Billionaire With a Twist (3 page)

It wasn’t the end of the world.
It was just a hot guy, who I didn’t get to spend as much time
with as I wanted to.

I tried to run through my presentation
in my head as I drifted off to sleep, but nothing could keep my mind
from replaying the scene with mystery man over and over. Those eyes,
that mouth…that damn phone call. I’ll probably never see
him again, I told myself, so it’s best to let it go. That’s
just how the world works.

“Oh my god, Sandra, I’m so
sorry, but I completely blanked on that, can you say it again?”

I cradled my phone against my ear as I
swiped my badge at the door to the company offices. Thankfully I
didn’t need my full brain to navigate, even though I’d
never been there before—corporate structured all these places
the same, right down to the brain-deadening beige of the carpet and
the mass-produced inspirational posters on the walls. The whole place
had a completely predictable layout and color scheme, all gleaming
sterile neutral tones and easily disassembled cubicle partitions, all
traces of individuality scrupulously erased from the workspaces
except for the odd golf trophy.

I trotted down the hall, avoiding the
curious gazes of the men in expensive suits, the younger ones looking
at me like I was the dessert option on the menu, and the older ones
looking at me like I must have taken a wrong turn on my way to the
kitchen.

I tried not to fumble my phone in my
suddenly sweaty hands. There was no reason to be nervous. No reason
to be nervous. No reason.

Maybe if I repeated that enough times,
I’d actually believe it.

“‘A warm color scheme,’”
Sandra repeated as per my earlier instruction. “Lots of rich
carmines and golden browns, think hunting lodge meets the red
carpet.”

“Got it,” I said. I most
definitely did not have a hangover, not even a tiny little bit, but
this headache I’d woken up with was really starting to get on
my last nerve, and the coffee and ibuprofen I’d had for
breakfast weren’t working their magic just yet.

“I’m sorry to make you
memorize all my crap,” Sandra apologized, before her voice went
slightly tinny and further away. “James! Icky! Icky icky no
no!” Her voice returned to its normal timbre. “Sorry
about that, he was trying to get into the cat food again.”

“Tell the little monster hi for
me,” I said with a grin. I just couldn’t be annoyed at
that little moppet with his big brown eyes and mess of dark curls,
not even if he was keeping the best art partner I’d ever had
stuck back in Washington, D.C. “Has he figured out how to
dismantle the DVD player yet?”

“Don’t give him any ideas,”
Sandra ordered. “Really, though, I swear, I am going to
strangle that babysitter; I let her know I would need her three
months in advance and she swore that she would be available and then
at the last minute—”

“Don’t sweat it,” I
told her. “I got this, just go over some of this stuff with me
and I’m golden.”

“Sure thing—James! Mommy’s
credit card is not a snack!”

Once Sandra managed to wrest her wallet
away from her son’s sticky, adorable fingers, we went over the
preliminary art concepts she’d created for my pitch today,
Sandra repeating the necessary buzzwords until I was sure they were
drilled into my brain and unlikely to come jarred loose by anything
less than a tank.

I could feel my confidence level rising
I as I trotted down the hall towards the elevators. This was it. This
was my big chance. There was nothing that—

“Did you see the hooters on that
chick I banged last night? Like frigging planets or some shit.”

“Aw bro, don’t tell me you
thought those were real!”

“Like I care? She wanted the D so
bad, I swear, I barely got back to the Caddy before she was on her
knees—”

My mood deflated like a rapidly
punctured balloon as the gang of tanned young men rounded the corner,
all pastel polos and hundred dollar haircuts and acrid cologne that
filled the air almost as stiflingly as their entitlement.

“Sorry, got to go,” I told
Sandra.

Her voice went tense. “Let me
guess, the Testosterone Squad has arrived?”

“Giving them that nickname is an
insult to testosterone everywhere,” I muttered quietly enough
that they couldn’t hear me, ducking my head in the hope that
they would take a second to see me through the fog of their own
arrogance.

“And ‘Douchebros’ is
better? Honey, I don’t want to even think about them anywhere
near my vagina.”

I snickered. “And that’s
why it’s perfect,” I told her. “Because they act
like they’re God’s gift to women, but they’re
actually harmful and gross.”

“Yo, Ally!”

Oh no. I had been sighted. I sighed,
reluctantly turning to face Harry, Supreme Douchebro In Charge.
“Hello.”

“Making an appointment for a spa
day?” Harry said with a smirk that made it clear he thought
that was the wittiest one-liner since Bob Hope. “You know, to
console yourself after we sweep this meeting? Tell you what, I’ll
buy you some chocolates and throw in a back massage, just for you.”
He leered, his eyes traveling downward to a part of my anatomy that
was definitely not my back.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes;
they’d just take that as evidence of how emotional and
unprofessional I was, as if leering and broadcasting exaggerated
stories of sexual prowess were somehow Business Conduct 101. “I’ve
got to go, Sandra, talk to you later.”

“Let me know how it goes—James!
No! Not the hair dryer!”

Harry was still leering, his collar
popped up high like he thought he was still a frat boy. “Nice
outfit, but you really should’ve gone with something that
emphasizes your body more. Only way to distract the client from your
incompetence.”

“Charming,” I said dryly,
refusing to engage despite the rage boiling in my gut.

“We’ve got this locked up,”
Douchebro #2, also known as Greg, chimed in, shoving his hands in his
pockets as he took his place next to #3, Chad. “Why’d you
even bother showing up? It’s a joke, getting a chick to pitch a
dude brand like this. What’re you even going to do, stick a
pink label on it?”

“What a brilliant idea,” I
said flatly. “I don’t know how I didn’t think of
it.” I gave them a smile that probably looked like I was
preparing for the dentist to extract all my molars, and got into the
elevator, trying to ignore how blatantly they checked out my ass as
they followed me in.

They didn’t matter. Nothing they
did mattered. The only thing that mattered was that I had gotten my
boss to agree to let me pitch
after
them today, and I wasn’t
going to mess it up. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity
pass me by. It was my first chance to really show everybody what I
was capable of.

It was time to step up. Time to show
them what I was made of. Time to fight back.

I clenched my fists at my side as the
elevator began its slow ascent.

And may the best woman win.

This would have been a very
inspirational moment, but then my phone rang. And the ringtone was
‘All the Single Ladies.’

I made the mistake of glancing at the
Caller ID before jabbing the power button. Great, my mom. Answering
this call was the last thing I wanted to do in front of the
Douchebros, up to and including stripping down to a string bikini and
dancing the cha-cha, but if I didn’t pick up now, my mom would
go into an anxiety spiral and by the time I called her back an hour
later, would have convinced herself that I’d been kidnapped,
taken overseas, and held for ransom on a modern day pirate ship.

I chose the lesser of two evils, and
answered. “Hey, Mom.”

Chad smirked, and I shot him a glare.

“Ooooh, watch out, I think she’s
on her period,” he stage-whispered, and the other guys snorted
and gave him high-fives.

“Daaaaarling,” my mom said
in my ear, skipping straight past ‘hello’ and any sort of
perfunctory inquiry into how my life was going. “I’m
ordering the champagne this very instant, and you haven’t
respondez s’il vous plait’ed to dinner yet.”

“I always come to Friday dinner,
Mom,” I said. I tried to say this like a reasonable adult
stating a fact, which, technically, I was. Only somehow, it came out
as a whine.

Family: it’s fucking magical.

There was a heavy sigh, as if I had
just single-handedly brought about the fall of Western civilization.
“It is called etiquette, dear. It exists for a reason.”

Is that reason to give you something
to nitpick about other people, all of the time?
I very nearly
said, but avoided voicing out loud since I didn’t want to be
the first person to cause spontaneous human nuclear explosion.

“I’m coming, Mom. Put me
down for a plate.”

“If you’d simply responded
to the letter, dear—”

Yep, that’s right. My mom sends
gilt-edged paper invitations through the U.S. Postal Service for the
weekly family dinner. And then expects you to respond in kind.
Sometimes I stop and think about how much free time she must have, to
think of all these tiny, pointless things to fill it. And then I eat
an entire carton of ice cream to try to stop being depressed.

The elevator reached our floor, and the
Douchebros and I made our way to the conference room as my mom
rattled on despite my best efforts to tune her out. “And try to
wear something appropriate this time, dear, I know more and more
women think slacks are appropriate attire these days, but they’re
just so unfeminine, and really a skirt is much more flattering for
our body type. Why, I remember when your father first started
courting me—”

This was what happened when you made
your whole life about a man.

I wasn’t going to let it happen
to me.

I took my seat at the conference table,
and saw the elevator button light up. That had to be the Knoxes! And
I’d barely had time to go over Sandra’s tips!

“Gotta go, Mom!”

“Allison Brierly Beignet
Bartlett, is that any way for a proper young lady to—”

“Probably not, love you, bye!”

I jammed my finger down on the power
button, killing my cell with only a weak buzz as its death throes,
before unceremoniously stuffing it into my purse. I was going to pay
for that later, in spades, but there was no point in dwelling on that
now.

I took a deep breath, smoothing down my
skirt as I stood, ready to greet the new arrivals. I thought about
puppies and chocolate and tried to make that translate into a
friendly smile on my face.

Meanwhile, Harry puffed out his chest
and stretched his neck like a bird doing a mating dance.

The first Knox representative into the
room was a small, weedy man with platinum blonde hair and watery blue
eyes. He looked like he’d gotten his fashion advice from the
same place as the Douchebros, but hadn’t managed to get the
sizing quite right. His eyes fastened on me, and a leer began to tug
at the corner of his mouth.

I ratcheted up my internal gears in an
effort to keep my own smile from disappearing. “Mr. Charles
Donahue—” I started.

“Call me Chuck,” he barked
in a heavy New York accent.

“Certainly. I’m—”
I hadn’t even gotten out the first syllable of my name when
Harry practically threw himself between us, like a bodyguard trying
to stop a bullet.

“Bro, that tie pin! Nobody said
you were a—” He preceded to rattle off more Greek letters
than I’d even known were in their alphabet.

Chuck’s grin widened. “Good
to see the brotherhood still going strong. What year were you?”

“2009, my man.”

And just like that, they were chatting
away like best friends, and I’d lost my big chance to establish
a personal connection with the client. I watched with a sinking
feeling in my gut as Chuck and Harry gabbed away as if everything
were already a done deal, and resisted the urge to grind my teeth.
Shut out of the boys’ club again.

Still, Hunter Knox, the CEO and owner,
was still chatting with some of his flunkies down the hall by the
elevator, and he was the one I really had to convince—

I turned to take a closer look at Mr.
Knox, and froze.

Bourbon eyes—

Caramel waves—

Freckles like a sweet dusting of brown
sugar—

Hunter Knox was my one-night stand.

What the actual fuck…

For a terrible second all I could think
about was the multitude of insulting things I had said about the
brand the night before: had I really called it an old person drink?
Done a cringe-worthy impression of an Appalachian miner? Oh God, and
I had shot down all of his ideas too, hadn’t I?

I was well and truly screwed, and not
in the way I’d wanted to be last night.

I did an abrupt about-face and took my
seat, not willing to risk him recognizing me—oh God, please let
him have been too smashed last night to recognize me now—and
avoiding his eyes as he made his way into the room and we all
introduced ourselves. I mumbled my name, pretending to be completely
absorbed in the task of setting up for my presentation. Move along
everyone, nothing to see here—

“It’s lovely to see you
again,” he murmured as he passed me, just low enough for me to
hear, and I blushed what I was sure had to be a brilliant crimson.

Thankfully, time was money, and Chuck
was determined that none of us waste any of it; we moved quickly into
presentations. The Douchebros were going first—I certainly bet
not for the first time—and I was actually grateful.

Maybe this’ll give me enough
time to compose myself and give a pitch so great it’ll totally
blow Hunter Knox away. Or at least make him forget how close I came
to blowing him.

He caught my eye and winked.

Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly.