The Billionaire’s Wake-up-call Girl (Billionaires of Manhattan, #2)

by Annika Martin

Trust me, that’s a nice way of putting it. The current Vossameer site looks like it was made by depressed robots in 1998.

want you to add something,” she says. “Think of gummy bears while looking at my nose. Never my eyes, just my nose. It’ll make you seem distant and a little stupid.”

practice talking to her nose. We talk to each other’s noses and

turn my vacant eyes to Mr. Drummond’s nose, channeling gummy bears. I act like I’m pondering his nose. Like it’s so amazing, I can’t wrap my mind around it.

“Yeah, I don’t know, maybe he’s planning a nap up there or something.

“You won’t let me see you,” he continues. “You won’t let me meet you. Give me this. What would you do today if you could do anything at all?” There’s something about the way he asks the question that makes me feel sad for him. Like a prison inmate asking what the air smells like on the outside. Does he never get to do what he wants? Or is he just tired?

clutch it to me. I should be angry, but mostly I feel tired. And sad for all my lost dreams. For how hard I try all the time.

“And you just rule out investors? Do you have any millionaire friends? Let me think…” Himself, he means.

I get out of there feeling like I’m starting at the foot of the

mountain, rolling the boulder upward, doing the kinds of jobs I did out of culinary school. I’m a better, faster baker, and a better businessperson than I was all those years ago, but in some ways, it’s all actually worse, because I see the steps. I know what a long road it is.

bring the card to my nose and inhale, picking up the faintest traces of a sweet-sharp scent. Like melon and pepper.

I prop my head up on my elbow. We just look at each other for a while. And we’re not playing a game; we’re just looking at each other. And it’s as if the world stills. Everything stops. The wind in the trees. The cats riding the vacuum cleaners. Everything.

When it’s nice out, Theo and I walk around together outside the hotels where we meet before going back to our lives. Now and then, he asks me to come to his place, but I always say no, because that’s a line in the sand for me. The hotels keep everything out of reality.

down to the couch, holding me still. “Everything always has to go perfectly your way. Is that it?” “Yes,” I say. Because that kind of is it. “What are you going to do about it?”

She holds up a flat metal sheet with an evil grin. “For cookies.” I go to her. “In what universe?” I kiss her head. “In what universe am I making cookies?” “Maybe you want to impress some date.” Everything inside me stills. I know it was a joke, but it’s not funny. That’s not a universe I’m interested in inhabiting. Not unless the date is her.

My race for the formula used to be the only thing on the landscape of my life. Now it exists alongside kitchen things and ironic cookies and hotel trysts and long afternoon walks when I should be working.

“On his own, he bought you a gown you love, in your size. It’s like, an Olympic gold medalist level of boyfriend achievement.”

Later that night, I pull my new egg pan out of my cupboard, just to touch something she picked out for me. I turn it over and over, musing about the nature of space and time. How close yet distant that moment was.

It seems baffling that I can touch something she touched last, put my fingers exactly where hers rested, but the whole world is different.

I probably won’t miss the conundrum window.