The Billionaire and the Banker

Breathing Room

Magda left the beach house annoyed with her friends. They were the best friends any girl could have but occasionally they got so caught up in shenanigans they forgot how amazing they were as independent women. Dimi was so hellbent on making her ex crazy, she was dragging them with her and while she would do whatever Dimi wanted because it is what best friends do, some of her plans were often extreme. Darya on the other hand was a punch first ask questions second kind of person and this morning she had told Dimi the best way to get Miklos Laskaris to sign divorce papers was to kidnap him, hold him at gunpoint and force him to put his signature on them

The entire conversation had escalated into a horrible plotting surrounding how they would do such a thing. Magda was quaking in her shoes they would actually try to accomplish Darya’s suggestion. Finally, she had said she needed to go to the grocery store to get a few things but really she needed a breath. She would go along with whatever harebrained scheme they came up with but hopefully by the time she got back they would be back to simply driving Miklos crazy.

As she drove the twenty minutes to the one store she preferred over the one closer to their beach house, she admitted, she had never been in love the way Dimi had been once and maybe if she had, she might be as crazy. Darya too had been in love but for her it was with a client she’d had at a b**m parlour they’d owned and he had worshipped the ground she’d walked on. It hadn’t worked out but she remembered Darya crying into her pillow when it ended much the same way Dimi would cry every time, she came back to Boston from LA. Sienna was in love with Dimi’s bodyguard and it was a screwed up situation all the way around as the man thought Sienna was Dimi. They were too deep into it now to tell the man the truth and when they did, he was going to hate her. Sienna cried a lot over the situation but lacked the desire to tell him the truth.

As far as she was concerned, there were too many women crying over men to make her want to jump into love. Her mother was likely right. A match made on personality and educational requirements was likely going to be far superior for her emotional health than falling in love with a man she met casually.

Occasionally she considered calling her mother, telling her she was moving back to the bay area and asking her to start setting her up with men she felt were suitable to date. Her mother had a list at least the length of her arm of men she wanted to introduce Magda to, but then Magda told her she wanted to get her doctorate first and her mother had acquiesced. Education before anything else. Though her mother despised her area of expertise. She was constantly telling Magda it wasn’t too late to start over while she was still young.

Her last trip to her family home, her mother had said her work on the application she, Dimi and Darya had been working on was simply a greedy venture siphoning money off the lazy. She couldn’t disagree but at the end of the day, she also felt she was doing a service to any woman who would be in the same situation she’d been in more than once.

Her phone rang as she was driving, syncing to her car’s audio and she frowned at the unknown number. She answered it hesitantly. “Hello?”

“Magda, it’s Ares.”

“How did you get this number?” Immediately she was annoyed and her driving was impacted by the surprise. She almost slammed her brakes on, earning a honk from behind her.

“I asked my IT guy to find it for me. I tried calling your work cell but it always goes straight to voice mail.”

In the light of him being honest she reciprocated the sentiment, “because I recognize the number you’re calling from and send it straight to voice mail.”

“Why?” he appeared quite puzzled she would do such a thing.

“Because you are a potential buyer for the program and while the first call I genuinely missed, the voice mail you left was personal, not business-related. I have no need to speak to you unless it’s concerning the program. If you can’t reach me, there are two other women you can reach out to.”

“But I want to deal with you.” Laughter coated his words.

“Then keep it professional,” she pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store.

“Do you think you’ll have a hard time conducting business if you and I speak personally?”

“Do you often negotiate business deals from between the sheets?”

“Not ever in my life,” he sounded insulted now. “Magda, I’m a grown ass man. I don’t need to negotiate using sex.”

“Then why are you calling?”

“Excuse me?”

“Mr. Winter, if you are not calling me to get me into bed with you to have me renegotiate the terms of the potential offer, then why? It makes no sense.”

“I’m not following. Why does it not make sense? I saw you in my boardroom a week ago today, last Wednesday and immediately found myself wondering every little detail about you. I know you found me attractive because you like to look at me as much as I like to look at you. I don’t see what is so confusing about this. It’s mutual attraction.”

“Just because a woman looks at a man doesn’t mean she’s interested in him. I was at a coffee shop recently and saw a movie star but I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole because he’s a married man. There is looking and then there is interest. One does not equal the other.”

“Can I ask you something, Ms. Magda Onassis?”

She parked the car a good distance from the doors liking the idea of walking the extra steps for the exercise. She sat there listening to him after shutting the engine off. “Go ahead.”

“What do you have to lose?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have coffee with me. If after a coffee date you don’t like me on a personal level, then we will keep things business. I promise not to let my personal feelings affect our business negotiations.”

“Mr. Winter. You are a billionaire many times over. You go through women like I do socks and are notorious for being a womanizer. You’ve clearly done your research on me if you’ve had your security obtain my phone number. You know your experience in dating exceeds mine by at least ten years given how much older you are than I am. What a billionaire playboy wants with an MIT nerd is not hard to suss out.”

“This should be interesting,” he chuckled at her words. “Tell me what it is you think I am looking for from you.”

“You read my bio.”

“I did. Not much there.”

“Exactly. You’re thinking of the three of us, me, Dimi, Darya, I’m the weakest link. You can say all these pretty words and I’m going to simply trust you aren’t using me. The geek with the glasses is going to be the easiest of the three of us to manipulate and so you’re going to do your seduction attempt. Then, with whatever pillow-talk you swear you’ve never used before to negotiate, you’re going to try to get me to come down with our numbers. Well, let me tell you, Mr. Winter, as much as I am the mousey nerd from MIT with nary experience with s****l exploitation, I will not be the Achilles heel of our group.”

His silence following her outburst had her staring at her console watching the ticking seconds of their phone call go by. She was about to hang up when he spoke softly.

“Magda, I don’t think for one minute you’re the weakest link. I know we share interests such as surfing, swimming, running and I wanted to know if we had anything else in common. I’m not out to arrange our business in bed. I only want to have a coffee with you and see if we might be compatible to move forward with dinner.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Oh.”

“Where are you right now?” he asked curiously.

“Supermarket,” she sighed. “Parking lot actually. I was about to go in to get a couple of things.”

“Whereabouts?”

She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to do so but she revealed the name and location of the favorite spot.

“I actually know the location really well. It’s my mother’s favorite shop because of the organic section.”

“Same. Dimi says most of the organic titles are bogus but I hear my mother in my head telling me to only put the best into my body. I also like the notion I’m doing something good for myself and the environment, even if it is a bit more expensive.”

“My mother has a doctorate in environmental sciences and argues the use of pesticides will be our downfall. She insists on organic as much as possible.”

“Very cool,” she pursed her lips as she considered this little personal detail. How bad could he be if his mom is a tree-hugger? Bad, Mags! She scolded herself. He could be very bad. Not everyone was like their mother. She, Dimi, and Darya were all perfect examples of this. None of them were like their parents.

“Magda, I am having dinner with my mom later this afternoon. There is a coffee shop about a block from the shopping center you are at. They have the best coffee in the state. It’s a shop where they support fair trade coffee and do partnerships with impoverished countries to support women in industry. It’s my mother’s favorite coffee shop and I often come here to get her coffee before I get to her place. I am here now actually. Occasionally, I like to get out of the office and away from the constant parade of people coming to my door and since I was going to Mama’s I stopped here to work for a bit. If you’re willing and feeling a bit brave,” he teased, “then you should make a trip to this coffee shop and try their dark roast. I feel you might be a dark roast kind of girl.”

She was silent as she felt the hammering in her chest at his comment. He was right up the street.

“Still with me, Magda?”

“Yeah,” she squeaked out.

“Well, I will be here for another hour or so before I go check on my mom and give her, her daily dose of her favorite child. If you decide to come down for coffee, I’ll save you a seat at my table. No pressure, Magda. If you come, then I will be thrilled. If you choose not to, given how you think I’m trying to get into your pants to swindle you, I will also understand.”

His words had a zing to them which made her feel an iota mean for judging him so harshly and rapidly.

“I have to go,” she said suddenly and hung up the call.

She was mumbling to herself as she almost stomped into the market and found a basket to pick up the things she needed.

“Magda!” a beefy man waved at her.

She recognized him from the gym and smiled. “Angelo, right?”

“Yeah,” he nodded as much as he could with his giant neck as tight as it was. He looked in her basket and saw it was empty. “Are you here to get protein too? They have a sale on the powder,” he motioned to his trolley which held four giant tubs of powder.

“No, only a few odds and ends. No protein powder for me.”

He looked like he was going to say more and she waved at a woman across the shop.

“There’s my friend. I have to go. Nice to see you again.” She beelined in the direction of the woman and grinned, “hi, I hope you don’t mind but he was about to ask me out again and I lied and said I was here with you.”

The woman laughed with wide eyes, “well, my name is Carol and I swear I am going to use this technique next time I’m cornered.”

“Do you mind if I follow you around a bit? He’s heading to the checkouts now.”

“Not at all,” Carol was grinning. “He’s very big. I bet it makes you a bit nervous to say no.”

“Not really. We go to the same gym and he’s always really nice and friendly but he starts to talk and he doesn’t stop and its always about the protein, the program, or the muscle mass. I want to work out and go home, you know?”

“I do know. I stopped going to a co-ed gym exactly for this reason.”

“I really like my personal trainer,” Magda sighed, “he’s great and he’s really helped me so much so I don’t want to leave the gym. He also likes blondes,” she curled her finger around her brown hair, “which means I’m safe from him.” She picked up a bunch of bananas and put them in her basket. “He’s quite the player but thankfully every girl I’ve seen him with has been a blonde so he’s unlikely to deviate from his own program.” She giggled at the thought.

“Why can’t they simply be good boys who like their mom’s and not be philandering pigs?” Carol questioned with a sneer. “Though with my luck, he’d be Norman Bates and nobody would compare to mother.”

Magda’s giggle turned into a guffaw. She noted the larger man leaving the store. “Carol, thank you for letting me use you. I do appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day.”

She gave a wave to the woman and moved around the store picking up the few things she needed and then passed by the coffee section. She immediately remembered Ares and sighed. She knew exactly which coffee shop he was at. She’d passed it on her way to the supermarket.

One thing living frugally in Boston had taught them was coffee shop coffee and the free internet most of the shops provided was an integral part of their lives. They could sip a single coffee for hours while they worked on assignments or projects and since being back in LA, they spent an awful lot of time in shops and were learning which ones were better than others. The one Ares’ was at right now was one they didn’t frequent very much because the coffee was expensive.

Ares Winter was a multi-billionaire however and therefore likely didn’t give a damn what the cost was, only what the taste of it was. She wondered what the taste of dark roast made in a shop where billionaires could casually hang out and work without being disrupted tasted like. She ran her fingers along the bags of coffee beans in the market and grimaced at herself.

She could certainly stop by and get a cup to go. It was walking distance and not out of her way at all. Magda made her way to the self-checkout and felt her heart rate quicken as she deliberated further going to see Ares at the coffee shop.

As she loaded her bag onto the floor of the back seat of her car, she looked in the direction of the supermarket and then the direction of the coffee shop. She could use the extra steps to get her closer to expected tally for the day. Her trainer would be proud.

“That settles it,” she murmured with no confidence at all in her sudden need to do something out of ordinary for herself. “Let’s find out what kind of coffee the rich and famous drink.” She locked the car and started walking in the direction of the coffee shop.