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THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 181
They were still out there by the elevator, the two massive guys in suits. They watched me curiously as I walked across the hall to the only other door and knocked on it softly.It took maybe three seconds before it opened.Sebastian was standing there, eyebrows arched in a question. Johnny was a few feet behind him, his face grave and worried.I burst into tears.Sebastian pulled me into the room and put his arms around me. “There, there,” he murmured. “There, there.”After about thirty seconds I pulled away. Johnny handed me a box of tissues.I smiled shyly at him and took a couple. “Thanks.”“So I’m guessing it didn’t go so well,” Sebastian said.“It didn’t go badly,” I said with a half-suppressed sob. “But… it pretty much went the way I thought it would.”“You drew the line in the sand?”“Yes.”He nodded approvingly. “Then that’s all you can do but wait.”I looked over at Johnny. “Sorry to keep you up. I know you must be tired.”He shrugged and gave me a sheepish smile. “Sebastian
THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 182
I made it inside the front door of my apartment before I burst into tears.Anh came out of her bedroom in her pajamas, wide-eyed, with her keyring canister of mace at the ready. “Lily?!”“Hey, Anh,” I sniffled – and then started crying again.She ran over and hugged me, then led me to the couch.I told her between crying jags what had happened. She made chamomile tea for us as she tried to follow my disjointed narrative. Once I calmed down, she pulled back the vertical blinds on our main window and pointed to a bunch of paneled vans out in the darkness, parked along the curb. “There’s not many of them at night, but just wait until the morning.”Try as I might, though, I couldn’t quite explain to her why I had left. At least, not to her satisfaction.“So… he said he loved you… but then he said he said it too early… and then you said you guys should take a break…”“He was avoiding me.”“So he was avoiding you… because you were all like, ‘Tell me you love me – ’”“I didn’t tell him to s
THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 183
Days passed, then weeks passed, and the pain dulled a bit. Not much, but enough that I was only looking at the phone every hour instead of every ten minutes.Anh had to take care of the groceries and shopping. She even had to pick up my Nuvaring birth control prescription for me.I’m sure the paparazzi would have loved getting pictures of that.The vans gradually dwindled out front. I thought they might finally be gone, and I went out for a walk one morning through the backdoor where Johnny had dropped me off.Bad idea.Three men saw me and ran around the corner, snapping pictures and filming video. One of them thrust a mic in my face and yelled questions like, “Lily Ross, did you extort Connor Templeton for the $50,000? Is it true that you and Miranda Lockwood are lesbian lovers? Is it true that Lifetime is buying the rights to your story?”I ran back inside the apartment building, screaming at them to leave me alone. For the next thirty minutes, people pounded on my door until I cal
THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 184
Turns out he was.He called again that afternoon.“So, did you think of a name for your consulting business?”“Sebastian, this is really nice of you, but – ”“No, actually it’s not, this is just what I do. Did you come up with a name yet?”“No, not yet.”“Apparently what YOU do is dither and procrastinate. Think of something in the next ten seconds. Go.”“Why?” I asked, irritated. “What does it matter?”“Legal needs the name so they can file with the state and get everything in motion. We’ll be expediting it, but it will probably still take a week or two – ”“You’re serious,” I realized, and my heart constricted in fear.“Of course I’m serious. Well, what’s the name?”“Sebastian, I can’t do this – ”“You COULD, it would just take you months to figure it all out and get the paperwork in, IF you actually stayed the course, which I doubt you would, so it makes more sense for our legal department to do it. They’re going to create an S corporation for you, so you’ll need bookkeeping and ta
THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 184
Turns out he was.He called again that afternoon.“So, did you think of a name for your consulting business?”“Sebastian, this is really nice of you, but – ”“No, actually it’s not, this is just what I do. Did you come up with a name yet?”“No, not yet.”“Apparently what YOU do is dither and procrastinate. Think of something in the next ten seconds. Go.”“Why?” I asked, irritated. “What does it matter?”“Legal needs the name so they can file with the state and get everything in motion. We’ll be expediting it, but it will probably still take a week or two – ”“You’re serious,” I realized, and my heart constricted in fear.“Of course I’m serious. Well, what’s the name?”“Sebastian, I can’t do this – ”“You COULD, it would just take you months to figure it all out and get the paperwork in, IF you actually stayed the course, which I doubt you would, so it makes more sense for our legal department to do it. They’re going to create an S corporation for you, so you’ll need bookkeeping and ta
THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 185
By 5:00 PM, I’d gotten over three dozen emails from various managers talking about availability.Eff my life.The only good thing was that most of the managers were wary of me, and most had wanted to schedule their interviews for later in the week, probably so they could get the gossip on me. I’m sure most (if not all) of them considered me a threat. Like the advance scout for the Hatchet Man.Anh helped me cram, just like the olden days in college when I was woefully unprepared for tests. “Okay, what questions are you going to ask them?”“What’s the top three problems they see in the business on a day-to-day basis… what they would change if they could…” I put my forehead down on our IKEA kitchen table. I was way past the hand-flapping panic stage, and well into the ‘total collapse and defeated resignation’ phase. “Oh God, this is going to be a disaster…”Anh smacked my arm with a sheaf of papers. “Stop being defeatist. Come on, you can do this.”“No I can’t…”“Connor set this up f
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Keisha was fully loosened up by the time the second margarita arrived.“Girl, he wasn’t a dog, was he?” she asked. “‘Cause in my experience, men are dogs. And I’m bettin’ the richer they are, the bigger the dog.”I laughed. “No, he was actually a really good guy.”“Then what happened?”“Did you see any of the interviews with him?”“Did I see any of the interviews with him?” she asked rhetorically as she gave me a Have you lost your mind? look. “I watched every damn one I could, because he is FINE.”I almost snorted margarita through my nose. “Yes, that’s true, he is fine.”“So what happened?”“Well, remember in the interviews when everybody kept asking him if we were going to get married?”“Yeah.”“Well, imagine a guy you dated for seven days, and people started asking him on the national news if he’s going to marry you.”“Oh my GOD.” She put hand to her chest. “Oh, you poor thing. He probably ran faster than Usain Bolt, huh.”“Well… let’s just say he sort of faded away really quickly
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Keisha’s insights were the foundation for everything else that followed. Once I knew the right questions to ask, the rest of the interviews went amazingly well.People were so used to accepting the status quo, they just didn’t think about it until someone brought it up. But if you happened to stumble across one of their pet peeves, that was usually a match to a can of gasoline. In fact, if you knew their pet peeve, and indicated that other people hated that thing, too, they would go off on all the things that were wrong with the company.And because of Keisha, I had a whole laundry list of potential pet peeves.I think some writer gave a speech once that started with a joke about an old fish who meets two young fish and casually asks, “How about the water today?” and then swims on. After he’s gone, one of the young fish turns to his friend and asks, “What the hell is ‘water’?”When you’re in it all the time, you stop seeing it – whether the ‘it’ is water, or bullshit problems at a cor
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