“Of course, you might decide not to finish your business degree, considering that you’re already the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company, but that’s up to you to decide which you want to do. And you can be a CEO for a year or more and then decide that it’s time to finish that degree. Whatever you want.”
Colleen found a stone bench near her and sat down because her legs were flopping. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes, if you want to.”
“Don’t you want to be the CEO since you own it?”
Tristan turned his head, looking out to the sea.
On the water that stretched to the horizon, sunlight sparkled on the rippling surface, almost blinding with its brilliance.
He said, “I have a lot of other parts of my business that I’m involved in. I don’t have the time to be the CEO of GameShack. If you don’t want it, I will hire someone else to be the CEO.”
“So you’re not justgivingit to me, right? Because you already got me into bed. I don’t need any more bribery.” Colleen had checked her savings account that morning. After the two-thousand-dollar-per share dividend had been deposited, no one could ever bribe her again. She needed to avail herself of the new wealth managers sub-forum on the Sherwood Forest boards because her savings account had seven figures in it.
“I’m notgivingyou anything. You earned it.”
As the CEO of a vast company, Colleen could be involved in all the facets of the business and really do something great. Because she’d been a clerk, she understood the structural changes necessary to make the company succeed. “Were my ideas actually good, or are you just humoring me?”
“Tristan looked down at her, and his smile was gentle. “They are actually good ideas.”
“Can I hire consultants?”
“Of course, and I’ll still be around. We can always talk about it.”
“Okay,” she said to herself as she mulled over this idea that he’d sprung on her.
She could always quit if it turned out that she sucked at it.
Colleen stood up and said more loudly,“Okay!Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Excellent!” Tristan said, laughing. “Now for your first decision as the CEO of GameShack.”
“Oh, Jesus. What?”
“As the CEO of GameShack, you can live anywhere in the world you want. You can live on a ranch outside of Phoenix, or in a penthouse in New York, or in a high rise in Hong Kong.” Tristan looked out to the Mediterranean Sea again, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Or on a yacht in Monaco.”
Colleen chomped down on her lower lip so she wouldn’t crack up. Oh, that sweet, sweet man with abandonment issues. “Like, what? Like, maybe I should buy a yacht right next to yours?”
His glance back at her was sharp, but he was smiling. “That sounds like such a waste.”
“I know. But what else could we do?” she asked.
Tristan wrapped his arms around her and bent to kiss her temple. “I suppose, if you wanted to, there might be enough space on theArk Nemesis.”
She snuggled into his arms and squeezed him around his chest. “Well, I suppose.”
Tristan’s hand slid up her back and into her hair as he pressed her face against his chest, and they stood there in the buffeting sea wind and Mediterranean sunshine.
Making sure that it was loud enough for him to hear over the wind flapping their clothes and the red and white Monegasque flags flying in the breeze, Colleen said, “I love you.”
Tristan’s arms tightened around her, and he bowed his head to kiss the top of her head as he murmured, “I love you, too.”
Helicopters took off from the heliport half a mile over the harbor far below, and cars drove by on the road around Monaco Ville.
Tristan bent a little farther and whispered in her ear, his voice low,“Good girl.”
60
