“Well, once we pay out the taxes to the IRS, the bill will be gone,” I pointed out, slumping back in my chair, equally as annoyed as Leslie was right then.
It wasn’t that she and Philip were bad accountants, but it was just that…
No, actually, they were pretty bad accountants. Somehow, I ended up paying millions of dollars in taxes each year, while people like Jeff Bezos virtually got off scot-free. Not that I wanted to quit paying taxes at all, but I had to admit, the fact that neither one of my accountants was able to find the loopholes that very clearly existed was rather annoying.
“And then we won’t have the money to invest anymore,” she replied evenly. “I’m merely saying that if Philip drains this account in order to make a gamble on this property and it doesn’t turn out the way we want it to, we will be deep in the hole with the government. And trust me when I say that is not a hole we want to be anywhere near.”
That was the last thing I heard either of them say, truthfully. I know they were going back and forth, snapping at each other as they tossed idea after idea out there, trying to make it all make sense.
Money. Sometimes I loved having tons of it, and sometimes I couldn’t care less. I knew I put on this whole facade of the rich playboy who loved two things- money and women- but that was really all for show. It was all because I happened to have an Instagram account for my realty business in Miami, just before it became really popular as a social media platform, and happened to run into an extraordinarily famous and well-loved basketball player while I was just starting out in the business.
And then everything had bloomed from there. I’d gotten a T.V. show all about the rich celebrity clients I would sell houses to in Miami, and suddenly I was on the cover of all sorts of magazines and featured all over famous social media accounts.
All of that had come about when I was in my mid-twenties, which meant I was still a young, stupid kid. But part of the appeal of my show and my Instagram account was the pure idiocy I’d displayed, so I kept it up even when I was past that phase in my life. I’d become accustomed to the fancy cars and the big houses and the way that people smiled at me when they walked by, blushing just a little bit because I was such a famous face.
I couldn’t give all of that up now, so the facade stayed caked on like day-old frosting.
My mind wandered as Leslie and Philip continued to go back and forth, trying to figure out which decision was the least idiotic.
That morning had been one of the more stressful ones since I’d moved here to the Bay Area. Normally, I was afforded relative quiet in comparison to the treatment I received in Miami, L.A., or New York. But Tom Cruise was in town to shoot a new movie. The streets were abuzz with paps in a way they generally weren’t, which meant I got the brunt of it whenever I stepped outside and made my presence known to the public.
I used to love that, all of the pomp and circumstance that surrounded me, but recently, I’d grown tired of it. It felt shallow and fake.
There had to be something more to life, like epic romance and pure happiness.
Just as the thought crossed my mind, like some sort of subconscious trigger, Sarah’s face popped into my head.
She hadn’t been the least bit swayed by my celebrity. In fact, for a moment there, I’d almost been convinced that she didn’t even remember me from Logan and Bella’s wedding, which would have been sad. The two of us had gotten along so well there. However, I’d still been pretending to date Nicki Ritter, one of the most famous YouTube stars of all time, so I couldn’t really pursue anything.
Actually, that was a lie. I could have if I’d really wanted to, but that would have meant dealing with a huge press scandal and all of the blowbacks I would receive, and truthfully, I just hadn’t been in the right headspace for that.
But today was a completely different story. Nicki had announced three weeks ago that our fake relationship was over because she wanted to “pursue new and different opportunities as a single woman,” which was perfectly fine with me.
It also meant I was free and in the clear to date whomever I chose to date. Not that I was cocky and believed that Sarah would just fall down on her knees and thank me for choosing her. This morning had shown me that she was hardly that type of woman.
But I wanted to at least give it a shot. Even now, when all I was doing was thinking about her heart-shaped face and her frizzy blonde hair, I couldn’t help but smile. I’d watched the entire exchange she’d had with the man on the street, and seen the way she’d slammed into that glass door and then walked inside as if nothing at all had happened.
She didn’t care about the glitz and the glam. She didn’t care about the celebrity. She wasn’t vapid and shallow.
That was the kind of woman I needed in my life. One who would help me usher in this new era of Rhett and help make me the man I wanted to be.
And hopefully, I could do the same for her.
Abruptly, I stood up, shocking both Leslie and Philip, who had frozen mid-sentence.
“What is it?” Leslie demanded.
“I think we’re done,” I replied with a shrug.
“But we—“ She started to protest, but I cut her off with a single hand raised in the air.
“I have to go take care of something,” I replied. “Hash this out amongst yourselves, and just tell me what your decision is.”
For the first time since I’d started my real estate business, I left a meeting. I didn’t involve myself in every single aspect of every single thing that went on.
I was a little bit proud, in a way. Even though this was all because my mind was too focused on Sarah to actually think any business decisions through, I hadn’t walked out of a meeting in nine years.
Maybe it was time to start being a little less hands-on with my company. Maybe it was time to reap the benefits of all of my hard work and see what the next phase of my life had to offer me.
I stepped through the long, glossy halls of my company, which sat on the eighth floor of one of San Francisco’s finest office buildings, and entered my very own private sanctuary.
When I was at work, that is. My entire home and office had been turned into lovely, relaxing spaces, thanks to the talents of Bella, Logan’s new wife.
The office in question was dimly lit, with a massive glass window against the back wall. The shades were drawn right now, giving the space an almost romantic ambiance. Whenever I wanted a little more light, I could simply yank them open, and the office would be bathed in the warm yellow glow of the San Francisco sun.
The floor was soft, plush carpeting that I sometimes sank my bare feet into whenever I was having a particularly hard day. There was a massive oak desk in the center, with a wingback leather chair directly behind it, and more drawers than a guy could possibly use in his entire lifetime.
And I absolutely loved it. The moment I saw what Bella had done with the place, the two of us had struck up a working partnership. Now, she handled all of the decorating needs of some of my biggest clients from here to Los Angeles.
I padded over to the chair and plopped down, listening to the little whoosh of air as I sank into the padding, and then put my feet on the desk to stretch out my knees. The right one popped a little bit, a holdover from my college football days, when I’d given myself one too many injuries and taken far too little time to recover from them.