Page 13 of Her Billionaire Boss
“Good.”He grabbed a bottle of water from the nightstand, took a big drink, tipped his head back and popped the handful of pills in, all at once.
“So, are those for pain or...”The number of medications concerned me.Of course, I wasn’t a doctor.I should have minded my own business.
“Pain, inflammation, neuropathy—that’s fun—, blood thinners because I’m more prone to clots now, a cocktail of various psych meds to deal with the PTSD of almost dying, and an anti-convulsant for the epilepsy I’ve had since childhood.”He half-turned to watch my reaction.“And erectile dysfunction meds,due to all of the above.”
“You never mentioned epilepsy.”Why would he have?We’d been fuck buddies in a whirlwind romance.There hadn’t been time or a reason to discuss our medical histories.
“I haven’t had a seizure in over a decade.”He paused.“Well...I’m not counting the ones I had in the hospital.I think bear attacks and blood clots and tons of surgery gave the epilepsy and unfair advantage.”
“These are the kinds of things we need to know about each other.”I padded toward the bathroom.“What would happen if you had a seizure, and I didn’t know to expect it?”
“You would call the ambulance, and it would be a big-ass hassle.”He stood and stretched.“Don’t walk around worrying about me like I’m a gun about to go off, okay?Like I said, a decade.”
“Are you supposed to be drinking as much as you do on all those pills?”I highly doubted the answer was yes.
“No, I am not,” he admitted, but in a tone that suggested it wasn’t up for debate.
I circled back around to the original question I’d posed.“All right, so you get up earlier than God, have a hearty breakfast of pharmaceuticals, do your physical therapy, and then what?”
“Then I have breakfast, usually while simultaneously watching and reading the news, check my schedule, shower, get dressed, do whatever I want before work.”He eyed me suggestively.“For example, I could incorporate waking up my girlfriend with my head between her thighs into my routine.”
“I would be fine with that,” I said with a sly smile.“Then, you go to work?”
“I like to get there at around ten or eleven.There aren’t any meetings until lunch time, usually.”
“Why’s that?”
“Clients like a free lunch.”
That made sense enough to me.“Is that what you do all day?Meetings?”
“Meetings, paperwork, reading reports.”He paused, as if he never thought through his day before.“My job is super boring.”
“Honestly, I’m surprised you have a job at all.If I had thirty-billion dollars, I wouldn’t do shit.”There was no reason to pretend I was some kind of go-getter.I had nothing in the way of career aspirations, and I didn’t want to give him the accidental impression that I was about to climb the corporate ladder.
“As long as you’re with me, youdohave thirty billion,” he reminded me.“And if all you want to do is spend my money and enjoy yourself, I’m not going to judge you.”
“It seems weird, that you have everything in your life taken care of, and you still want to get up early and go to work.”Not going to work was the dream of every person I knew.
“I mean, I do get to take a lot of time off, pretty much whenever I want,” he said, a little sheepishly.“But the thing about having a fortune is, you’re afraid you’re going to lose it.While I’m fully cognizant of the fact that I’m not about to blow through thirty-billion dollars, that it would be pretty much impossible to do so in my lifetime unless I did things spectacularly wrong, I still want to work for it.To protect it.”
“Because you can’t imagine a totally different life for yourself where you don’t have money.”It made perfect sense to me.I hoped the reverse would make perfect sense tohim.“Now, think about it this way: a totally different life for yourself, where you suddenly do have that kind of money.”
He froze, then said, “I think I know what you’re getting at.”
There you go.
“You want a job.”
Wait.“What?”
“You suddenly have access to all my money, but you haven’t worked for it like everyone else you know has,” he began, so obviously proud of himself for the conclusion he’d come to.
“Let’s not be too hasty,” I said quickly.
“I own a company,” he went on.“I can give you a job.”
“A job doing what?What, at your company, am I so qualified to do?”I demanded.
