The Billionaire’s Girlfriend Bet - Leslie North Page 0,7
make him want to take her out on a date for real, beyond the scope of the bet. But moving forward seemed precarious.
She was part of his business empire—and, moreover, a check of her personnel file showed that she was an employee they’d been very lucky to get. She was good for the program, not to mention a good person overall, and Blake wanted to make sure she didn’t suffer any fallout just because she’d had the bad luck to be chosen as the object of some stupid bet. That meant it wasn’t as simple as inviting her out five times and then disappearing forever.
He just had to figure out how to take the next step.
“Blake, don’t forget—you have the stadium get-together tomorrow evening.” His secretary, Jana, came into his office, her iron-gray hair pulled back into a low bun. She was the glue that held his professional life together, and he wasn’t sure where he’d be without her dry humor and attention to detail.
“Wait. That’s tomorrow already?”
She pursed her lips. “I’ve been reminding you all week.”
“Yeah, but I thought we still had two more days.”
“We did—yesterday,” she said with a smirk.
He sighed. “All right. Remind me of the details?”
“It’s the quarterly event for your employees to bring their families and meet the baseball team. You’ve skipped out on the past three times.”
He grimaced, tapping his knuckles against the desk. “Right.” It wasn’t that he’d intended to skip it for most of the year. It had just…happened. Things always came up. But he wanted to stay in good standing with all the employees of his empire. And that meant making time for things like this.
“It starts at six tomorrow,” Jana quipped, turning on her heels. “Don’t miss it.”
Once she was back at her desk just outside his office, Blake began mulling over his plans for tomorrow. The quarterly event sounded like a perfect way to get a second date in with Michelle. And if he was being honest…it would even help his image to bring her along. Two birds, one stone. He grabbed for his cell phone and called her before he could think twice.
“Hello?” When she answered, she sounded breathy, which sent prickles through him. He wet his bottom lip, temporarily forgetting what he wanted to say, now that fantasies of what she might be wearing began assaulting him.
“Uh…Michelle.” He squeezed his eyes shut, pinching at the bridge of his nose. In his mind’s eye, he could see her—in the standard issue blue polo and chinos that she’d worn the last two times he’d seen her. How could such a boring uniform seem so erotic when he pictured it on her? “How are you? Am I interrupting anything?”
“No, I just got done with a few assessments. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine. I had this idea I wanted to run by you.” He pushed to standing, opting to pace his office while he spoke.
“Oh. Am I your internal confidante now?” The tone of her voice told him she was teasing.
“Maybe you are,” he said, pausing by the window, wondering if she was in the gym that he could see just beyond the slope of trees to the west. “Would that be a bad thing?”
She laughed softly. “No, it would be fine. I’d like it.”
He smiled, even as he realized that they were flirting. Again. It had been just like this at their quick lunch the other day. With her, it was too easy to fall into an easy rapport. And he liked going there with her.
But he needed to focus. Because this wasn’t about floating off together. This was about winning the bet and getting DJ Fiesta on the ticket at his nightclub.
“Well, I’m not sure if you’ve been before, but I put on these quarterly events where employees can come in and meet the team with their families. I know you’d have no need to meet the team, since you work directly with the players, but I thought you might want to join anyway. It’s a good chance to socialize, meet everyone’s families, get to know people outside of a work context,” He trailed off, his throat going dry. Yes, this was a work-related outing, but going together—to an event where people usually brought their spouses and significant others—definitely felt more serious than most of his dates. The idea made him queasy, but he barreled on anyway. “It would be fun for the families to meet you as well. Being that you’re responsible for, you know, keeping them healthy