Her Billionaire Toy Boy

Chapter 7

Friday afternoon. Four in the afternoon, to be specific. Mira was watching her clock more stridently than she had ever watched anything before in her entire life.

According to the rules of watched pots, the seconds were dragging themselves out in a way which Mira had not previously thought humanly possible.

Paralegals were tossing briefs onto her desk. The partners had all taken off earlier that afternoon—a perk of seniority: the observation of Summer Fridays. The sunniness outside had leached inside, producing a lethargy from which all the attendant staff was having a hard time breaking. Mira could feel it: everyone was just biding their time, waiting for 5:00. Very few people would be making the case to stay late and impress tonight, Mira thought. Those who would usually be impressed by such things had called off the workweek hours prior.

Mira herself was counting down the minutes. Only about forty-five minutes left until Sam was to pick her up from work. Mira looked down and to the left, at her packed suitcase. She felt the need to open it, to go back through it, to make one thousand percent sure that she had packed everything that she was going to need that weekend. She’d over-packed, really. She’d prided herself, in years past, on learning the invaluable skill of packing light; but she definitely had not packed according to those tenets and that skillset this time around. She’d instead pulled out her larger suitcase—not particularly caring about impressing Sam by taking a smaller case than she deemed necessary—and thrown in everything which she thought might make her feel more comfortable, literally deciding to bring with her a security blanket and her own robe for the mornings. She was going to be in a weird situation for three days. She wanted to make sure that she was extra prepared for anything that might happen.

She checked her phone. No updates from Sam.

Busying herself with last-minute work, she bustled through the last working hour of the week before shutting down her computer, taking a deep breath and getting her last refill of water from the office canteen, and taking the elevator downstairs. Her heart was beating rapidly. Her heels clicked on the marble floor in her office’s atrium. She thought of the slippers she had packed in her suitcase and thought to herself that at the very least she would be able to change into much more comfortable footwear in only a few minutes.

Leaving the building through the glass rotating door, she found that the black limo which Sam said would be waiting for her was already idling at the curb.

As she approached it the door clicked open, and she was gratified to see Sam’s happy and handsome face poking out of it. He jumped out of the car and walked, quickly, over to give her a hug. When she was released from the embrace, Mira saw that Sam had deftly taken the handle of her suitcase from her and was now wheeling it himself.

“Nice suitcase,” he said.

“Hello, yourself, sir,” Mira said, laughing.

“Oh, hey,” Sam said, bemused. “How are you doing?”

“Very well. Looking forward to a weekend in the country.”

“Should be quite relaxing,” Sam agreed, looking happy. “Well, I’ll put this in the trunk of the car, then,” he said. But then he looked back at Mira, his face momentarily serious. “But be warned, Damien and his friend, Lisa, are in the limo.”

“We’re all riding over together?”

“It seemed to be the environmental and economical thing to do.”

There was a bit of a strain in Sam’s voice which Mira neither had expected or could now understand. She felt confused. “How are you doing?” she asked, brow furrowed.

“Ah, you know.”

Mira did not know. At the confusion on her face, Sam clarified. “Feeling just as ready for a weekend away as you probably are,” he said. “Also, glad to see you.”

Mira warmed to this and smiled graciously at Sam as he opened the car door for her and handed her into the limo. She slid across the leather seat and then smiled at the two people, two people whom she had never met, who were now grinning at her from across the aisle. But she thought she might have seen a spark of surprise in their eyes, and she instantly wondered: Had Sam told either Damien or Lisa that she was black?

“You must be Damien,” she said, smiling at the sandy-haired man.

“Guilty as charged,” the man said, smoothly—very smoothly. “And you’re Mira, then? Sam has told us so much.”

“Wonderful,” said Mira.

“Only good things, I swear. Isn’t that right, Samuel?”

Sam made a face as he slid into the limo next to Mira. “Don’t call me that. And, of course. If I had anything bad to say about Mira—which I don’t, obviously—I wouldn’t be saying it to you.”

Mira was trying to work out how she felt about this pronouncement when the blonde woman across from whom she was sitting made a slight, pointed cough and glanced at Damien. Damien looked over. “Oh, yeah,” he said, unconcernedly. “Mira, this is Lisa, she’s a good friend of mine.”

Mira may have been imagining things, but she thought that she saw a shadow cross Lisa’s face as Damien said this. She understood the sentiment. She wondered how long Damien and Lisa had been friends—and whether Lisa was entirely okay with that moniker.

“Lisa,” she said, warmly, giving her a little wave. “Wonderful to meet you.”

Lisa smiled. “It’ll be so good to have another woman along,” she cooed. “I was worried that I was going to feel like a third wheel on a boys’ weekend…”

Mira reflected that there were now two counts of people saying that they were glad she was along merely for numbers’ sake. She hoped that Sam was glad she was here for less impersonal reasons…

“Well, we’ll all be in Farrow Valley in a few hours, and I think I can promise that we’re all going to have just the best weekend,” said Damien.

Mira, sitting close to Sam, felt him tense up a little, and she wondered why. She wondered if he was still nervous about the fact that she was there, still a little off about the appropriateness of their very quickly planned vacation. She wondered if he at all felt that she might be foisting herself upon him, no matter how many times they had both emphasized that they had both been placed in the same awkward position by Damien.

Thinking this caused her to look up sharply at Damien. She wondered what the relationship between the two men must be like….Sam had made it clear that he and Damien were old friends; but what sort of an old friend did that kind of thing to another? Mira decided that she would have to be on her guard around Damien.

However, as of that moment, she was also on vacation and it wouldn’t do not to observe the festivities. She certainly needed to relax—no one would have doubted her on that accord. Therefore, when Damien poured tall glasses of champagne for the four of them a moment later and proposed a toast to the weekend, she joined in gladly. Sipping the champagne with delicate grace, she waited for the alcohol to take the edge off. She was looking forward to relaxing in style.

Sam leaned back into the leather seat beside her and gave her an easy grin. “So,” he said. “Rough week?”