The Billionaire’s Over 40 Love

Chapter 5

Cal woke up with a hard object under his back. His cell phone. It took him a few minutes to remember why his phone was in his bed. She left in the middle of the night, I wonder why—

He didn’t have a hard time making up a legitimate excuse for her. It was, after all, s*x on the first date, and it wasn’t too much of a shocking scenario to leave after the deed. But Cal had had a nice time with her at dinner the night before, and although unbelievably attracted to her, he genuinely liked spending time with her in whatever way he could. It was that thought that caused him uncertainty after their night together.

Maybe she wasn’t interested in anything more, or maybe he wasn’t as interesting as she’d thought. Or maybe it had been bad s*x—no that definitely wasn’t it. He didn’t let himself linger on the possibilities before he got out of bed and started to clean himself up.

It wasn’t until he was getting out of the shower that he realized he didn’t have Faydra’s number to text her how much he’d enjoyed the night before. Idiot, you spent hours with this woman and you didn’t think to ask for her number. Immediately, thoughts of doom surrounded him. This was an asshole move if he ever saw one—he’d slept with her and not taken the time to make sure he’d have a way to contact her again, making it seem as though he wasn’t interested.

He dried off from the shower and took an extra minute to put on a nice suit and tie combo. He decided that he would head over to Faydra’s shop at the end of the day to ask for her number and tell her in person how much fun he’d had last night.

He made it to work a little late but was in a pleasant mood. That was, until Sophia showed up with the worst attitude and dragging two interns behind her.

The three barged through the door to Calvin’s office, not even stopping to check with his secretary. Calvin took a second to take in the group that stood before him, a motley crew if he ever saw one. The two interns, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, had horrified looks in their eyes.

“Whoa, Sophia! You can’t just barge in here, I could have been in a meeting.”

“Well, this is more important than anything else you’re doing, trust me. These interns you assigned me… they’ve singlehandedly been able to ruin all the work we’ve done on the contract with Linkedin and it’s due tomorrow! The code was perfect, the plans were perfect and now it’s gone—a jumbled up mess!”

“Okay, calm down.” Cal looked at the two teary-eyed interns. One had obviously been crying prior to this meeting and the other one refused to make eye contact with him. “I’m sure we can get it fixed, we’ll just need a little time. Have you called them and explained the situation?”

“And what situation is that? That some idiots tried to improve a perfectly good code and in doing so killed everything?”

“Yes,” Cal replied blankly. He hated when she got overdramatic because it made her look dumb, and she wasn’t dumb. In fact, she was one of the most intelligent women he knew, so much so that he had wanted to be with her and start a company with her. But she’d then she started to change into the woman that stood screeching in front of him now.

“No! They should have to call and explain what happened! This is LinkedIn we’re talking about.”

Ah, now it mades sense. Perhaps surprisingly to everyone else at the company, Cal didn’t place as much value on the LinkedIn account as he should have. He wasn’t obsessed with landing a social media giant like they were. Mutualism. He remembered his conversation with Faydra from the night before. That was what he wanted out of his business—not to become some media mogul who had his days planned out to a T.

“Sophia, it’s LinkedIn and that’s exactly why they’ll wait. They don’t need what we’re offering so they must want it, and because of that a few days won’t hurt anything when we explain the situation to them. Please stop torturing the interns and get everyone back to work on the issues until we have a product that’s ready to send out. Got it?”

Sophia paused with a horrified squint across her face. “Are you kidding me? This is my company too…”

Cal’s expression was unamused. She had no claim over the company, though she’d helped him start it. The fact that she worked there was only because he let her stay. A fact she tended to forget.

He was prepared to bicker back and forth with her like he always did but something stopped him.

It was the thought of the beautiful black woman that he’d shared a bed with the night before. A woman who laughed instead of argued and was honest about her needs and wants. She was not Sophia.

“You all are free to leave, get back to work. I’ll be down in a little bit to assess the damage. We’ll work out a game plan to get them their product,” he said to the group but locked eyes with the interns. They retreated, leaving Sophia alone. “I meant all of you, go!” he insisted.

She huffed and trudged away like an angry teenager.

*****

He spent the afternoon in the bullpen with the entire coding and product teams. People were running around and yelling back and forth between cubicles. Half the large area of cubicles waiting for answers and instruction from the other half. It was dark by the time he even had the chance to look down at his watch, and seeing that it was quarter past eight o’clock his heart lurched.

He’d missed his chance to go to the shop and talk to Faydra. He again thought about how angry or upset she might be that he’d slept with her and never called. But then again, she was the one that had slipped out after s*x—maybe she wasn’t interested in anything more. That thought upset him as well.

He had to find a time to go see her at least to get her phone number so that he could talk to her whenever he wanted.

*****

After three days Faydra had given up on Calvin and almost forgotten about him entirely. She wasn’t a complete stranger to late night hookups and one-night stands but she hadn’t had one since college. She was just surprised, although she knew she had no reason to expect anything else. Except maybe she did. He’d been so sweet and had spent a lot of time opening up to her just for it to be a one-time thing.

She remembered how she’d felt that night they’d slept together. The s*x had been amazing, awe-inspiring actually. And she’d collapsed onto him afterward. They tried to talk for a few minutes but both of them ended up drifting off to sleep and that was that. About an hour later she woke up, as it turns out a man’s chest isn’t comfortable enough to sleep on for an entire night. She remembered her car parked outside of the shop and thought about awkward conversations that came the morning after encounters like those. The justifications were there—she needed to get up and leave.