Page 46 of Beauty and her Billionaire Beast
20
Knox
I lean back in my swivel chair a few days after my underground fight, looking at Foster across my office desk. He’s been here for twenty minutes. He’s just sitting there, distracting my attempts to catch up with work after an extended longweekend.
“Don’t the guys over at that hedge fundcompany give you real work to do?” I ask as he walks over to the small bar area in one corner of theoffice.
He opens the built-in minibar and bends forward, checking out what’s inside. “A six-pack of beer, dude? That’s all you put in this deep, big-ass fridge? You can fit a whole case in here.” As he stands he reveals the two beers in his hand with the lids off, and brings one over tome. “I bring in business over there. Investor relations and shit. You know what thatmeans?”
“No.” I take a swig of beer and swallow the perfectly cold liquid, then set the bottle on a coaster at the edge of my desk. “But I’m sure you’re gonna tellme.”
“It means that right this second, I’mworking.”
“Doing what? Depleting my alcoholstash?”
He shakes his head. “No.But that reminds me. Do you remember that summer Pops cut off your allowance and made you take on a paper route as punishment for disrespectinghim?”
I roll my eyes and return my gaze to the emails all waiting for my response. “I remember. I don’t have time to walk down memory lane with your lazyass.”
“I seem to recall you were the lazy one. You got in so much crap with the neighbors.Throwing those newspapers from your bike into CCTV cameras, breaking automatic gate consoles…shit, and remember those two Rottweilers that Mr. Patinski owned? They ate the paper,” he says and bursts out laughing. “He complained that he didn’t get his paper, and you told him the dogs ate it. Mr. Patinski got your ass fired…from a paper route,dude.”
I cross my arms and wait for him to gethis laughter under control. “What are you really doing here, man? I got shit todo.”
“You do realize that you and your grandfather have invested close to thirty mil with us, right? That makes you an investor. And right now, we’re talking and sipping cold ones. We’re relating. See? Investorrelations.”
“Fuckingslacker.”
“Whatever.” He takes a quick look at his phone, and tucksit back into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “On that, you should really think about throwing in another twenty mil. We’re about to look at an international commercial project that’ll have a footprint in seventy major cities. It’s right up youralley.”
“Sounds okay. Email me the details and I’ll get the risk management guys to look itover.”
“Willdo.”
My phone buzzeswhile I check through the numerous corporate emails that I missed since I left the office last Thursday night. As usual, I ignore the phone and keep focused on the computer monitor, replying to the simpler ones, sending others along for review, and approving others where it makes sense to do so. I look up and notice Foster scrolling through my fuckingphone.
“Put that shit down,” I tellhim, but I see him empty his beer, then places both of his hands on my phone and begins to tap away on it. “What the fuck, man? Leave thatalone.”
“I’m fixing something,” he says, and continues to key in a long-ass string of God knowswhat.
“I don’t need you to fix shit forme.”
His eyes alone move as he looks up from the screen, only glancing at me for a split second. “Youfucking do, if you haven’t replied to even one of your girlfriend’stexts.”
“If you want to fix my woman problems so fucking bad, why don’t you just use your own damn phone and talk to her yourself. She’s your friendtoo.”
“Maybe she was, but not anymore. I tried to cover for your ass after you went off to college. She didn’t like it all that much. Blocked my number andshit.”
“What? What the hell did you tell her to make her block you? And how do you know for sure that she blocked yournumber?”
“I know because she told me. In a text. It went something like,‘Foster, this is a courtesy text. I don’t want to hear from you anymore. Trying to cheer me up by showing me dick pics is not just inappropriate. It’s gross. I’m blocking you in my phone the second afterthis text goes through. Bye.’But you’re missing thepoint.”
“You fucking idiot!” I shout. “You sent her dickpics?”
“It wasn’tmydick. It was online stuff from those triple-X rated websites. And for the record, I was simply explaining to her that you’re at college, that at least you didn’t run off to some porn movie set to start starring in X-rated movies like the ones at the linkin that text. It wasonefucking time, and she blocked me afterthat.”
“You’re really an idiot, son of a bitch.” I stretch my body over my desk and try to take the phone from him, but he swivels back and continues to type in a message. “Leave it alone, Foster. I’ll beat the shit out of you if you don’t stop what you’re doing and put the phone downnow.”
He doesn’t stop. “You’re overdueto get your ass kicked, so sure,” he mutters. “Bringit.”
