Robert, Her Billionaire Widower

“Vanessa!” he said excitedly. “I’m so glad you’re here. Come in, come in. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like some coffee or tea? Perhaps a cold beverage would be preferable?”

“Some coffee would be lovely,” said Vanessa, “especially if we are going to be talking about what you want me to do for you. I’d like my mental faculties to be as sharp as possible so that I can give you exactly what you are looking for.”

“Great,” said Robert with a smile. He told his butler to make them some coffee and to bring some snacks as well and they sat down in his opulent living room and began to talk.

“So,” said Vanessa, wanting to take charge of the situation as she so often enjoyed doing. “I have a feeling that what you want me to do is similar to a biography. Would this be correct?”

“This is absolutely correct,” said Robert. “I would like you to ghostwrite a biography of Marie for me. You will be credited, of course, and you will earn a good deal of money from it. I will give you royalties from the book and you will be paid a salary while you are working for me as well.”

“That sounds great,” said Vanessa. “So what exactly would this job entail?”

“You will come here and interview me,” said Robert. “You can simply ask me anything you want to know, but I think it would be beneficial if I gave you my own recollections of my wife. I could start with the day I met her and we could go from there. What do you think?”

“Yes, that would be best,” said Vanessa. “I think I would enjoy that a lot. We can have a two hour session during which I will take notes and after which I can ask you any questions I might have about what you have just told me. Does that seem fair?”

“That sounds absolutely perfect,” said Robert with a big smile. He looked even more handsome while he smiled, and Vanessa was surprised that was even possible. He was ridiculously handsome to begin with, but somehow his smile brought out his eyes even more. It gave him a more human look, a look of warmth and love which Vanessa really appreciated. She realized that he and his wife had shared a lot in common. They shared the ability to make the people that they were talking to feel absolutely comfortable. They had a way of behaving that made the people around them feel like they were in the presence of friends rather than in the presence of some of the most powerful people on the face of the Earth.

The coffee arrived along with an assortment of cakes and pastries. Robert poured coffee for Vanessa and took some pastries and placed them on a plate for her as well. She couldn’t believe how nice he was, how down to Earth. Here he was, one of the richest men in the world, and he was taking food out for Vanessa as if he was nothing special, as if he didn’t have a butler that would do this for him. Vanessa found herself more and more attracted to him. She found she was so attracted to him it was reaching s*xual proportions and this concerned her because this man was going to be her boss. He was going to be paying her to write a memoir about his dead wife. It was highly unethical for her to have s*xual feelings towards this man.

Vanessa decided to steer the conversation in a direction that was as objective and impersonal as possible. She decided to talk about money.

“So,” said Vanessa. “What would you be paying me for this work?”

“Straight and to the point,” said Robert with a smile. “I like that. What do you think this work is worth? I honestly don’t know how much a ghostwriter is supposed to be paid. You will get royalties, of course, but as for your salary, I don’t think I would be able to give you an adequate estimate. I don’t want you to feel like I’m cheating you. Name your price and I will pay it.”

Vanessa thought for a moment. Writing was difficult work and it deserved adequate payment. However, she did not want Robert to feel like she was cheating him. She didn’t want him to feel like she was just trying to squeeze as much money out of him as possible.

She thought long and hard. The amount had to be one that both of them would be comfortable with, because, after all, she didn’t want to be paid too much either. She wanted to be paid as much as she deserved to be paid, and this meant that she would have to give him a number that represented an accurate degree of just how much work she was doing.

“I think,” said Vanessa, “that a flat payment of about eight thousand dollars per month would do. It will take me about three months to get the research done and about three more months to write the novel. That means that you will be paying me around forty eight thousand dollars in total for this book. Does that seem fair?”

“It does,” said Robert. “How about we make it an even fifty? I quite like even numbers and I’m sure that you won’t mind having an extra couple of thousand to spend, would you?”

“I certainly wouldn’t,” said Vanessa with a smile. Once again, she was impressed at how unlike a stereotypical billionaire Robert was. Most billionaires could be quite stingy which was rather ironic when you considered the fact that they were worth so much money. A billionaire would have beaten her down to forty and would have grumbled if she did not settle for that amount. Robert, however, was clearly different. He clearly did not view his money as something he would have to hoard.

She liked him, objectively speaking. She liked the fact that he had not made his money his entire life. She thought it might be a little silly to like him so much for giving her a couple thousand dollars extra when he was worth so many billions but at the end of the day it was the little things that make up who we are. Vanessa had expected him to act like every other billionaire and try to get her to do more work for less pay, but he had behaved in exactly the opposite way. She found this extremely attractive.