, but I couldn’t make myself feel too terribly bad for the wealthy, self-important man, not after weeks of going to restaurants with him only to be a captive audience for his long recitals.

  “Head’s up, he’s starting to consider a mail-order option,” I said.

  Katie groaned. “I’ll talk to him about that,” she said, rolling her eyes. The few clients we had who started to talk about green card wives or mail order brides typically were—in the agency’s experience—going down an irredeemable path. We had a few informers at the larger mail order bride agencies in the country who would let us know if any of our “red flag” names came up in applications; it was mutually beneficial because the mail order agencies lost money on those clients when a “perfect match” didn’t meet the pedestal-raised criteria that the clientele looked for. Katie did try to reason with those few men and women who went down the path of what they thought would be instant gratification, but it was the first step towards them no longer being our clientele, and we both knew it.

  “That brings us to the newest addition to my roster,” I said, taking a deep breath and a sip of my mocha to remove the bad taste of Asher from my mouth. “Zeke Baxter.”

  “He seemed pretty promising in his interviews,” Katie said, sitting back in her chair. “I’ve got your initial reports, of course. What are your current thoughts?” I considered that question carefully. I’d been thinking a lot about Zeke ever since our most recent date when he’d kissed me. That had been a major mistake—and one that I definitely wasn’t going to divulge to Katie, no matter how good of a working relationship I had with her.

  “I think he’s a lot less hopeless than Asher,” I said tartly.

  “That’s not a very promising start,” Katie joked. I grinned.

  “In seriousness, I think he mostly just needs some rough edges smoothed out. He’s not…” I shrugged. “He’s not a bad guy, just a little out of touch. Too much the businessman.”

  “I did get a bit of a brisk vibe from him,” she admitted. “But he does seem to have a certain native charm.”

  “He does,” I agreed, thinking about the way that Zeke had been at our first meeting. “He’s a quick learner.” I told her about the first official date, when Zeke had bought and given me roses—and how he’d reacted to my feedback by bringing me flowers I actually liked the next time we had a date in person.

  “What kinds of dates is he arranging?”

  I shrugged again. “So far, the basic things. Dinner, a movie, that kind of deal. I do suspect that he has more ambitious ideas that he’s having his PA put together, but we’ll see how he carries those off.”

  “What is your opinion of him more generally?” Katie added a couple of notes on Zeke’s file on her computer and turned her attention back onto me more fully. I felt weirdly self-conscious for the first time, and I wondered if she had somehow detected something amiss in my reports about the businessman—if she thought I was hiding something. Don’t be ridiculous. She’s always more intensive in the beginning stages of a coaching project. She just wants to have a good picture to start with so she can monitor his progress better. I took a quick, deep breath.

  “I think his biggest problem is that he’s over-confident,” I told her, remembering the interactions I’d had with Zeke. “He came into it thinking that he’d have a couple of practice dates, charm me to bits, and then he’d be onto the ‘real’ stuff.” I shook my head, unable to keep myself from chuckling. It was an attitude I’d seen more than once from clients; in that sense, Zeke wasn’t in any way unique. “I think it’s going to take some work for him to get over this sort of—transactional feeling in his mind, to get him to actually engage with his dating partners
as real people instead of as business associates.”

  “But otherwise he seems promising? How’s that charm of his working on you?”

  I snorted. “I have known plenty of charming men in my time,” I told Katie blandly. “I’m not worried about him overwhelming me with that superficial bull.” I looked at one of my early notes about Zeke. “I think that he’s a pretty promising client, overall. I think he learns quickly; and if I can bust him out of that routine, shake-hands-and-make-the-deal mindset, I can prepare him for someone really special.” Katie’s eyes widened with mild surprise.

  “That’s a pretty strong accolade,” she told me. I dismissed the idea that I was in any way praising Zeke unusually.

  “He’s smart. He’s quick on the uptake, and he’s willing to learn from feedback—from a professional perspective, it’s easy to see how he got to where he is,” I explained. I swallowed against the convulsive tight feeling in my throat as I thought about just how much Zeke had already learned from feedback, and just how far he had come—and how easily he had gotten where he wanted with me, at least in terms of the “goodnight kiss practice” idea he’d had.

  “Good to hear,” Katie said, turning back to her computer to type in a few more things. “I guess they can’t all be lumps of coal, right?” I laughed.

  “Some of them have to be diamonds in the rough, after all,” I agreed. She finished off her notes and turned back to me.

  “So let’s get to talking about the next couple of clients that I’m giving you,” she said. I nodded and pulled up a new document on my tablet to take notes. I had graduated two of my clientele the week before, and I had been expecting two—maybe three—new coaching clients to introduce myself to. Hopefully, one or more of them will help me get my mind off of Zeke for a while, I thought optimistically. I knew that not telling Katie about the goodnight kiss was a fine line away from lying to her. I needed new clients. I needed to delve into my work more generally. I was definitely in danger of putting too much thought into Zeke Baxter if I didn’t, and that was one of the things I most wanted to avoid.

  I started taking notes as Katie told me about my new clients to come, focusing on the details that she emphasized about each one. I always wanted to go into a new coach-client relationship with someone armed with as much information as possible; it gave me an opening to get through to them, the same way that I had managed to with Zeke and had failed to with Asher. I could only hope that one or two of the new members of my roster would be as quick as Zeke was—certainly they couldn’t both be as bad as Asher. The odds just had to be against it. I told myself firmly that I was going to make the best of it either way and do my best by my new coaching subjects, as I pushed my thoughts away from Zeke.

  Chapter Twelve

  Zeke

  As I walked up to Putt-Putt Mini-Golf, I grinned to myself, anticipating Natalie’s smiling face when she saw me. I’d heard the ripple of concern in her voice when I’d told her over the phone that I wanted her to bring Brady with her on our practice date. “I don’t normally—my clients usually don’t even know that Brady exists,” she’d said to me.

  “Well, I already know he exists,” I’d pointed out. “And besides, it’ll be good to change things up. Don’t you think he’d have fun?”

  Trevor had come through for me on the date idea beyond even my high standards, purchasing a package for me, Natalie, and Brady: two rounds of mini-golf, drinks, food, and tickets for the prize area that would work regardless of how well or how poorly any of us did on the course. He’d picked a day that wouldn’t be quite so busy—I didn’t think Natalie would enjoy trying to wrangle her three-year-old son if he started to have a tantrum—and set it all up easily for me, so that all I had to do when I arrived was present my ID to the ticketing clerk.

  I was more than a little apprehensive about having a practice date with Natalie with her little boy present, but I’d told myself that not only would it score major points with my date coach—who I still wanted to impress—but also it would prepare me for the possibility of some of my real dates having kids and teach me how to deal with them. At my age, I’d figured, more than a few of the women in the world looking for a husband would have kids, either from a previous marriage or on their own. It was only smart to prepare to deal with that in a dating context.

  I spotted Natalie and her little boy hanging around the entrance. Natalie wasn’t even looking for me, she was busy talking to her son. For a moment, I just stood there, watching her. She looked so beautiful, so sweet, crouched down a little bit so she wouldn’t tower over the little toddler, her face so open and so loving. It was as obvious as the sun in the sky that she loved her little boy more than anything—or anyone—else in the world. That’s how it should be, though, I told myself. It didn’t make it any less beautiful to see that look on her face, the warmth in her eyes and the way that her little boy responded to it, beaming back up at the woman who’d given him life in a way that told me plainly that it wasn’t just for show.

  I shook my head and made myself keep moving forward, towards my coach and her son. “Hey, Natalie!” I felt a little tingle of apprehension at the possibility that it’d been a huge mistake to insist that she bring her son. As great as it had been to see Natalie interacting with Brady, the possibility that the toddler wouldn’t like me, or that I’d do something that would be inappropriate, or that he’d get over-stimulated and throw a fit before the date was halfway over weighed on me. But I had already made the choice, and I’d have to go with the flow. “This must be Brady,” I said, gesturing to the little boy and looking down at him. Brady’s eyes were wide when he looked up at me and he ducked behind his mother’s legs, peering out from between her knees.

  Natalie laughed. “Yes, this is Brady, my sweet little boy,” she said, half-stepping aside and turning her head to look at the toddler. “He’s feeling a little shy, I guess,” she told me, smiling wryly. I thought about that for a moment; everything about this date—and the decision of whether or not it was a success—hinged on how I handled the situation.

  Acting on impulse, I dropped down into a crouch, so I wouldn’t tower so much over both Brady and his mother. I balanced on my haunches, looking at the little boy with the kindest expression I could make my face into. “Hey, Brady,” I said, smiling at him. “If you don’t want to say hello to me just yet, that’s fine. I just didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you, okay?” Brady nodded, his eyes still wide but his face otherwise calm, and I rose back up, grinning at Natalie.

  “I’m sure he’ll warm up,” she told me, reaching down and behind her to tousle her son’s hair. “He’s usually pretty quick to get social.”

  “Something he has in common with his mama,” I countered with another grin. “I’ve got everything set up for us—I was assuming Brady would want to play, but of course he can take turns or not however he likes.”

  “Let’s go on in, then,” Natalie said. She looked over her shoulder and then turned around to face her son. “You ready to play, Brady? Can you give me your hand, or do you want me to pick you up?” He considered that question and his face looked like that of a much older child for a moment. Finally, he threw his arms up in the air, obviously opting to be picked up. She bent forward and lifted her toddler son off the ground and settled him at her hip. She looked so natural, so right like that, I wished that I could have taken a picture—but I thought that even if I could, it would just come across as creepy.

  I led my coach and her son towards the ticket counter and showed them my ID. “Oh yeah, I see it right here,” the teenaged clerk said, nodding as she found some note in the ledger on the desk. “You’ve got the full package. Let me just pull that together for you.” I waited patiently, glancing at Natalie and Brady from time to time. Brady, still feeling coy, buried his face against his mother’s shoulder or neck every time I glanced in their direction, and I fought back the urge to laugh.

  In a matter of moments, we had our wristbands on, tickets for drinks and food and p
rizes in hand, and we’d collected our putters and balls, and pad and pencil to keep score. I’d volunteered to do the honors, since I figured Natalie would have her hands full keeping up with Brady. “You know, I almost regret this,” I told her as we made our way to the first hole.

  “Why?” She looked at me, startled and worried, and I realized my gaffe.

  “No—it’s not Brady, it’s just that I wanted this to be a relaxing, fun date for you, too,” I told her. “I guess I have a lot to learn about kids.”

  She laughed. “It is relaxing in its own way,” she told me, handing Brady his putter. “Don’t swing it at anything but your ball, little man,” she said to the toddler. She looked at me again. “I don’t have to worry about how he’s doing with the sitter or whether he’s behaving himself with her, anything like that. And, it’s nice to be with him—I always feel a little guilty when I have to be away for any length of time.”

  “In that case, I give myself a pat on the back for my innovative idea,” I said, smirking as I pretended to pat my shoulder. She laughed, and I couldn’t help smiling even more at the genuine delight I could see in her face.

  Brady began to warm up to me after the first hole, especially when I insisted that it would be perfectly fine for him to have both a cake pop and a soda; I made up for it with Natalie by agreeing with her that he should have a hot dog as “real food,” as well, and we all settled into the date properly, going from one hole to the next.