“You’re on.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was like studying for a final exam.
The entire surface of the coffee table was covered with various investing books I’d picked up at the local bookstore. My laptop, tablet, and phone were each open to different research pages, looking into various stocks I was considering investing in, and the TV was on the news channel with the little stock crawl across the bottom.
I was, if you’ll forgive the pun, invested.
I’d always loved a challenge.
And, damn him, Harrison was right; investing was a lot like gambling: the risk, the reward, the careful planning mixed with gut instinct.
Everything I’d learned over the past two days had me itching to dive in.
If I wanted to win, I needed to dive in. I was just giving myself until the end of the day to research.
Then, well, it was time to trust everything I’d learned, invest, and watch things like a hawk.
It seemed like my best bet was to invest sixty to seventy percent in something stable like the S&P 500. Then I would take twenty to thirty percent for strategic growth: undervalued companies, momentum stocks, short-term catalysts.
I would keep five to ten percent as a pressure valve. This was all gut instincts and short-term, high-risk trades. I was calling it my “Idiot Fund.”
It was where I would win or lose the most dramatically.
Naturally, it was what I was also most excited about.
I’d been so fixated on learning that I’d almost completely forgotten to keep messing with Harrison.
I did spend almost the whole night before screwing with the thermostat. Each time he got up to turn it down, I cranked it up higher. I was in my room with the vent closed, in my underwear, with the window open because it was so damn hot. But it was fun to hear him grumble as he made his way back into the common area each time to turn it back down.
As for the chaos I wanted to create, well, with how distracted I was with studying, I was naturally creating small messes: dishes in the sink, books and notebooks all over the place, layers I put on and stripped off all over the apartment.
I ate through just about everything in the fridge and freezer while he was at work.
Of course, I’d been so distracted by my studies that I’d forgotten what was coming up.
The weekend.
And Harrison? He seemed to like to take a half day on Fridays.
Because I was still sitting there on the floor by the coffee table, wearing nothing but my yoga pants and leisure bra, my hair in a rat’s nest, and a pen between my lips, when he came in and spotted me.
“Having fun?” he asked, his eyes going immediately warm.
“You’re home early.”
“Well, sweetheart, it appears you have the metabolism of a fifteen-year-old boy. I decided to leave early to hit the market.But I stopped home to see if you wanted to come. Pick out some snacks.”
Normally, I would say that spending more time with him was a terrible idea. But we weren’t going to accidentally have sex at the grocery store. And I really did need some snacks. Harrison was entirely too healthy for my liking. The man snacked on nuts—unsaltednuts.
“Can you give me time to shower?” I asked.
“Sure. Maybe I’ll go for a swim.”
It was cute he thought I needed that much time to get ready. But I didn’t object, just went into my room to get cleaned up.
The problem was, well, my room location.
