Page 34 of Most Eligible Billionaire

I try my best not to slump or appear to crumble. Did I go overboard in all of my enthusiasm? Lose my judgment? Yes.

But it felt good while I was making it.

“What do you call it?”

“Smuck U,” I say.

She looks confused.

I pull out the sandal medallion. “Inspired by my dog, Smuckers.”

She tilts her head. “What’s the thinking?”

I look up and down. She thinks I’m crazy already, so it can’t get worse, right? I pull out the bracelet. “People have tried to push Smuckers around. Take things away from him. Smuckers wears bow ties, and he’s cute and fluffy, but he is so done with people pushing him around. So done.”

Everyone is looking at me now.

“Cuff bracelet. All metal is a pink alloy. This is what you wear when…” I pull out the choker and hold it up to my neck. “Well, it’s what you wear whenever you feel like it. It’s high-end, but not playing the high-end game.” I pull out a bracelet and lay it flat. On the front of each medallion, the size of a quarter, is a fun painted animal face. On the back are the various messages.Zoinks. Hell no. Hell yes. Smuck U.“It’s not about what the world tells you to be. It’s about what makes you feel alive. This is for a woman who’s so done with being pushed around.”

Do I sound like a crackpot? Probably.

The buyer gazes at the prebuyers. Back at the Smuck U collection. Back at me. “I like it, but it doesn’t work for us, and especially not…it’s not what we had slotted.”

I thank them for their time and get out of there, down the elevator, out onto the sunny sidewalk where I’m jostled by pedestrians and assaulted by the scent of diesel trucks and burned hot dogs.

I just blew the biggest meeting of the year.

I might be making sequined dog collars for the rest of my life.

And I feel…happy.

Eleven

Henry

She’s latefor the board meeting. Almost ten minutes late. I’m surprised. I keep watching the elevators across the vast empty space that, since this is Manhattan, costs more per square foot than a Bentley.

Brett rocks back in his chair and says, “Somebody didn’t read the bylaws as well as she should’ve.”

The bylaws stipulate that if you’re fifteen minutes late without alerting anyone, the board votes your percentage. It’s a rule that was originally created so meetings wouldn’t get held up if our grandfather decided to grab a dozen glazed bear claws from Jolly’s on the way in from Long Island.

“Let’s do this.” I pull up the motion to strip her of her votes and enter it into the agenda with a sense of disappointment.

I was looking forward to today. Perverse, I know. But I’m curious to see what’s next in the pretty little scammer’s playbook. Does she cram on the bylaws? Bide her time until she attains expertise in all things Locke, and then go in for the kill?

Or does she play bull in the china shop, making us suffer and squirm until we make her a better offer?

Does she cut in a lawyer? Somebody to read everything that comes up for vote? I definitely wouldn’t blame her if she did that, considering what we pulled in that last meeting.

Mandy seconds the additional agenda item and moves that we consider it first.

Kaleb seconds the emotion.

At thirteen after, right as we’re about to vote her off the island, the elevator doors open.

I sit up, heart pounding.Saved by the bell,I think, folding my hands in front of me, ready to give her the amused smile that seems to annoy the stuffing out of her. Ready for another one of her prim-but-strangely-hot librarian outfits.

But it’s not her.

---