Page 90 of The Grumpy Billionaire

“Did you mean it before when you said you never take women here?”

“Never.” He’s wearing sweats and a super sexy black tee; he strolls across the place and around a sparkling white kitchen island. “Hungry?”

“Now you’re going to feed me dinner? What part of not dating did you not understand?”

“It’s not dinner if you eat it standing up. It’s a snack when you eat it standing up.” He pulls a circular white pan of something from the refrigerator and slides it into the oven.

“Is that so?”

“And we eat sandwiches at the Luxe.” He sets out a knife and two large tomatoes. “Start slicing.”

I grab a cutting board. There’s a small bowl that looks like spices and parsley, maybe basil.

“What are we making?”

“A snack.”

“So…youcook?”

“I have a chef in three times a week; she stocks the kitchen and does meal prep and all that. I just assemble. I share her with Wulfric.”

I slide some slices to the side. “Wulfric lends you his chef. You are so his golden goose.”

ChapterThirty-Nine

Hugo

I grateParmesan into a small bowl while Stella chops the vegetables. I’m pushing the envelope, I know. Making this into a real date. I don’t care. It’s time.

“Do you remember what happened to the golden goose?” I ask her.

She looks up, amused, surprised. People almost never think through the golden goose reference, at least not where it applies to me.

“That’s right.” I draw my finger across my throat. “The farmer killed him. And that goose hadn’t even stopped laying eggs.”

“Wulfric’s not a fool,” she says.

“No, he’ll wait until the eggs are gone.”

“How’s it going? With the model, I mean. How are you feeling about it?”

I watch her chop the basil leaves into little bits, thinking about the question. People ask me about the model all the time—when will it be done? How scalable will it be? What are the testing parameters?

But how do I feel about it? Nobody ever asks that.

She looks up when I don’t answer for a while. “Is it going okay?”

“Not really,” I say.

“Why not?”

“I have a vision for it that’s proving challenging. I always knew it would be challenging, but…”

“Is it a big ambitious vision?” she asks. “Charlie says your first one was a massive disruption that reverberated through the markets.”

“The first one made an impact, yes. And that’s my goal for this one. I’m not planning on bringing my B-game like a hack.” I tip the cheese into a bowl. “I’m not gonna go backwards.”

“Is not making an impact really the same as going backwards?” she asks.

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