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The meeting was set up for the next afternoon. Our secretaries had spoken to each other, so I hadn’t actually heard Beverley’s voice, but I got the feeling that she wasn’t pleased. In fact, I had expected her to turn down even before meeting up with me. But, I had a look at the company’s financials, I was aware of their state of affairs. That would have made her desperate to meet with me.
I was sitting behind my desk in my swanky new office, and a smile erupted on my face when I thought about her. Beverley Wade…my biggest competition in college. We had four classes together, and in each one of them she always made a point to try and prove herself to our teachers and to me. She had underestimated me in the beginning. I was captain of the basketball team, I dated cheerleaders…she had probably assumed that I was just a jock. That I was also an ace student and that I’d turn out to be her biggest competitor in class; was not something she anticipated.
Beverley was something of a nerd in college, the exact opposite of me. That is what the rest of the world thought, including her. With black rimmed circular glasses, her dirty blonde hair tied in a ponytail at the back of her head; she was always in oversized t-shirts and plain shirts and ill-fitting jeans. She took pride in her scores, not in her looks. She had a fiery temper and always took the high moral road.
Beverley sat at the front of the class and always had her hand up when questions were asked. While I sat at the back, and if I happened to give the right answers; she never failed to whip around and shoot me a look. But, surprise was always mixed with her rage. She was always shocked that I had the answers and then that shock immediately turned to anger that I had managed to trump her.
My friends thought she was a geek. Everyone thought Beverley was a geek. A fairly attractive geek but a geek nevertheless!
To me, Beverley was delicious. Her anger and competition with me, made me secretly smile and fantasize about taming her. What would Beverley taste of? What would it feel like to pin her
down in my bed? Sometimes, when I slept with another new cheerleader, or a sorority girl…I imagined Beverley’s face and I could never control myself after that. She was like a forbidden fruit. I knew I could never have her. She detested me, but it was exciting just imagining it. Undoing that ponytail, taking off her glasses, overpowering her and making her orgasm. That would teach her.
It wasn’t just sexual though, she challenged me. I found it refreshing to go to class and try to beat her to it, but she never seemed to be having fun. It was always a competition to her, while to me it was just a friendly game. And now we had found ourselves in this position. We had both started tech companies to build apps and games, and we had big ideas for it. We had both moved to Silicon Valley with this idea and very little money in our pockets, and she maintained her distance from me. But in the past four years that we had been here, I had not once bumped into her. It had to be a carefully constructed scenario, I could sense that she had been avoiding me like the plague. Probably because of my company’s success.
I had the backing of wealthy investors within six months of starting Lonex, while I heard that Beverley was still trying to perfect her app. I paid attention to the business side, passing over programing reigns and responsibility to a dedicated team of experts. I focused on expanding my company, while Beverley still wrote her own code, worked with only two programmers and hadn’t found any investors yet.
I wished I could reach out to her and give her some advice, but there was no way that she would have accepted it. In her eyes, I was still the womanizing basketball heartthrob who sweet talked his way into getting better grades. She thought I was an airhead, while she was the genius. And probably I didn’t deserve any of the success I had gathered.
Now here we were. She was on the brink of bankruptcy and I was a billionaire. I didn’t have to talk to her to know that she was not a fan of this situation. But there was no way that I was simply going to sit back and allow Beverley’s company and hard work disintegrate into nothing. Whether we were friends or not, I still believed that she was the smartest person I’d ever met. Buying out her company was a no-brainer. Even if she didn’t look at it as a rescue, that was the only way I knew how to keep her afloat.
It had been close to five years since I last saw her, we were both in our late twenties by now, on two different ends of the spectrum; but I hadn’t stopped thinking about her. I knew nothing about her personal life, I practically knew nothing else other than that her company was sinking; but just the prospect of seeing her again excited me.
Our lives had changed drastically now, and she probably hated me more but I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if we could work together. If we could finally put our differences aside and work as a team. It would require a lot of effort, because Beverley was a tough cookie, but it would ultimately be beneficial to my company as well as to me.
Now, all I had to do was make sure that our meeting the next day went according to plan.
Chapter 3
Beverley
I was nervous the whole way to the Lonex office building. I’d brought Sasha with me for moral support, even though I was the sole proprietor of the company. He was more than happy to tag along; starry-eyed and fresh faced about entering the hallowed halls of the Lenox brand. I could tell that he looked up to Grant. Grant Jennings was his hero, as he was to several others in Silicon Valley. A self-made, good looking guy only in his late twenties who was the poster child of tech start-ups. Every guy wanted to be like him and every girl wanted to sleep with him. I’d read the articles, I kept track of him even though I carefully avoided him.
We walked into the lobby of the building, which looked more like a hotel lobby than an office. People were lounging on purple couches and at the back there was a table tennis area. Beyond the glass walls at the back, I could see a swimming pool and some people eating ice cream. This was definitely a dream job for a lot of people, and I could sense that Sasha was getting excited.
I walked towards the reception area, with Sasha trailing behind and the woman behind the desk looked up at me with a friendly smile.
“We’re here to see Mr. Jennings,” I said abruptly, without any formal greetings.
“Good afternoon, you must be Ms. Wade,” the woman said, the wide smile was still on her face.
I could see everyone around here just looked exceedingly happy and carefree. When did they even work?
“Yes, I am. Is he expecting us?” I said, and the sour look on my face didn’t seem to dissuade her.
“He is, indeed,” she said and I caught her looking past me, her cheeks were turning to a bright red. I could sense him behind me, and then I heard his voice.
“Beverley, how are you?” his voice was deep and it scorched my skin the moment I heard it. His voice had always thrown me off, and even after five years I didn’t seem to have recovered from that effect. I whipped around to find him standing in front of me, with his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans.
I had seen photographs of Grant online and in newspapers, shaking hands with business partners and investors, giving speeches and holding meetings. He was always dressed in sharp suits and yet today, he looked quite different. Very much like I remembered him from college. It was like he hadn’t aged a single day.
The only difference was that he had grown a beard. A neat dark beard that was perfectly trimmed and shaped. His eyes were a painfully bright blue and his features were sharp and chiseled. He hadn’t lost his athletic body, and he towered over me with his wide shoulders and broad chest. Even through the gray t-shirt and jeans combo he had on, I could tell he was hiding bulging muscles and washboard abs. His hair was dark, like his beard and slightly shaggy. Not exactly the look of a ruthless billionaire.
“Hello, Grant,” I found myself saying blankly, while he smiled at me. He had a knowing brilliance in his eyes, like he was somehow glad to see me. And why wouldn’t he be? He was about to buy my company, or at least make me an offer. It was his biggest victory against me to date. I could feel my knees buckling, and I tried to keep my back straight and my chin jut out.
“Mr. Jennings, I’m Sasha Winnings. I’m so glad to finally meet you,” Sasha was gushing beside me and he thrust out his hand to Grant.
“Hello Sasha and please call me Grant,” he said, turning to him for a brief moment before looking back at me again.
