The Billionaire’s Full Figured Desire

Frida rolled her eyes at her own internal monologue, especially at the words “gentle snoring.” It was only the second time that she was waking up next to him, and yet even she knew all too well that there was nothing gentle about Terrence’s snoring, a longstanding fact about him that, to that very day, he continued to absolutely and unequivocally deny. Frida had made promise many a time to record him while he slept, to provide final proof that would put the discussion to bed, but she’d never gotten around to it.

Terrence stirred again, and Frida caught her breath. It seemed as though confrontation was unavoidable in this instance. Of course, there was always the possibility that Terrence had no such desire to revisit their argument from the previous afternoon-stroke-evening any more than she did. A lack of desire to argue contradicted pretty much everything that Frida knew about Terrence and the male gender as a whole, to voice the truth of it, but a woman can dream, couldn’t she? What have we if not our dreams? Another saying.

Sayings were pretty much how Frida kept it all together in her head. Especially ones that supported the sanity in feelings of hopelessness against the “establishment” or “the man” for lack of a better name. Because at the end of the day, nobody wants to feel crazy, and there’s nothing more comforting than the realization that you’re just as sane as the rest of the world. Or conversely, that the rest of the world is just as crazy as you. It could work either way, in Frida’s experience.

And so there Frida lay; in bed for the best part of two hours, her mind racing into overdrive. And in all her restless thinking, she began tossing and turning so restlessly that she ended up waking up Terrence too. The good news of that situation was that instead of rehashing their argument from the previous night, he’d sensed her anxiety, probably guessed what it was about and volunteered to make her breakfast this time. Terrence was no gourmet cook, but he made excellent scrambled eggs.

Frida wasn’t surprised to learn that the nervousness that she had felt all day didn’t disappear, even after seeing Terrence’s review in the newspaper the next day. It was as she expected, a glowing review from a well-known food critic that, if Frida didn’t know him, would’ve been an excellent thing for the restaurant. Unfortunately, however, the man in question was having breakfast at her kitchen table.

Frida shook her head and scolded herself for even putting the word “unfortunately” in the same sentence as Terrence’s name. Their meeting wasn’t unfortunate, not in any way, shape, or form. But in many ways, it was the best thing that had happened to her for a long time, even comparable with becoming head chef at L’Ultima Cena. And they hadn’t even known each other for much time at all; a handful of days, if that! Instead of dwelling on the one argument that they’d actually had since they’d met, Frida decided to dwell on the high moments of their…relationship? Why not call it a relationship? And, if the truth were to be told, there were quite a few high moments, it could not be denied. Not by Frida, not by Terrence, not by anybody.

Suddenly, Frida heard a gentle buzzing and a soft ringtone from the lounge. She smiled as she realized that it was her phone ringing from the coffee table. She had deliberately left it in the lounge the previous night so that if it went off the noise wouldn’t wake Terrence. This was, of course, after he’d brushed aside all of her concerns about where his priorities lay.

Perhaps she’d been unfair to hound him with questions like that, he had been under a lot of pressure too. But then again, he was willing to tank the review to save his own skin, and Frida didn’t know that she could knowingly sacrifice his reputation for the restaurant? Would she do that? Or could she do that was most certainly a better answer?

Frida quietly slipped out of bed, taking great care to barely rustle the bedspread or creak the mattress and plodded barefoot out of the bedroom into the lounge. There she found her phone sitting on the coffee table, exactly where she’d left it. Frida was fairly certain that she had a touch of the obsessive-compulsive because whenever she left something valuable somewhere, she always had to leave some kind of distinguishing mark so that she could always tell if it had been used or moved. Like for example, she’d put her phone down, but deliberately face-down and at a jaunty angle.

If she came back and it was face-up, someone had touched it. If it was no longer pointing six degrees south, someone had touched it. Just what she planned to do with this information had never been made official, not even to her, but knowing was a start, wasn’t it?

Frida picked up the phone and answered it. A gruff male voice on the other side went. “Morning, boss.”

Frida hardly recognized Andrew Ferguson’s tone of voice; even after years of knowing him, she’d never heard him so grave. One thing was clear to her, though, she definitely didn’t like it. It was blood-curdling, bone-chilling, and sent a cold and uncomfortable shiver running down her spine. Call her dramatic and a drama queen until the cows came home, but Frida knew her friend. And while Andrew had a tendency to be nonchalant, he was never grave.

Gravity (meaning solemn seriousness or importance, not the natural cosmic phenomenon) is an emotion, which is the opposite of nonchalance. And when Andrew Ferguson was emotional, that gave Frida cause to be worried. Because what boded ill for Andrew boded ill for everyone in her opinion.

“Morning, Andy,” Frida said, using her preferred pet name for her sous chef. “What’s wrong, you sound down?”

“Boss, you’d better get over here,” Andrew said seriously. “Actually, don’t. I don’t want you to see this.”

“See what?” Frida asked, her heart beating rapidly. “What’s going on there?”

“Last night,” Andrew said. “There was a critic at our restaurant. And there are some witnesses who claim that you, boss, knew about him.”

“What?!” Frida’s heart positively skipped a beat. “That’s horse sh*t!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Andrew said. “They have all the evidence they need.”

“All the evidence for what?” Frida asked frantically. “You’re not being fired are you?”

Andrew snorted at this. “Fired? I wish I was fired. What’s happening is much, much worse. No, they’re disbanding the company and shutting down the restaurant. It’s over, Frida. It’s over.”

The air in Frida’s lungs vanished.