Page 59 of My Cruel Billionaire

Ramone’s eyes sparkled as he told the story.

“Oh, nothing much. Except that your boy didn’t stop texting on his phone so Jennifer tossed it into a full fish tank.”

I burst into laughter as Jennifer shrugged.

“I did warn him I was going to throw his phone in the fish tank. I don’t think he took me seriously.”

“Not seriously enough,” Marshall admitted. “Did you have to throw it in Livingston’s tank, though?”

“Livingston?” I blinked.

“The lionfish,” Jennifer said. “Very beautiful but covered in razor-sharp spines and highly venomous.”

“No way was I reaching into that tank to get my phone back,” Marshall said.

I worked my way over to the champagne table. Unlike poor Jennifer, I wasn’t pregnant. I helped myself to an effervescent glass of the bubbly and mingled with the other guests.

I spotted Amanda, Evan’s wife. She waved at me but she seemed slightly troubled.

Amanda joined me at the champagne table, and after a moment Jennifer came over as well. I realized then that I had the ears of two women who had married extremely wealthy men. They might be able to offer me more insight into how to handle being with Michael, if that was what I really wanted.

“How do you guys do it?” I asked.

“Do what?” Amanda asked.

“Oh, it’s really quite easy,” Jennifer said. “I just kind of float through life. By the way, what the hell are you talking about?”

I grinned at her quip, but it soon faded from my face, replaced by a somber frown.

“I mean, how do you handle being married to men who are so totally focused on business? I mean, you can’t throw their phones in the fish tank all of the time, can you?”

“Why not?” Jennifer said with a giggle.

Amanda laughed as well, but she grew more serious as she turned to face me directly.

“In all seriousness, there is no handling. You don’t really do anything, you just accept that this is who they are and how they are going to be.”

“You mean, you just put up with their bullshit?”

“No,” they both said at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed.

“Jinx,” Amanda said. Then she turned back to me. “The truth of the matter is, part of the reason we love our men is because they are so driven and passionate about what they do.”

“You don’t have to knuckle under,” Jennifer said. “In fact, you can’t bend to them like they expect everyone else to. At the same time, you don’t want to fight against their nature. If you really love the tiger, you have to let it prowl the jungle in a metaphorical sense.”

“If you do it right,” Amanda added, “then they’ll see that they really are stronger with you than without you.”

I mulled this over. It made good sense, of course. These were not stupid women. And yet, I wondered if I could ever really handle being with Michael in the long term. It seemed to me that he was rather set in his ways. Every time I thought that he might be changing, he resorted to his old self.

Only he seemed to think he was different. Maybe things could be different with us too.

Amanda’s face lit up as she looked over my shoulder. I found out why a moment later when her husband Evan showed up. I had forgotten Evan was my boss, because while I was around Amanda he just became her husband.

“Hi sweetie,” Amanda kissed him, and I think she might have grabbed his derriere as well. If so Evan did a good job of not reacting to it. Or a bad job, from Amanda’s point of view.

Evan smiled at his wife, then turned his somber expression toward me.

“I’m sorry, I need to borrow Jenna for a moment. I hope you won’t mind.”

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