Page 59 of Most Eligible Billionaire

“Smuckers is just a dog.” He glances over at me. “Is that better?”

“A dog your mother left her company to.”

“You think I’m jealous of a dog? Please, Vicky. If I wanted to wear my hair in a marshmallow Afro and live in a woman’s purse, I think I could find a way to arrange it. This is New York, after all. There is probably a dominatrix out there who’d make it happen.”

I cross my arms. “You know what I find weird? People aren’t freaking out about Smuckers’s control of the company very much. They all seem to think it’s a PR stunt.”

“A lot of people see it as a PR stunt. Connected to his dog shelter gift.”

“And you’re letting them think that.”

“We are.”

“Why not tell people the truth?” I ask. “Unless…I don’t know…”

He says, “Unless we have more evil plans to get rid of you?”

I say nothing. Because, yeah, does he have yet another trick up his sleeve? I wish I could just tell him—don’t worry, you’ll get it back.

But how can I expect Carly to keep her word if I don’t keep mine?

“You know how many people we employ?” Luckily he answers the question for himself. “Directly, we employ three hundred forty thousand people across ten offices worldwide. When you count vendors and subcontractors, it’s double that. Those are real people with real lives and families and homes, people who depend on the health of this firm to make house payments and put food on the table. Do I want to announce that a Maltese is in charge of all that?”

I wait. I know a rhetorical question when I hear one.

“No. I’m not going to rock the company with that kind of announcement. I’m showing them that things remain consistent after Bernadette’s death. I want them feeling strong, steady, capable leadership.”

“Okay.” I make myself not look at his hands. I try not to think too hard about him caring about people. Or turning out so different from Denny.

We have a late lunch at a sidewalk café in Soho. It feels like a date. He asks me a lot of questions about my life and my jewelry biz. He seems really interested in the makers studio, and I swell with pride talking about it, because it’s such an awesome space and an amazing group of people.

Then I remember he’s not my boyfriend. He’s not even my friend. He’s an entitled wealthy man who thinks I’m going to come to him and beg him to take me.

I keep my distance.

I tamp out every spark that lights between us. Sometimes I feel like Smoky the Bear, stomping sparks left and right. Too many to stomp out.

Day after day.

Biding my time.

The worst are those moments when he lets down his guard, when he stops being beloved playboy Henry Locke. When it feels real.

It’s a mindfuck when it feels real.

Here is the last guy you should ever trust or want. He’s fooling you. Fake seducing you. And you want him anyway!

The mindfuck of hanging out with Henry twists and contorts into confusing new shapes every hour over the following days.

The man is on this kick of showing me every aspect of the company. “You need to understand things to vote out of a place of knowledge,” he says.

This involves Smuckers and me getting picked up in a limo and taken to a different part of New York or New Jersey and meeting people and learning new things that a giant company does.

Building turns out to be a small part of the Locke activities. Every one of those companies that got listed off in the will reading has its own little empire of activity.

Henry does work in the car and discusses corporate things on the phone with the people we meet. He’s good at what he does. He really cares. Is this his new method of seduction?

On one outing we tour a nearly finished building that has a zero carbon footprint—it’s heated and cooled through underground circulating water. Super green. Henry’s excited.

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