The Hated Billionaire by Erica Frost

Chapter 6: Brett

I couldn’t stop thinking about Christina. I was annoyed with myself – after all, I had a lot to do and I really had to be preparing for the big meeting tomorrow evening. I didn’t need distractions right now.

And almost walking into Christina had been distracting.

I recalled her lovely figure – trim waist, generous curves, pale skin. I hadn’t realized how much I longed to kiss that sweetly-perfumed skin, how I wanted to bury my face in her hair and breathe that elusive, fresh fragrance of her.

“Come on, Brett,” I told myself sharply. This was no time for flights of imagination. I had a lot of work to do.

I was sitting in my sitting-room, just the other side of the open-plan kitchen. I am very fond of my apartment – it was a real surprise to find something so absolutely high-quality at a reasonable price. Well, okay, reasonable in terms of someone who is owner of a company that grossed three billion last year. But all the same, it was a bargain. Yes, I might have a multibillion-dollar company, but I didn’t always have one, and I sometimes struggle with spending money a bit. I guess it was how I was brought up. My family had been comfortable, but not wealthy, and I sometimes struggled to accept my own wealth and the luxury of my surroundings.

I wasn’t thinking of the beautiful granite floor or the stunning coffee-table, though. I was thinking of the beautiful face of my senior executive. She looked so surprised! This morning, when I had actually spoken to her in her office, she had clearly thought I was nuts.

I guess I was acting a bit weirdly, but I knew I couldn’t help myself. If I had an opportunity to speak with her, I intended to take it. I leaned back on the couch, feeling restless.

“I guess I should tidy something.”

I have a bad habit of leaving dishes in the sink. It is all very well until you can’t put stuff in the sink anymore and you happen to have guests. That had happened to me once, and it was very embarrassing. I went through to put the dishes away.

As I dried the plates, I found myself thinking about the meeting tomorrow. My own part was to convince the board, while Christina would be presenting the current and future state of the company, and the marketing guys would do their presentation about how we were going to market it. I thought about Christina doing the presentation. Or rather, I thought about Christina.

“Damn it,” I muttered to myself, though I was grinning as I walked through to the black granite tiles. I was amused by how she was never far from my mind.

I pushed away images of Christina in a tight shirt and black skirt. It was what she had been wearing the other day. I absolutely wasn’t going to stare at her gorgeous body, I was there to listen to the talks.

I finished tidying the kitchen, and remembered to call my brother. I had been meaning to call him for ages, but until now I hadn’t had any time. I sat down and phoned.

“Hey! Teagan,” I greeted him. “How’s it?”

“Okay,” he replied, stifling a yawn. “Not bad. How are you?”

“Good, good. Busy but not as busy as I should be; that sort of day.”

“Sounds good,” Teagan said.

“Maybe,” I replied with a shrug. I have always found it a bit tricky talking to Teagan. He was a champion baseball player, and since an injury to his knee he has since gone into being a spokesperson and advisor for sports facilities planning. He earns well, but I have always worried that maybe he has a grudge against me – though he has never said anything of the sort before. I had made a lot of money, while his glittering career had suffered a setback. And it was a difficult thing to address because I was always intimidated by him as a kid – he was such a big figure in sports. “It was quite a tiring day,” I added, feeling myself yawn.

“Well, I can agree with you if you’ve had enough of meetings,” he said with a grin. “I have had a week full of them. We’re talking about budgets. You know…it really annoys me how these politicians always talk about money. You’d think their job was to save the country money, not to serve us.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “It must be pretty frustrating.” I was interested in his work, but we worked in such different sectors that it was not always easy to talk about stuff. I wished I could really connect with him and talk about everyday things, like how I felt about Christina. I was a bit shy of discussing that sort of stuff with him – maybe because girls had always hung around him when we were young, but none of them really seemed to notice his little brother.

“Well, I guess it’s what I do,” he said with a sigh, his comment bringing me back to the moment. “How were your meetings and stuff? Tiring, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably less stressful than yours. Different sort of meetings, really. Though not that different. Still about money, and how to get it out of people.” I chuckled, self-deprecatingly.

“No, probably not that different,” he agreed with a laugh. “You mentioned you had a big one coming up.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I should probably look into that a bit more this evening. I guess I am just tired.” I felt another yawn coming on.

“Have you had dinner?” he asked. I chuckled.

“I’ve started cooking something. I know I sometimes forget.” I often came back late from the office after meetings and didn’t have dinner. Not intentionally, just because I was too tired.

“Brett, I know you know how bad that is,” he said, concernedly. “You need to have enough energy, you know. You burn more than you think just using your brain.”

“Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “I know I need to eat. I really do just forget.”

“Yeah. Well, if I invite you for dinner, you don’t have any excuse. Will you come down next week?”

“Um, yeah,” I agreed. It was a surprise that he would invite me for dinner – I always had the impression he was too busy to have dinner with me. Or that he didn’t really like my company.

“Great,” my brother said. “I’ll see you then.”

“See you, bro.”

We hung up. It felt good, having spoken to my brother. He was oddly reassuring in my life. After all, he was a big star way before I had my company. My company shot up rather swiftly – being a billionaire and CEO by the time you are thirty-one is weird, and anyone would need somebody as a sort of advisory role. Something like a father figure, without the scary authority connotations. That was Teagan, for me. Our own father had separated from our mother when we were both young, and Teagan had more or less taken over his role in my life by the time I left home.

It would be nice, I thought, to have dinner with him.

I finished tidying the kitchen and went through to my room.

I looked around, a small smile lifting my lip as I took in the soft carpet, the white walls and designer furniture, the bed with its pure cotton covers. I was sure that lots of people thought that I got up to all sorts of bad-boy stuff in this bedroom, but really, all I did in bed was check budget reports and sleep. I had never actually been much of a one for wild parties, though the press tended to speculate, at a low level, about me, and I let them.

It didn’t hurt to let people think I was getting up to all sorts, with all sorts of people.

I suppose people expect bad behavior from the rich and sort-of famous, but I was really quite boring – I had a few long-term girlfriends, but mostly they had been people my family more-or-less directed me at: relatives of my school friends and college friends, people my parents had thought were the “proper” girlfriends for me. I hadn’t fallen in love before. I wondered idly if I ever would.

I reached for my book, then I put it aside and went to shower. I let the warm water sluice over my body and I found myself thinking about Christina. I imagined her here with me, her lovely butt pressed against my naked belly, her curvy thighs stroking up against me as I reached around and ran my hands down her wet skin, reaching lower and lower.

I imagined my cock hard and thick as I pushed against her back, my hands moving around to her belly and moving lower, rubbing between her thighs as she gasped in surprise.

“Oh, come off it,” I told myself aloud as I stepped out of the shower. I was hopelessly aroused.

There was no way I should be thinking like that.

I was going to be sitting across a table from her tomorrow! If I was visualizing her naked, it wasn’t going to do any good at all. I had to be focused. I tried to get the image out of my mind but my body was pretty fixated.

I got into bed and lay back on the soft, warm pillows and tried to think. I had an important meeting tomorrow and I needed to sleep. I absolutely did not need my mind filled with crazy images of one of the staff who would probably slap me half-silly if I asked. She was absolutely not what I needed to be focused on.

I reached for my book and tried to read.