Her Billionaire Toy Boy

Chapter 3

“Um, hey,” she found herself saying and then she winced. Would she ever be able to comport herself as a mature woman? She was a lawyer. She fought battles in court. Millions of dollars often rode on the tip of her tongue. She’d dated—well—many boys and men over the years. Many. And here was this gangly young gentleman and he was completely undoing her, to the point where her very educated brain could only come up with “Um, hey,” as an opener.

While she was berating herself, it occurred to her that Sam had said something. She rolled her eyes at herself again and sank down onto her couch. She’d been talking herself up to take care of this ever since she had gotten her hair done. She’d just asked for a quick black wash to take care of her roots again—she didn’t think that she had the stomach to sit through an entire deep hair treatment. Her eyes danced over to her phone the entire time, and her stylist’s funny stories about her children were, unfortunately, something which Mira tuned into far less than usual.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mira found herself stammering. “Could you repeat that?”

“Yeah, of course,” said the friendly voice on the other end of the phone. “It’s Sam. Mira, right? What’s up?”
He had all the coolness which she was failing to grasp herself. He sounded as if he was genuinely curious—but also not super invested in her response—an air which Mira would never have been able to cultivate if she tried for one million years, which she found surprised her. Again, high-stakes conversations were literally her job, she thought to herself.

“Um, nothing much,” she squeaked.

“Right,” she heard Sam say. She thought she could detect a hint of bemusement in his deep voice, and she mentally facepalmed herself.

“How are you doing, then? What are you up to?” She could hear him throw himself down, easily, on a couch. She tried to mirror the pacific attitude she was projecting onto him. Mira looked around her apartment at her myriad shopping bags and the food she had placed upon the counter.

“Ah, you know,” she said. “Just got in from a day off, I did my shopping, all that fun stuff. Thinking about putting together dinner sometime soon.”

“What’re you thinking of having?”

“Haven’t decided,” Mira said. She stood and traversed the room to pick through the offerings she’d selected from her grocery’s shelves. “I was thinking—maybe something with farro? And I picked out the loveliest swordfish, I couldn’t help myself. And then, of course, it’s asparagus season. I could never resist a spear, you know?”
“Wouldn’t know,” said Sam. “Not much of a cook, myself—but that all sounds decadent. And like you really know what you’re talking about, eh?”

“I’m good at seeming like an expert,” Mira said, laughing. “It’s almost part of my job description.”

“Lawyer, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“And yet you find time in all of your spare time to become a borderline gourmet cook,” said Sam. Mira imagined him shaking his head and she grinned. “I mean, I’ve got to eat,” she pointed out. “Might as well eat well, you know?”

“Sure, sure,” said Sam. “Yet I, faced with precisely the same conundrum, am microwaving a TV dinner tonight.”
Mira was stunned at this. “But I thought you were…”

“Wealthy? Yeah. I’m also an amateur sommelier, incredibly stuck up when it comes to wines. So where’s the disconnect, you wonder?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t,” said Sam. “I know for a fact where the disconnect is. Even though I have a lot of options, I must make to you a fatal confession: I am very lazy. I am, very possibly, the world’s laziest man, Mira. You should know that, right upfront. I know it’s not an attractive quality, but honesty is an attractive quality and I’m hoping the goodness of the latter makes up for the awfulness of the former.”

“It might,” said Mira, who had begun to laugh during his rather odd speech.

“Laugh if you want, it’s ridiculously difficult to live a good life when you’re this lazy,” said Sam laconically. “It’s awful: I have so much money about me that I’m able to do nothing, you see? My fortune enables one of the worst things about me…”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“Half am, half not. I’m lazy, but it’s not a terrible thing,” said Sam. “I firmly believe that everyone needs a bit of laziness about them. It’s like Aristotle said: Too much of a good thing, you know, is always a bad thing. Even when that good thing is industriousness. The virtue is in the middle.”

“You read Aristotle?”

“I follow the tweets of someone who does,” said Sam, laughing again. “Now. You called, so what’s up?”

“Oh—I got the strangest text the other day,” said Mira.

“Strange?”

“Strange means ‘cool’, did you know? In Old English, or something. They literally come from the same root.”

“Weird, that’s definitely not what it means today.”

“Yeah, I know—it’s a bit like how ‘awful’ used to mean ‘awe-inspiring’ but now it just means ‘horrible’. Language is weird.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway—this weekend?”

“Yeah?” Sam’s voice sounded a bit more hopeful at this. “You in?”

“I think I am,” said Mira. This entire conversation had easily been the highlight of her day. She suddenly couldn’t wait for Saturday. “What will we be doing?”
“Er,” said Sam. “Well.”

“What?” She couldn’t imagine what had transformed this previously brazen man—who had just admitted, after all, to what many women considered to be a fatal flaw in the opposite sex—to now turn tongue-tied.

“Well, before I thought of you as some sort of amateur four Michelin star chef, I had signed us up for a cooking lesson.”

“What?”

“Like, I didn’t mean for it to be pedantic or sexist or weird or anything,” said Sam. “One of my friends went on a date at one with his girlfriend, and they said it was lovely—lots of tasting samples, and they were laughing the whole time, and there were paired drinks served—“

“No, no, it sounds great,” said Mira. “It’s just—not what I was expecting.”

“Well, it’s based on a theory I have,” said Sam.

“Let’s hear it, then,” said Mira. She went across her apartment and laid on her bed. The conversation she was having had put her entirely at ease with Sam, which was a very unexpected result of the conversation. She wouldn’t have believed it would have been possible.

“Well,” began Sam. “The traditional first date is dinner and a movie, right?”