Her Billionaire Toy Boy

To get his mind off of Mira, Sam fixed an eagle eye upon Damien and tried to turn the conversation around. “And you? What are you up to these days?”

“Currently got two on the ropes,” Damien said, casually. Sam cringed. Damien leaned back in his chair as if to think, to recall. “Oh, great…can’t remember which boxes they check…hold on…”

Sam watched as Damien pulled up his phone and scrolled on it. Was he looking at texts? Pictures?

“Oh, yeah,” said Damien. “One’s a ginger and the other’s an actress.” He flashed a smile up at Sam. “Scoring big time over here.”

Again, Sam had a very hard time persuading himself that this was not ridiculously abhorrent behavior.

“You’re seeing both at the same time?”

“Yeah, more efficient that way. And I’m leading the charts, look,” said Damien; and he minimized his game window to pull up a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet did, in fact, show that Damien’s points were in the triple digits, whereas Sam was trailing in the upper seventies.

“Gotta get your head in the game, Sam,” remarked Damien. “’Course, this cougar you’re seeing—“

“Her name is Mira,” Sam said automatically; and then he wished that he hadn’t. The less information that Damien had on her, the better.”

“Sure, whatever,” Damien said, waving this away. “I think I can be generous. I’ll award a time bonus: If you score with her sooner rather than later, I’ll double the—“

“Shut up, Damien,” said Sam, coloring.

“No big deal,” said Damien. “I’d take the points, though, man.”

“Right,” said Sam. He looked at his feet and then stood. “I’m going to head home.”
“Okay,” said Damien. He looked up. “We have that corporate retreat in three weeks, though, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Sam, wondering why Damien was bringing this up. “Corporate Retreat” was likely a generous term for what was actually slated to occur—a boozy wine tour of Sam’s estates, to do a nominal quality check of the product. It was an annual and much-anticipated event.

“Yeah, well, this year, I’m going to invite Lydia and Robin,” said Damien, turning back to his computer, getting ready to get back to his game.”

Sam sat back down. “What?”

Damien smirked at him. “Sam, you know as much as I do that this retreat is just a thinly veiled excuse for us to get blasted. I thought that having a few friends along would make it even more awesome, you know? We can write them off as additional product testers.”

Sam shook his head. Of course, it didn’t really matter. His satellite homes all had multiple guest rooms and he could certainly afford the extra bottles of wine this meant that they would go through. He just didn’t love how Damien was growing to walk all over him. The power dynamics in their relationship felt like they were slowly shifting, and Sam was unsure how to correct the tilt.

Just now, he was very tired and didn’t feel like starting a fight.

Sam schlepped over to his apartment—not a far walk away from his workplace; definitely one of the perks of being a billionaire as well as CEO of his niche operation. A cool breeze wafted through the air. He thought about Mira and the rather shady play he was constructing behind her back. He thought about trying to pull out of the game—making it clear to Damien that he wanted no further part in the point system, ceding to Damien, telling Damien that he had won. Sam winced. He already knew that Damien wouldn’t be okay with that. He imagined the look of surprise and then disdain which would flash over his friend’s face—and then, with a stuttering shock, Sam realized that he couldn’t possibly pull out of the game. For he knew precisely what Damien would do to make sure that this was never an option for Sam. Damien had so much dirt on Sam, game-related dirt. So many women whose phone numbers they both knew.

Especially now. If Sam were to pull out of the game now, Damien would know for sure that the woman Sam was now seeing was the reason he was ditching his friend—for that was precisely how Damien would see it: as a betrayal and as an end to their friendship. It wouldn’t be any good that Sam had tried to conceal Mira’s identity, he’d already failed. Damien would stop at nothing to figure out who she was and how he could contact her.

It wouldn’t even be very difficult, Sam thought, his heart plummeting. Mira had been a customer at one of their restaurants. That would give Damien a full name, right there.

Sam arrived at his place. His mind drifted to the other option: He could render any potential, future blackmail on Damien’s part moot by simply telling Mira. He had that option. He could easily make it happen.

But what he risked by doing so!

He liked this woman, and he could so easily see that he would be in the position of nipping everything they potentially had completely in the bud by being too honest at this too-early stage in their nascent relationship.

Sam pulled a beer out of his fridge and settled down on his couch, trying to pull his mind away from the awful place in which he found himself—metaphorically speaking. As he had quite the pile of resources, his apartment building and the penthouse thereof, which he inhabited, were both quite nice. Lots of marble was involved and he had a sweeping spiral staircase just off the elevator door, which opened right into his foyer.

He flicked through various shows on various streaming services, none of which were able to steal his attention for more than a minute or two. His mind kept going back to the wonderful conversation he had had just earlier that day – in what now seemed like a long-ago, happier time, before he realized the implicit stakes involved – the rambling, witty, funny, endearing time he had had with Mira Jamb.

*****

Mira herself was fast asleep when all of this was going down. After she had gone about the rest of the business in her day, she had found herself in the peculiar—yet for her, perennial—position of being even more tired after a day of ostensible rest, than she often would have been after a day of the dramatic drudgery which was so often her job while she was at work.

Accordingly, she had gone home. She had pulled some chicken broth out of the refrigerator, broth she had made herself off chicken bones she had kept and frozen, and decided to make some pad thai. Pulling ginger, scallions, and basil out of her fridge, pantry and tiny windowsill garden, she chopped and stewed until she had a quick Vietnamese-ish dinner. Once this was consumed it was late at night and she decided to turn in early.

After she had gone about her usual night routine—hands washed, creams smoothed onto her dark face, lavender oil in the diffuser on her bedside table—she curled up with a book. But she found herself staring beyond the pages with a half-smile playing about the corners of her lips.

He was young, to be sure, but he spoke so quickly–which meant that he must think quickly, as the witticisms falling from his lips were not the sort which could have been premeditated. She’d have to be on her toes with this one—she could already tell. Mira picked up her phone and scrolled quickly through the scant history of messages she and Sam shared, and grinned. She rarely let herself be optimistic anymore these days, but it was hard not to with Sam.

Only three days until their ‘first’ date. Only three workdays to get through.

Mira could hardly wait.