Page 11 of Insta-Hubby
No model can compare to her.
And the way she gives me lip, she’s all sass and smarts.
And she makes me stone-hard.
“You think you can say no me to, baby?” I say across the table to her. She leans forward on her elbows, the neckline of her dresstantalizinglylow across her perky breasts.
“I didn’t say no,” she breathes, “I said I don’t know yet.”
“Let me try to persuade you,” I say as our cocktail waitress brings over the two blueberry ginger vodka tonics I ordered. “Let me try to get you to say yes.”
“I’m listening.”
“If you looked at my card, which I know you did because you needed my number, you know that my family owns half of the newspapers up and down the eastern seaboard. My father is at the helm of the ship, but he is getting older now, and he wants to retire. My brother and I are the VPs of the company, and my father wants to leave majority control of the firm to my brother. This is a problem.”
“A problem?” she asks, taking a sip of her drink. Her lips wrap up around the thin black straw and I feel myself stiffen at the thought of what I’m going to have her do later. “What’s the problem? Let me guess. You want control because it means more money. More control, more power?”
Oh, my girl has mesowrong. And I’m going to set her straight.
“Let me clue you in, baby. I don’t give a shit about having more money or power. I already have all the money and power I could ever want. The moment I got you to come to this bar with me, that’s when I knew I wouldn’t need power ever again. Because if I can get you to come share a drink with me, have a date with me, then I don’t need anything. Because you are beautiful, and I still can’t believe it’s not your wedding day.”
She sits up straight, taken aback. Her eyes open wide and I can see her breathing come faster, and she reaches forward to take her glass in her elegant fingers, taking a sip of her drink.
That’s right, baby. Cool down.
“What is it, then?” she asks. “Why do you care about getting control of your father’s company?”
“My brother is a dickhead, and that’s putting it nicely. He wants to take one of our media divisions, the one that runs the print newspapers in New York, and chop it up. Sell off the parts to the highest bidder. Outsource the office jobs, take away the printing functions from the people who’ve run everything for years. And I know lots of people are going to lose their jobs if - excuse me,when- that happens.”
Anna takes another sip of her drink and puts the glass down on the table.
“Why’s this even a problem, though?” she asks. “Why don’t you just ask your father to put you in charge and cut your brother out?”
“My father is old-fashioned. Hehatesthat I run a blog and interact with a community of other bloggers. Hates it. He thinks it’s too egalitarian. He thinks the media should be controlled by a few. He doesn’t agree with my approach to things. He doesn’t like that pretty much anyone can share and disseminate information so easily.”
“Disseminate information?” she says skeptically. “I think you’re overestimating the power of the internet. It’s all just cat videos.”
“You’re right, there’s a lot of that fluffy stuff out there. But that’s the point. We have to keep these platforms open and available to everyone. Even if we think some content choices are somewhat questionable.”
“What about you, Liam? What are your content choices?”
“I thought you didn’t want to see me online,” I rib her.
“Consider my interest piqued.”
I grab my phone and scroll through my blog, landing on a picture of me at the beach. Shirtless. Sweaty. Smiling. Like it’s all for the girl who’s looking at the picture.
“How’s this for content?” I say, pushing my phone across the table to her.
Her lips part slightly as she looks down at the picture, and then back up to me.
“Want to see me with my shirt off IRL?”
“Is that the question you wanted to ask me? Is that why I’m here right now? So you could show me your abs...what did you say?IRL?”
“No,” I say, taking my phone back from her. “I wanted to ask you to pretend to be my girlfriend. And I thought you’d like it if I bought you a drink first.”
Anna’s eyes widen and her eyebrows knit together slightly in the middle. I want to reach under the table to touch her thigh. I think she’s getting wet for me.
