Chapter 2
Eli – a billionaire who’d rather be on an island with his shit stirring brothers than in a board room with his shit stirring colleagues
Eli
“Are you listening to me?”
I draw a hand down my face. “Can you repeat the last part?”
Jeremy barks out a laugh. “Dude, I have never seen you this distracted. Not even when you came back to college from Thanksgiving break with a case of poison ivy. You sat for your finals with a cold compress on your forehead.”
“Don’t remind me.” Having five younger brothers who are the definition of shit stirrers is a damn trial.
He waggles his eyebrows. “Is it a woman?”
I shake my head even as a vision of Paisley pops into my mind. Paisley and her long auburn hair with out of control curls. Her hazel eyes always narrowing and flashing with anger whenever she looks at me. The freckles across her nose I want to count with my tongue .
Does she have freckles anywhere else on her body? How I’d love to strip her bare to find out. My cock twitches. It’s on board with the idea.
“Not a woman,” I lie.
“Which is why your eyes went all dreamy and you zoned out for a minute.”
I glare at him. “My eyes didn’t go dreamy.”
He holds up his hands. “At least tell me it isn’t Miranda who you’re dreaming about.”
I scowl. “Not Miranda.”
He drags the back of his hand across his forehead in an exaggerated gesture of relief. “Phew.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s not too bad.”
He chuckles. “Your secretary has been through the entire board of directors. She came on to each and every one of them – man and woman alike. You’re the only one who can put up with her since you’re hardly here anymore.”
I frown. Is he upset I don’t live in California any longer? “You agreed I could move back to Smuggler’s Hideaway and work remotely.”
There’s no need for me to be at the headquarters of Apparoo anymore. In the beginning, when Jeremy had the idea for his app and it was all hands on deck to develop the software and build the business, things were different. But the company is pretty steady now.
I can do most of my work as Chief Financial Officer from Smuggler’s Hideaway. Besides being present for meetings every now and again, there’s no reason for me to be physically present at the headquarters.
“I was merely pointing out a fact.”
I study him. He appears serious. But my former college roommate is a master bullshitter. In college, he’d invent the most outlandish reasons why his assignment was late and the professors would buy it – hook, line, and sinker. I’m still surprised he managed to graduate at all – let alone in four years .
“I don’t want my move to come between us.”
“I get it. You want to be near your family. And since Buccaneer’s Whiskey & Distillery is making waves in the industry, they need you there to guide them through the transition from local distillery to worldwide domination.”
“I never mentioned anything about worldwide domination.”
“But you’re Eli Raider. You don’t know how to not dominate the world.” He throws his arms wide open. “Look at what you’ve accomplished here.”
“I think you’re forgetting about how you’re some genius coder who turns the most outrageous idea for an app into a million dollar line of revenue.”
He pats himself on the back. “It’s true. I am a genius.”
“And modest, too.”
Jeremy stands. “Come on. It’s time for the meeting.”
As soon as I step out of my office, Miranda jumps out of her chair. “Mr. Raider. Do you need my assistance?”
I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes at how she purrs her question. I pat my laptop. “I’m good. ”
She isn’t deterred. She follows us to the meeting room. “What about a coffee?”
I indicate the table where several carafes of coffee and tea are set out.
Jeremy stops her before she can enter the room. “We’re good, Miranda. Go back to your desk.”
She licks her lips as she stares up at him. After a few moments of him staring down at her, she huffs and whirls around before stomping back to her desk.
Jeremy chuckles as he sits at the table. “You have to give her credit. She’s persistent.”
I shrug. I have no interest in my secretary. She’s not the one who heats my blood. “She does her job well.”
“Do you have the presentation ready?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I’m not the one who thinks a deadline is a suggestion.”
“People get way too worked up about deadlines.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re a billionaire.”
“Hey!” He points a finger at me. “You are, too.”
“Because I invested in your app.”
When Jeremy asked for seed money to launch his app company while we were still in college, I offered him the money I’d saved up for the next semester’s tuition. I figured I’d never see the money again and would have to take out a loan for tuition.
Instead, the app had more than one thousand downloads on the first day. And from there, things went crazy.
“Don’t sell yourself short. You worked just as hard as I did those first few years out of college. ”
Between being the CFO for Apparoo and the CEO of Buccaneer’s Whiskey, I still work my ass off. But now, instead of couch surfing to save money, I have a luxurious apartment here in California and my dream house on Smuggler’s Hideaway.
Life is good. If a bit lonely. Thoughts of Paisley flash into my mind again but I force them out. A senior management meeting is not the time or place to think about the woman who hates my guts.
I wake up my laptop and connect it to the screen. I open my presentation and Help me! screeches from the speakers.
“What the hell?” I press escape to get out of the presentation but nothing happens.
Jeremy bursts into laughter. “Look.”
On the big screen, a man labelled Eli is being chased by a shark labeled Miranda. The theme song of Jaws plays in the background while the cartoon Eli screams for help.
“It’s a good thing the other managers haven’t arrived yet,” Jeremy manages to say between his barks of laughter.
I glare at him.
He holds up his hands. “It’s not me who pranked the IT team.”
I grit my teeth. “It was an accident.”
“An accident? Their coffee machine broke and you were doused in coffee. You could have at least covered your tracks.”
I throw my arms in the air. “For the last time. I didn’t break the machine. I was trying to fix it.”
He pats my shoulder. “Maybe you should stick to numbers instead of actual machinery. ”
I growl at him. “Says the man who doesn’t know how a toilet plunger works.”
“You’re the one who wanted to go out for Mexican food.”
“You could have told me you were allergic to Chipotle peppers.”
“I didn’t know.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “You’d never eaten Mexican food before in your life?”
“We’ve been over this. It’s not my fault I never ordered extra spicy before.”
The door opens and the senior management team begins to file in. I check my watch. They’re late. All of them are late. Which is highly unusual.
“Is it over?” Jennifer, the human resources manager, asks.
I study the team and notice everyone is averting their eyes. Were they warned about the prank? “Is what over?”
She motions to my laptop. “Whatever juvenile prank happened I do not want to know about it.”
Jennifer tries to keep everyone in line and ensure there is no bullying or mistreatment of employees. Considering we’re a company of people who’ve mostly known each other since college and believe pranking is the highest form of affection there is, she’s often forced to look the other way.
I sigh. “I can’t wait to get back home.”
“What’s on this island you can’t stay away from?” Jeremy asks. “Maybe we should visit for a company retreat.”
“No! ”
“Testy. It’s probably because the woman who rejected him is there.”
Paisley never rejected me. I’ve never had the chance to ask her out considering she runs the other way whenever I’m around. Hell, she even hid behind a bar once.
The woman does not like me. I wish I could say the feeling is mutual.
“Are we going to conduct this meeting or not?” I make a show of checking my watch. “I have a plane to catch.”
“You own the jet. I think they’ll wait for you to arrive.”
“I bet we could fit all of the senior management team in his jet,” Chuck, the operations manager, says. “I can be packed in five minutes.”
I growl at him. “You’re not coming to Smuggler’s Hideaway with me.”
The island is my sanctuary. No one treats me like a billionaire there. To them, I’m Eli. The oldest son of Jessica. The oldest brother of Jaxon, Rhett, Kai, Miles, and Zane.
No one kowtows to me because of my money on the island. They don’t care. One person in particular who I want to care, doesn’t give a shit about me.
And there I go thinking about Paisley again. I need to figure out a way to stop obsessing over her.