Page 39 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
It was something a lot less like a one-night stand.
It was something likemore.
* * *
“Beer, Charlie?” Ryan called from the kitchen. Maddie’d gone up to bed and Flora and I had wandered out to the patio. I had a balcony at my apartment and the office building had a terrace with some grass and tables where people often ate lunch or had less technical meetings, but there was something about a yard that just felt different. Cozier.Homier.
“Please,” I called back. “If I’m late tomorrow morning, I’ll tell the boss it’s your husband’s fault,” I said to Flora, who rolled her eyes at me. She had the earliest morning tomorrow, and was still nursing her single glass of red from dinner.
“Youarethe boss,” Ryan said, joining us. He passed me a bottle.
I sighed. “Not for long. Soon, it will be the shareholders calling the shots.”
Ryan groaned as he settled onto the loveseat next to his wife. “Don’t remind me.”
“The end is in sight, Walker,” I told him. “This time next year, the IPO will be done, and if you want, you can be right back in Tahiti, drinking pina coladas.”
Flora grimaced at me. “No,” she said, drawing out the word. “Not unless he wants to go alone, at least. Because this time next year, there will still be fifth graders to teach.”
“I’ll go with him then,” I said. “You don’t mind, do you, Flora?”
She laughed. “Oh, but there will still be computer club for you to teach, too, Charlie. You would abandon your proteges like that?”
“Shit, you’re right.” I took a drink of my beer. “Maybe I’ll just take a vacation from being CEO and focus on running bootcamps out of the school. I’ll need the time away from the office more than the money at that point,” I said, raising my eyebrows at Ryan.
“Damn right,” he said with a smile I returned easily. “If this IPO goes well, you’ll never have to work again if you want.” He and I both knew that wealreadynever needed to work again. It wasn’t the money that kept me at my job and he at his. For Ryan it was security, stability, although he’d been getting better about embracing change. For me…
At first it had been fun. The challenge of it. Then it had been necessity: once companies started using my product, they needed guidance, and the consultancy had been born. And now it was the IPO. It wasn’t the money. It was that Veritech–my company–would be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Veritech–my company–will havemade it.
“Sorry, but I still have trouble understanding why anyone would want to pay that amount of money for your company,” Flora said. “Ryan can’t even explain what Veritechdoes, and he’s been the CFO formonths.” I laughed.
“Hey,” Ryan interjected, “that’s not true. I’ve explained this to you atleasta thousand times.”
“Yeah,” his new wife cut in. “In the most boring, jargon-y way possible.” She leaned closer to me conspiratorially. “He’s anaccountant,” she whispered, patting him on the knee. “You understand.”
“Flora, sweetheart, Charlie is aprogrammer, I hardly think that’s any sexier thanaccoun–”
“Oh no,” Flora said, her eyes going wide. “It’swaysexier. Startup billionaire? That’s leading man material!”
“Thank you, Flora,” I said, grinning, as Ryan rubbed his hand over his face.
“Don’t encourage him,” he groaned.
“Fine,” she sniffed, pouting as she took a sip of her wine. “Anyway, you were explaining?”
“Right. So, I built a specialized programming language that allows software developers to write multi-threaded applications without having to be experts in thread safety. Then I started a consulting firm–that’s Veritech–to help companies use this programming language enabling multi-threaded processing. A thread is–”
“Uh huh,” she said. “Okay, yeah. So when you pitch thisstartup billionaire romantic leadidea to Edie, tell her I think the guy should be the stoic type. Then he can just brood sexily, and we won’t get into this,” she waved her hands vaguely in the direction of my face, “thistalkingthing. It isn’t working for me.”
“I told you,” Ryan chuckled.
“It won’t work for Sam, either,” Flora continued, and my heart dropped for a second.What did she mean? Did Flora somehow know– Did she suspect–“And actually, if you could start working on a more taciturn kind of persona when you’re around her, that might reinforce the concept. Plant the seed of a tech mogul bad boy.”
Right. Flora didn’t know, she was just talking about a fictional book about my doppelganger. Therewasnothing to know, I reminded myself, beyond a handful of one-night stands.
“Ha,” Ryan said. “Like Sam would ever fall for Charlie as a romance hero.”
“Hey,” I protested. “I’m very romantic.”
