Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1) (2 page)

Since Brooks Media owned TapNext, it was easy to understand why I was well versed and highly invested in the app’s success. It was a requirement when hired—all single employees had to create a TapNext profile. Staff were strongly encouraged to use the app and give honest feedback about their experiences. Profile names were kept top secret and on penitentiary-style lock-down with Human Resources. And feedback stayed anonymous.

Translation:
Don’t worry,
TAPRoseNEXT
, your boss doesn’t know about your pervy play on words.

At first, I’d felt it was an odd way to handle business, but after two years of working at Brooks Media, I’d found that my TapNext profile was a damn good way to do research and find promotional ideas.

My phone pinged with the offender’s response.

BAD_Ruck (11:38PM): …

Did he just ellipsis me?
Really?

TAPRoseNEXT (11:38PM): Creep Threat Level MOTHERFUCKING Red.

There was no immediate response, but the rest of my rant would not be contained.

TAPRoseNEXT (11:39PM): Don’t any of you know how to start conversations anymore? Jesus.

Cassie sighed beside me. “Stop slamming everything around, Wheorgiebag! I’m trying to watch
American Ninja Warrior
and you’re totally messing with my pumped up vibe.”

I ignored her, still focused on finding a way to erase the offending images from my brain.

She peeked over my shoulder before I could pull my phone away. “Whoa. Whoa.
Whoa.
Is that
my
picture on
your
profile?”

Creamy, perfect-skinned thighs on display, she was bent over with her dark brunette head peeking through the space between her open legs. Her hooch just barely escaped making an appearance.

“Paybacks, Casshead.”

“And what did I do to deserve being your pro-bono photo ho?”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Do I have to choose just one?”

“Go ahead, give me one example. I dare ya.”

“College. Sophomore year. I told you not to post those pictures on Facebook, but did you listen? Of course not.”

She grinned. “Ahhhhh, yes. I remember those. I thought you looked really cute that night.”

“My head was in the toilet.”

“But you had those cute puppy dog eyes going on.” She glanced at my phone again, dusky gray eyes hitting the phallic bull’s eye. “Holy hell, what is that? Is that Quasimodo’s dick?”

I stood up from the couch and began to pace in front of the TV. “Four dick pics today, Cassface.
Four!”

Cassie scrunched her face up. “And what? You were hoping for five?”

My expression was a combination of disgusted and puzzled.

“You know,” she explained, “one to fill all the holes and one for each hand.” Easy to interpret and equally graphic hand gestures matched her words as she spoke. “Although, I’m not sure I’d want DP from The Hunchcock of Notre Dame.” One look at my face and she coughed out a laugh. “You’re not really a prude, but right now, you’re playing one on TV.”

I groaned and gave in, planting my ass back on the couch and burying my face in my hands. “I guess it’s because this profile is for work research. I have this unjustified sense that it should be more professional.”

She shook her head and smiled, propping her mismatched-sock feet on the arm of our couch. “I gotta say, that wiener is pretty fucking awful. But, Georgie, you work for a company that specializes in an app called
TapNext
, not the White House.”

After a brief beat of silence, we laughed at the same time, and I raised one eyebrow in question. “You’re comparing
TapNext
to the
White House
?”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “Bad analogy. There’s probably
more
dick pics there.” A giant, mischievous grin consumed Cassie’s face as she grabbed the remote.

“Cassie…”
I pointed in her direction, but it was too late. She was already standing on top of our coffee table, using the remote for a microphone.

My best friend had this thing with making parody songs out of pretty much anything when inspired. And she didn’t do it quietly. No way, quiet was not Cassie’s style. She sang like she was Adele performing at the Grammys.

“I call this one
White House Lovin’
,” Cassie announced.

I groaned but secretly couldn’t wait to see what she would come up with. Think Kristen Wiig on
Saturday Night Live
kind of hilarious shit. That was Cass.

“Blue-dress intern, found my pants fast…”

“White House intern, it was a blast…”

She was singing her little heart out.

“This girl, she was crazy for D…”

Snapping fingers. Pelvic thrusts. Head bobs. Cassie wasn’t missing a beat.

“Met the prez, down on both knees…”

One verse in and the dick pic bandit had been forgotten. I hopped off the couch and tackled her to the floor. She screamed. I laughed. And five minutes later, Cassie was back on the coffee table while I sang backup to the rest of her ridiculous song.

Tell me, whore… Tell me, whore…

Admit it, you’re singing it too.

Later that night, once I had cozied myself in bed and was so very close to reaching that heavenly REM cycle, the ping of my phone pecked at me. I groaned my way out of Dreamland slowly. God, it was time to make some major life changes. For example, the alert settings for my TapNext profile in my phone. It was either that or murder, and I’m the kind of person who likes to dip a toe in the pool water to test it rather than cannonball my way in.

Rubbing a hand over my face, I forced my eyes opened and snatched the phone off my antique nightstand. I barely resisted the urge to slam it back down, thus breaking it into a million tiny pieces. Luckily, my rational thinking wasn’t as sleepy as the rest of me and realized the amount of work that would result from such an impulsive decision.

Cleaning and shopping and transferring my contacts, oh my.

Yeah,
screw that.

BAD_Ruck (2:09AM): It’s NOT my dick.

It’s not
his
dick?

What the double actual fuck?

No. Nope. This was
so
not the right time to deal with this bullshit.

Not. Answering.

The sides of my pillow exploded upward with the force of my punch and made the perfect cushion for my face when it slammed down beside my hand. I had so much shit to do at work tomorrow, and dealing with
BAD_Ruck
and his proclivity for awful crotch selfies and unintelligible responses was not going to be on my agenda.

I was focused on getting shut-eye, confident that sleep and I would spoon the fuck out of each other until the sun rose the following morning. I channeled Buddha for my inner Zen, humming my way toward unconscious bliss. It was either that, or grab my vibrator and participate in a ménage à moi.

Thankfully, my return to sleep came easily that night. No hands-on approach required.

The next day, while I was getting ready for work, I decided to give
BAD_Ruck
a piece of my mind. I spit toothpaste into the sink, rinsed my mouth out with water, and turned off the faucet. Striding into my room with purpose, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and sent the dick gremlin a response.

Suck. On. That. Buddy.

TAPRoseNEXT (7:03AM): Then it’s someone else’s dick? WORSE. Threat Level EXPLODED.

“G
ood morning, Mr. Brooks.”

“Good morning, Frank,” I replied, picking my head up from the crime scene on my phone just long enough to meet his honest amber eyes before sliding into the soft leather seat of my Town Car.

Fucking Thatch.

I swear, somehow he took doing what would already be really fucking annoying and advanced it to the next level. If he didn’t have the same ability with money, I probably would have dropped him by now.

To the bottom of the ocean.
With a cinder block attached to his ankles
.

She was right, of course. Sending a picture of someone else’s dick
was
considerably worse than sending a picture of your own.

Especially this one.

Three rings trilled in my ear before his sleep-laden voice forced one hungover syllable past his lips. “’Lo?”

“A dick, Thatch? Really?” I asked immediately, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off a headache.

No amount of lingering alcohol could stop his answering laugh.

His throat cleared a little more with each chuckle, and by the time he responded, he was speaking clearly. “You’re the one using my picture for your profile, bro. It was only fair that I unleashed the gargoyle dick.”

Gargoyle dick.
Too fucking right. A winglike knob, a hunchback, and questionable coloring all lent themselves to his description. I’d left my phone on the bar without hawk-eyeing it for
two fucking minutes
, and the asshole had somehow managed to send one of the world’s worst illicit pictures to some poor—now blind—woman in that time.

“That profile was only payback for the last awful thing you did to me.”

“Which was?” he asked, altogether too amused.

“Who knows,” I admitted, staring up at the passing high-rises and shaking my head. “I can’t keep up.”

“Then join in, K. Live a little, for fuck’s sake.”

The burgeoning sun glinted off of a pane of perfectly smooth glass at the top of a building and reflected a rainbow right into the window of my car.

“I’m living just fine,” I argued.

“Yeah.” He laughed and scoffed at once. “Say hi to Walter for me.”

That was Thatch’s version of calling me a cat lady.

“Hey, fuck you!” I said, only to be met with dead air. I pulled the phone away from my ear to discover he’d ended the call.

“Fuck that guy,” I muttered, somehow calling more of Frank’s attention to myself than I had with all the yelling.

“Sir?”

“No worries, Frank.” I paused for a second and looked back out the window. “You wouldn’t happen to know a hit man, would you?”

I glanced up front in preparation for his reaction.

“Um,” he murmured hesitantly, flicking his eyes between me and the road in the rearview mirror. “No, sir.”

I shook my head as I smiled, a brief chuckle tickling the back of my throat.

“Good. That’s good,” I remarked, just as we pulled up to the curb in front of my building.

Flexing the door handle in my hand, I shoved the door open with the toe of my shoe.

“Mr. Brooks,” Frank started to protest, as usual, jerking into motion in order to hop out to help me, but I just couldn’t get into the mindset where his
and
my time was well spent waiting on him to walk around the car just to do something my opposable thumbs and lack of paralysis made shockingly simple.

I smiled in response before he could get out, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror before exiting.

“Have a good day, Frank. I’ll see you at six.”

With the slam of the door, I buttoned my suit jacket as I walked, twenty audible smacks of my soles eating up the concrete courtyard in front of my building in no time.

New Yorkers buzzed around me, continuing a marathon life that started the moment they opened their eyes. That was the vibe of this city—active and elite and totally fucking focused. No one had time for each other because they barely had time for themselves. And yet, each and every single one of them would still proclaim it the “best city on Earth” without prompting or persuasion.

As my hand met the metal of the handle, I surveyed the lobby of the Winthrop Building, home to Brooks Media, to find the front desk employees and security guards scurrying to make themselves look busy when they weren’t.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I’d never been the kind of boss to rule with an iron fist, and not once had I uttered a word of micromanagement to loyal employees like the ones practically shoving their hands in their staplers in order to look busy.

But being CEO of a company of this size and magnitude had a way of creating its own intimidation factor, whether it was intended or not. And, sometimes, the weight of unintended consequences was heavier than gold.