Page 93 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

“You’ll keep the company?”

“I’ll make it into what I want,” I say. “I have some big plans. Radical plans. I’ve been thinking about restructuring things. Spreading the profit around. Raising everybody’s salary and cutting my own. Creating a foundation to unload some money.”

“Wait, what?” Her eyes go wide.

“My wife is not into billionaires, and it turns out I’m not either,” I say.

“Oh my god,” she says. “Are you serious?”

“Entirely,” I say.

“Aaron is going to be so upset,” she says. “Aaron is going to flip out.”

“Yes, he will. He’s definitely going to try to stop me,” I say. “But I don’t owe him anything. He’ll still get a lot of money. Not as much as he wants but…”

“And a year is precious,” she says. “We could do so much in a year.”

We could. We. Us.

She grins.

“I love this,” I say.

“Me too.”

We haven’t talked much about the future, but it feels infinite now, and full of possibilities.

I go around behind her and pull her hair free of the hair binder, kissing her on the neck where she loves being kissed. “I feel like we’ve done everything backwards, getting married before anything. But maybe we could take the very huge step of dating. If you would do me the honor…”

“And make you the happiest man in the world?” She spins around and kisses me. “I’m in.”

“We can see where this goes. We can make it up as we go along. You live in a place that you love with all of your friends and that’s great. But it goes without saying, the studio here is all yours. It always was.”

“Oh, Mr. Stearnes.”

“We’ll figure it out as we go along,” I say.

“Hell yeah,” she says. “We can apply the chocolate chip cookie dough test to everything. If it’s not chocolate chip cookie dough, screw it!”

“If we had to do our wedding vows over again, that would be mine, Francine. All chocolate chip cookie dough from now on, starting with you.”

Her eyes gleam. “So we’re doing this. We date. I’ll dump the tour.” She stands and extends her pinky.

“Pinky shake?” I ask. “You know dudes don’t pinky shake, right?”

She forms her beautiful lips in a little pout.

I grumble and grab her pinky with mine.

“I’ll call Aaron and Juliana,” I say.

* * *

“You can’t just pull out,”Aaron says when I call him.

“I can absolutely pull out,” I say. “This whole month was our getting-to-know-you phase and I know I’m not interested in the sale anymore.”

“But this is the deal we’ve been waiting for!”

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