Page 67 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“You don’t like champagne?”

“Yes, but we’re at work right now.”

“Oh, come on, now, you won’t let me treat you to a nice dinner session? A bit of a thank-you? Your story was brilliantly helpful. And this is the best champagne you’ll ever have.” He lifts his glass. “I was Chuckles after all. How about that?”

“I didn’t tell you that story for you to be Chuckles.”

“Why not? I’m happy to be Chuckles. Chuckles was the most dynamic character in your story. I had something to offer Gerrold that I didn’t realize I had—a new story about the two of us. He wants the cow butchered by somebody who will honor the cow. That’s all he ever wanted.”

“Why in the world would I toast to the fact that all of those people that work for Germantown Group are a step closer to losing their jobs?”

Malcolm does his weary sigh, like I’m being entertaining in a tiresome way. “They were always going to lose their jobs,” he says.

“They’ll lose them sooner now. Why should I be glad about that?”

He takes a sip and sets down his glass. “Because it shows what an excellent executive coach you are. You should give yourself a little credit. And that observation you made the other day after that negotiation session—you said, ‘He wants his son to see the beauty in what he built. To see the human value in it instead of looking at it coldly as a commodity.’ It was a good point, though I didn’t know how to act on it until the dog anecdote. You really are brilliant, you know.”

I frown. I meant that about our building, I want him to see the beauty in our building, in our community.

“You are really very good. It’s as if you can’thelpbut be insightful and helpful, even though you were sent to torture and punish me—and not to worry, you are doing a fine job of it, what with the videos—you nevertheless helped me to get a little bit closer to attaining one of my most vital business objectives of this year. Never in my wildest dreams—”

“I told you, I’m not here to punish you.” I swig a full half of my drink and put it down. Francine always says not to swig the bubbly, but I don’t care. “My goal as your coach is for you to have empathy. To see people as humans with hopes and dreams just like you. Trying to do the best that they can and—”

“That part is an especially good touch,” he says. “Here to turn the devil good! To bring heart to the heartless.”

Miserably, I rotate my glass. Am I making everything worse? I didn’t come here to make everything worse.

“You’re not the devil,” I inform him. “And you’re not heartless. And that’s final.”

Malcolm wears a ghost of a smile, meaning his lips don’t actually smile, but his eyes twinkle and his cheekbones become more gorgeously defined. The ghost-of-a-smile look is unbelievably hot on him. But then, most looks are unbelievably hot on him, being that he himself is unbelievably hot.

And the fact that he thinks he’s heartless makes him even hotter. He’s forlorn and dangerous at the same time, a beautiful wounded beast.

Sometimes I have this crazy impulse to put my hand to his chest just to feel his heartbeat, to let him see in my eyes that I feel his heart beating the same as anybody’s heart.

And then I would draw my lips to his ear and whisper that he is not the devil.

And maybe I would kiss him.

Gah. What is wrong with me?

I straighten up. “Also,” I continue, “wanting you to have empathy is not atouch.” I glance down at my phone as my mind crowds with images of pressing my palm to his heart. And maybe I would close my fist and grab up a bit of his shirt and maybe I would twist a little bit. Maybe I would pull him to me.

It’s as if the grumbly gravity of Malcolm and his tragic dark thoughts about himself are turning me into a freak of lust. A predator in my own right.

I ball my non-phone hand into a fist, as if that will keep my libido bottled up inside me. “Seven twenty-two. I hope you don’t think our session has officially begun. Because it hasn’t.”

“Do you like seafood?” he asks. “They have some of the best here.”

“I like seafood,” I say. “Unfortunately, I’m not here for dinner.”

“That is unfortunate, being that a delicious dinner is on the way.”

Right then, the waiter comes with a steaming plate of fried calamari and something that looks like raw tuna encrusted in sesame seeds, plus a plate of bruschetta with red sauce and shaved manchego.

“Your favorite food,” I observe.

“If I recall, it’s one of your favorites too,” he says.

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