Page 138 of The Billionaires

I feel paws tapping my shin.

Ah.

Right.

The dog is reminding me why I’m here.

I walk over to the fridge and get the soy sauce dish that we use as a doggie plate. The chef has outdone himself, as usual, setting up all the morsels in a pretty way.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lilly take off her headphones.

“Hey,” she says. “Is he about to eat?”

I set the bowl down in answer.

Channeling the Flash, Colossus whooshes over and devours the whole meal in an eyeblink. Even though I’ve seen this before, I shake my head. Why do I make the chef waste his time to make the dog’s food look so presentable?

Lilly’s eyes widen so much they look proportional to her eyebrows… at least for the moment. “I’ve seen dogs eat fast, but this may be a Guinness world record.”

The stupidest thing happens next. My lungs expand with pride, as though fast eating is an accomplishment on par with solving a quadratic equation, calculating a derivative, or programming a VCR. “It’s too quick,” I grumble. “Sometimes he’s so fast he makes himself sick.”

She nods knowingly. “There are products on the market that can slow him down.”

“Oh?”

She pulls out her phone, does a search, and shows me something that looks like a blue honeycomb. “It’s called a lick mat,” she says. “If you mash up his food or run it through a blender, you can smear in on that thing, and he’ll have to take his time licking it off.”

“I thought you followed the golden rule,” I say. “Licking your food sounds frustrating.”

Then again, the next time someone insists on having a lunch meeting with me, this could be the way I make them eat, as it would eliminate all chewing sounds.

She bristles. “Obviously, you can’t always go by how a human might feel about something. We don’t sniff butts, for example, but dogs love it.”

“Are you saying I need to provide my dog with butts to sniff?”

“No,” she says. “I mean, yes, for socialization, you should have him meet other dogs, but I was trying to say that dogs find licking very soothing.”

Making a mental note to come back to this socialization business, I take out my own phone and buy a few different kinds of lick mats to test out.

“Great,” she says when I tell her what I’ve done. “I’ll work with Bob on slowing the puppy down once they arrive.”

I cringe. “Can you at least call him Chef?”

She rolls her eyes but says, “Fine.”

A compromise? Mercury must be in retrograde.

“Anyway.” I walk over to the oven where my food is being kept warm. “I’ll let you enjoy your meal.”

“Ah. Right.” She grabs her plate with a jerky motion. “I was warned not to eat in your august presence.”

“Who warned you?” I demand. My staff shouldn’t be talking about this.

She takes a step back. “No one.”

I point at the ceiling. “There’s a surveillance camera up there, so I could find out for myself.” It’s a bluff, at least regarding my looking at the footage personally—it might include people chewing. But I could have someone from security comb through it if I felt like it.

“Then check your fucking camera,” she grits out. “Just leave me out of it.”

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