Page 11 of The Grumpy Billionaire

That’s my job.

And suddenly, here she is, Stella Woodward, the world’s greatest monkey wrench. A walking, talking monkey wrench fucking up my concentration on the project of predicting and accounting for monkey wrenches.

It would be hilarious if it weren’t so maddening.

I go back at it, jaw clenched. This is not a distraction I can afford.

Stella Woodward, my best friend’s kid sister. Jelly on her face, mischief in her eyes. And later on as a teenager blowing the upstairs fuse with her hair-grooming rituals, completely disrupting our gaming. Because of course she had to have her hair in a shiny, wavy waterfall-like style designed to reflect light in a totally distracting way at all times.

And yes, when we got older, I could see that she was what my high school peers might have considered hot, if they had any intelligence at all—debatable. Yes, obviously she was attractive what with her sparkling eyes and curves, just a whirlwind of laughter and rebellion and cheeky energy.

But any attraction I might have had to her was overruled by general decency. Only an asshole goes after their best friend’s little sister—I didn’t need Charlie to warn me off of her all those years ago to know that.

Stella was practically family for all the time I spent there, and Joyce and Warren Woodward were like second parents. The debt I owe them is incalculable. “It’s like Stella has two older brothers looking out for her,” Warren once said to me. I always admired Warren, a stand-up man with the bearing of a four-star general and an old-school sense of humor.

Off-limits. A man has to have codes, after all.

I go back to work. I stare at the board, determined not to think about her being in the same building.

There’s that ridiculous saying that if you try not to think of an elephant, suddenly all you can think about is an elephant. It’s the pathetic sentiment of a person with an undisciplined mind.

When I tell myself to stop thinking about something, I stop thinking about it.

End of story.

ChapterSeven

Hugo

I hitthe timer when I realize I haven’t been working on the new data model for some time.

I’m trying to expand my focus minutes by 1 percent every day, and I track it on one of my whiteboards. My QuantumQuilt data model is hugely ambitious—it’ll take enormous effort, but it’ll skyrocket our market leadership—unless somebody else figures it out before me. Then we’ll lose market share, and all my work will be wasted.

I gaze out the window. What, exactly, was so funny?

I shouldn’t be mad; it’s all my fault she’s here. What did I expect?

And that expression.

Some people might call it smirking, but that would be wrong. It’s this mode her face gets into when she’s suppressing completely fucking inappropriate mirth—her lips smush together into a plump little line and her cheeks harden, as if with the immense effort to contain an outburst. She thinks she’s fooling people. She thinks she looks serious. Like nobody can tell she’s a micron away from laughing.

She takes nothing seriously. She never has. She is impulsive, undisciplined, disruptive, rebellious, inappropriate, impudent, and, in a word, trouble.

I trudge over to my focus chart and scrawl a darkXin the block for this time period to signify a failure of focus, then I grab another Tums. This heartburn is twisting me up.

Yes, some men might find her attractive. Some men would probably enjoy her devil-may-care attitude and the way her eyes dance when she’s dreaming up something outlandish. I could see some men focusing unwholesomely on her button nose with its light dusting of freckles, on her strong, solid legs, on the gentle curves of her lips. It’s possible certain sorts of men would be entertained by her obsession with retro owls or her love of the artist Salvador Dali. Yes, I’m sure a lot of men find her attractive.

But she’s not my type. She’s the total opposite of my type. In fact, if you described the kind of woman I very specifically avoid, you would find a description of Stella Woodward, double underlined, pencil tip broken.

Yes, she does have her charms, but she is so impossible.

And anyway, I have a code. If you can’t stick to your own codes, what do you have? Weakness. A lack of integrity. Dissipation.

I hit the timer and go in for another focus session. A major iron-clad focus session.

My attention does not wander. It doesn’t go on flights of fancy. It doesn’t gaze at the clouds or gather wool or stop to smell the roses or trot elephants around the room. I do not let it get distracted by gummy worms or the memory of how a shiny waterfall of brown hair feels in my fist.

I do not let it get distracted by Stella Fucking Woodward’s badly contained mirth due to whatever she thinks is so hilarious.

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