Page 24 of Meet Jon, the Billionaire

When I hit the street level, I peered around, looking for Jonathon. My street’s a one-way lane, with parking only allowed on one side. I almost walked right into one of my neighbors.

“Sal, what’s going on?”

“Ah, some jerk parked his limo and took up like four spaces… I wish whoever was supposed to come out and ride in it would hurry the fuck up. My wife is circling with a carload of groceries.”

“No kidding,” I said. “Rich jerk.”

“Hey, you look nice,” he said in a non-creepy, grandfatherly way. That was why I liked Sal. “Are you going somewhere special?”

“Oh, a friend asked me out to dinner—”

“Bullshit, you’re blushing. You’re going on a date. Well, I hope this rich jerk gets in their damn limo soon so your date can find you.”

The back door of the limo opened up and I saw Jonathon step out, peering around. It sounds like a cliché, but he looked like a movie star in a three-piece suit that had been expertly tailored to fit around his athletic frame.

I strode away from Sal, feeling a bit foolish. Of course Jonathon was a rich guy. He had a country club membership where the dues started at a million a year, duh. Still, I was a little bit overwhelmed. My heart thudded a mile a minute in my chest as I approached him.

Jonathon spotted me and his azure gaze widened in delight. He sidled through the milling throng and took my hand.

“Amy, you look amazing.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling. Of course, then I realized that I had forgotten two things before I shot out the door. Deodorant and cologne. Oh boy.

Too late to do anything about it now… God, he’s SO good looking…

Jonathon held the door open for me, and I stepped into the back of a limo for the first time since prom.

Chapter Thirteen

Jonathon

The first time that I saw Amelia at the tennis tournament, I’d been intrigued. That intrigue grew into something that seemed to take on a life of its own. Attracted to her? Absolutely. Like a nail to a magnet.

But when I saw her in that sleek black dress, I have to say the only word that works is enchanted. I felt my heart lift up as if on feathered wings and beat about inside of my chest as if it sought to tear free from my corporeal form and be closer to her.

As she got into the limo, the hem of her dress crept up just enough that I could see the lace embroidered tops of her stockings. My heart skipped a beat at the thought that I might get to see the whole thing later.

Some of my male acquaintances have asked me, often in a fit of drunken depression, how I ‘magically’ get gorgeous women to drop their panties for me. My secret is confidence. Nobody wants to hear that, but it’s true. The thing is, though, my confidence was borne as much from the fact that the stakes were often so low than that I believed in myself.

Simply put, I lacked the slight veneer of desperation that tends to leak out of most men around beautiful women. I mean, there would always be another beautiful woman. When you’re rich as I was, they come out of the woodwork.

There was only one Amelia, however, and that fact had begun to sink in. This time, the stakes were very high indeed, and that was eroding my confidence. It’s easy to balance on a beam a few feet above the ground. Most people can do that with ease.

Take that same, stable, wide, and easy to traverse beam and suspend it a hundred feet in the air? Then you have some people who can’t even set foot upon it. That’s because you’ve changed the stakes.

Fate had changed the stakes on me, and I was being much too slow to adapt for my own liking.

“Would you like some champagne?” I asked, opening the mini-fridge.

“Um, no thanks,” Amelia said, flashing a smile. “Not on an empty stomach.”

“I have some energy bars in here, too, if you want.”

“No, God no,” she said, pretty face wrinkling up into a disgusted grimace. “I mean, those things hit my stomach like a ton of lead. You can’t tell me they’re healthy. Give me a jelly donut any day of the week.”

“I rarely get to indulge,” I said. “I’m on a Keto diet.”

“Oh, you poor bastard,” Amelia said with a laugh. “I guess growing up around a bakery meant that I developed the ability to digest baked goods exceptionally well. Carbs don’t seem to affect me.”

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