Page 24 of My Cruel Billionaire

“Who first reached out to who on this merger?”

“Is it true that Evan Jones is merging all of his businesses to focus on charity work?”

“I heard that Joseph Joestar came out of retirement to work on this merger. Any truth to that rumor?”

I held my hands out, palms facing down.

“Now, now,” I said. “One at a time.”

They just kept shouting their questions. I could feel Michael shifting from foot to foot behind me. He was anxious, a rarity for a man some people thought of as being cold as ice. Not me, though. I knew how fiery he could be once the clothes started coming off.

I leaned in until my mouth was right over the mic.

“One at a time, please,” I said in a suddenly booming voice. The reporters quieted down, and once a general sense of order emerged from the chaos I felt ready to continue.

“Thank you,” I said as people lifted their hands in the air instead of screaming at the top of their lungs. I sought out one of the reporters who hadnotbeen shouting questions at me and pointed at him.

“You there, in the glasses.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” he said. He didn’t know who I was—not a big surprise since personal assistants just don’t get the same press as billionaire playboys—but he figured out I was somehow connected to the merger. Just how deeply he didn't know, but it was obvious that I was a pivotal player. “Were you ordered to reveal this merger by Evan Jones or Michael Wallace?”

I shook my head as I spoke.

“No, I was not. Neither of those august personages had anything to do with the leak or this press conference. I imagine that my boss Evan is probably having a bit of a conniption right now, but in a moment all will be made clear.”

I spotted a reporter from one of the bigger cable news conglomerates. I had done my research and anticipated his arrival.

“You there, in the green tie,” I said, pointing him out. The nebbish little man stood up, a smirk curling the corners of his thin lips. His appearance struck me as that of a fish.

“I’m sure that our millions of viewers would like to know why Joe Joestar came out of retirement to help oversee a merger? Doesn’t he have plenty of money at this point? Are the rumors true?”

I frowned at him and shook my head. A carefully rehearsed reaction, because I had anticipated just what question he would ask, too. And I had a perfect rebuttal.

“I’m sorry, I thought that we were here to talk about business matters. Mr. Joestar’s personal life is his own business, and anyone who thinks that it might impact his business acumen I’ll point you to the fact that, were any silly rumors true, it would hardly be his first divorce. Not really the news your millions of viewers want to hear, I would imagine.”

Oh, the look on his face. It was priceless. He looked as if he’d just gone bobbing for apples in the swishing fetid offal at the bottom of a port-a-potty at a Grateful Dead concert.

I was loving every minute of it.

“Now, you with the very chic Armani blazer.”

A ripple of laughter rolled through the crowd as the female reporter stood up. I could feel Michael’s eyes boring into me. I risked a quick glance his way, and saw that he was smiling with his mouth, but his eyes were full of grumpy surprise. Like I was exceeding his expectations and that upset him rather than delighting him.

It sort of hurt my feelings. I guess a part of me still wanted to impress him. Not with my body, or my adventurous nature in the bedroom. Not this time. I wanted to impress him with my work ethic and my intellect.

The fact that I still thought I needed validation from him somehow irked me on a lot of levels. The fact that I couldn’t help but remember the times he’d looked at me with hungry eyes grated even worse.

I turned my attention back to the female reporter. I couldn’t afford to let my mind get lost in the catacombs of memory and desire that lurked beneath every interaction I had with Michael now. This man had spoken to my child—his child—and maybe made some connections I didn’t want him to make. Even if he didn’t know, or even suspect, on some level it lurked in his mind.

“Leisure Unlimited has recently had something of a falling out with online payment processors, in particular StashApp and PalPayments. Given the vast amount of account holders both of those platforms have, is the newly merged company going to reach out to them for a newly negotiated deal?”

“That’s an excellent question,” I said, nodding to her and smiling. I had been hoping that particular query would come up. “Actually, we have a tentative agreement to continue the NonPoint contracts with those two corporate entities when we merge the company.”

“What does tentative mean?”

“Look it up in the dictionary,” I said, because tentative meant that nothing had been put on paper yet, but we expected it to be. As my mom might have said, I didn’t want to write checks with my alligator mouth that my mosquito ass couldn’t cash.

Michael’s gaze intensified, practically burning a hole in my back. I knew that I had to move on from the awkward moment so I forged on ahead.

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