Page 100 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

“An ironic and dorky occasion cookie bakery,” he says.

I smile. That’s the description on my blog. Or maybe he saw my Instagram. “Somebody did their homework.”

“I always do my homework,” he says. “Did you ever think about looking for an investor?”

“No,” I say. “I need it to be mine. It’ll be all mine, and it’ll be amazing.”

He asks where I got the idea for my ironic cookies, and I tell him the whole long story, which involves a bet with a friend about the existence of Bathtub Party Day, and me rubbing it in through creative baking. Theo doesn’t believe Bathtub Party Day is a real holiday, either, so I make him Google it. He finds it. Of course, he’s disgusted. He’s delightful when he’s disgusted.

I tell him about Compliment Day and Donut Day and High Five Day. He thinks I’m making all of them up, and it’s funny every time he discovers they’re real, and we’re laughing about it when a shadow appears over our table. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

It’s a man with a pinkish complexion and a ball cap.

“I recognized you from theTribarticle and I wanted to thank you,” he says to Theo. He tells us a story about his son falling off a ladder. Without Vossameer, his son would’ve died—apparently, the EMTs told him so.

Theo nods. He thanks the man politely, even tries to divert the conversation to the medical personnel’s hard work, but the man is having none of it. He shows us three pictures of his kid playing in the park before he lets us get back to breakfast.

When the man is gone, Theo huffs out an exasperated breath. “Where were we?”

“Dude. Was that just an annoyance to you? Your product thatyouinvented saved his boy. Doesn’t that make you feel good?”

“It’s a product.”

“That saves lives.”

“I think there were EMTs involved in saving his boy’s life. Medical professionals who knew how to deploy it. I think that’s what he needs to focus on.”

“It doesn’t make you feel good? Not at all?”

“I made millions selling blood coagulant. Does that make me feel good? Every time I look out my penthouse window at Central Park.”

I watch his eyes, not buying it. And suddenly I’m thinking about his whole weird antihero thing. “I think you’re full of shit right now.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I shove at his leg with my foot. “I think you care.”

Suddenly he has my foot. “You sure? Last I checked, I was the asshole of the century.”

I shove at his thigh again. He starts working off my shoe.

“I’m going to need that shoe.”

He has his dirty-sex look. “Not where I’m taking you.”

“Fuck.The fuck. Off.”

“You’re a bad wake-up-call girl.” He lowers his voice. “You’ve been nothing but trouble.”

“If you think we’re fucking in that bathroom, you are so wrong.”

Theo lets go of my shoe when the waiter comes to pour more coffee while giving my giant bag of sugar the side-eye. Theo just gives me a sexy-eye. This guy. He melts me.

“Your family owns a pizzeria?” he asks when we’re alone again. “That’s where you’ll work out of in Fargo?”

“It’s not as glam as it sounds,” I joke.

But there’s this silence where that’s not the issue. The issue is about ending whatever is between us that isn’t supposed to be anything.

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