Page 2 of How to Bang a Billionaire

My best friend Nik was actually the one who’d signed up, but he’d come down with laryngitis. Which meant the telethon team ended up having to use me instead. I knew as soon as they gave me what was supposed to be two days of training in ten minutes that it was going to be awful. And a quick glance around the only slightly dank basement confirmed my worst fears: the rest of the volunteers were all engaged in life-enriching, college-benefiting conversations with opera singers, human rights lawyers, and boutique cheesemakers. Whereas I’d eaten my body weight in free doughnuts and been hung up on more times than an insurance salesman with underdeveloped people skills.

I dialed the next number. They’d told me you could hear the smile in someone’s voice, so I made sure I was grinning as if I’d swallowed a coat hanger.

“HelloImArdenSt.IvescallingfromSt.Sebastian’sCollegepleasedonthanguponme.”

Silence.

Then, “How did you get this number?”

“God, I don’t know. It was just on the list. I’m helping with the…” My mind blanked out. Something about that implacable, cut-glass voice. “…telethon thingy.”

“The telethon…thingy?”

“The St. Sebastian’s College annual telethon. Um, you went here, right?”

“Isn’t that why I’m on your list?”

“Oh yeah.” I decided to pretend my utter incompetence was funny. “Good point. But there was a letter. You should have got a letter.”

“I don’t have time to read letters.”

“Well, no wonder you miss stuff.”

A laugh, quiet and almost shy, ghosted down the phone to me, and I felt it like fingers against my spine. “I assume that if the message is important, the sender will find a more efficient way to deliver it.”

“Efficiency isn’t always better, though.”

“Under what circumstances is being effective at achieving what you set out to achieve less good than the alternative?”

I’d had tutorials like this. Blurting out some half-baked idea, which was swiftly revealed to be the most abject nonsense. So I did what I always do—the general refuge of the comfortable upper second—and promptly reframed. “Only if what you want to achieve is communicating something as simply, directly, and immediately as possible. Like, if you were on fire, a letter would be a really bad way of telling you.”

“Also a flammable one.” God, his voice. From the moment I’d heard it, I’d thought it was pretty sexy, in a chilly, upper-class way, but amusement-softened, it was as rich as honey. Irresistible.

I grinned foolishly at the receiver. “But if I wanted to say something with more nuance, something personal like I’m sorry or, thank you, or…or y’know…I love you, then maybe a letter would mean more than a text message or a Post-it note.”

“I had no idea the Master of St. Sebastian’s felt quite this strongly about me.” A neat little pause. You had to appreciate a man with timing. “Do you think it’s too late?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe if you chased after her in the pouring rain.”

“She’s not entirely my type.”

“It’s that purple houndstooth jacket, right?”

“I’m afraid it’s a deal breaker.”

I snuck another peek at the room, in case I was doing it wrong and everybody could tell, but nobody was paying any attention to me. I huddled a little closer to the phone and confessed, “I’ve actually only met her once. In my first year. She asked me what I was going to do when I grew up.”

“And what are you going to do when you grow up?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Grow up, I guess?”

He was silent a moment. “I think that would be a shame.”

“If I grew up?”

“If you changed.”

I made a sort of hiccoughing noise. Surprise and bubbly pleasure. “You don’t know me.”