“And why not?”
“Live in the same house and date? No.”
“Would you not date someone who lived in the same apartment building? Besides, this is all temporary for me. If all goes well, in a couple of months, I’ll be back in New York, and you’d be doing me a favor by being my on-site property manager. I offered for Shelley to live on-site, but she refused. Something about her husband wouldn’t like it.” I waved my hand and grinned to let Poppy know for certain I joked. “Hey, I could pay you what I’m paying her. Extra income for very little work. You wouldn’t even need that OnlyFans account.”
“How much do you pay Shelley?”
I popped another grape and recalled my agreement with Ms. Shelley Brownlee. Given I had her doing so much extra, we weren’t on any kind of standard package she offered. But once I got settled, she’d be charging me less. As I mentally scrolled through the numbers, I realized Poppy might make more per month from her little website side gig. “How much do you make from OnlyFans?”
“The amount varies by month.”
“On average?”
“Between five to ten thousand. But lately it’s been more consistently closer to five.”
“And that’s revenue, right? Not profit, so it doesn’t account for any of your expenses. How’s this for a deal? I pay you five thousand monthly for property management, and you agree to allow me to be your only OnlyFans client, and I pay you an additional five thousand. Then you live in a place rent free, plus you’re making the top range, and less time intensive too.”
Her face contorted, and the sinking sensation in my stomach informed me I’d said something insulting. I braced myself for angry words to exit her mouth as I ran through my offer to identify exactly which portion I needed to retract.
“Do you see me as a prostitute?” She drew her words out slowly. A good thing because it helped with my slow processing speed.
“Nooo.” My brain kicked in. “Okay. Never mind about the OnlyFans account. Forget I mentioned that.” Although, damnit, I wanted her dropping that bullshit. Maybe it was a conservative notion, but I’d never been fond of her showing her wares to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. But that was just me being possessive. I’d never been a great sharer. For the negotiation at hand, I dropped that point.
“You live here rent-free. If, once I’m back in New York, you want to take over Shelley’s responsibilities, it’ll be another income source. If not, that’s up to you. Forget I mentioned OnlyFans.” I leaned closer to her, forearms resting on my knees, and paid careful attention to those wide, blue, doll-like eyes.
“Why do you want me to live here so badly?” Those stunning eyes squinted as if reading small font on her phone.
I inhaled and stared out the window at the ocean and asked myself the same question. The whitecaps had grown more plentiful, a sign the winds had picked up.
“Because. I’m bored out of my mind. It’s too quiet. I’d love to have a housemate. Seriously. I came here on a total whim because Tate’s here, and I liked coming to visit as a kid, and I wanted to get away, but there are only so many things to do. And the house is quiet. So fucking quiet. It hadn’t even occurred to me how much it’s all getting to me until right now.” My index finger jabbed in her direction to emphasize my point. “You’d be doing me a favor if you moved in.”
“But we can’t date.”
No, I would not cave on that point. One, I found the whole friend zone thing to be oxymoronic. And two, I’d jacked off far too many times fantasizing about her to even pretend to build a sophomoric fence around us.
“No.” Her shoulders pulled back, and she sat erect on the stool. I rushed my counteroffer. “We can date, but with agreed on parameters. I’ll ask you out to dinner, and it will be a date night. You know, the way parents do it. You’ll live downstairs, and I’ll live upstairs.”
“Until you go back to New York.”
“Yes.” I snapped my fingers, the excitement of closing a deal surfacing. “And once I’m back in New York, you can take the upstairs suite. The place will be yours except for random weekends I come back to visit.”
She crossed her legs and swirled her wine ever so slightly as she held the stem between two fingers. “OnlyFans doesn’t work like that. You can’t set it to one client.”
“Okay.” I said the words softly, mindful she hadn’t agreed to anything yet. Her words sank in, and it became crystal clear that portion of my proposal didn’t make sense.
“Why did you say you’re here, again?” Her wine sloshed up against the slide of the glass as she swirled it and hung a thin veil as it sank back down.
“It’s a lot to explain.” And I hated explaining it to anyone, mainly because it was all such bullshit.
“Try me.” She put it out there like her own counterpunch. Or dare.
“A few years ago, well, several years ago, this one guy, Cyr Martin, gathered a significant number of investors around the world. Some big investment banks funded his effort. The guy raised in the neighborhood of three hundred billion.”
“Did you say B? As in boy?” I nodded. “In U.S. dollars?”
“It doesn’t matter what currency you use. He raised a ton of money. Governments put in money. The company supposedly bought up land in Malaysia, doing good things in developing areas and…making a lot of money. It was a hot investment tip in the Asia market for a while.”
“Okay. Then something went wrong?”
“You could say that.” I popped another grape. “It was a shell company. Didn’t even really exist.”
“Wow. That’s a scam and a half.”
“Yeah. There are all kinds of precautions that are supposed to prevent a scam of that size from coming to fruition. So, there’s an investigation now.”
“To figure out
