6. She must be willing to compromise on scheduled dates, trips, and future plans. She must also be considerate of my time, especially in the beginning of our courtship. For example, if she calls to cancel a date, and makes no immediate plans to reschedule it, she was never really worth my time and it’s an automatic NO.
7. She must be easy-going, non-confrontational, and allow me to set the pace of our relationship: fifteen introductory dates to gauge our conversation quality, seven trips to vacation spots to test our compatibility, and well, countless ways to make sure we’ll have a great sex life.
8. She must fit all of the above. NO EXCEPTIONS.
I felt my checklist was necessary since I was a low-profile billionaire: I never went to parties, social mixers, or golf tournaments with the city’s elite. I hated being inundated with media requests, loathed the nosiness of the paparazzi, and hardly posed for pictures when I was being profiled for a magazine. I usually emailed the writer the same six year old photo of me standing beside my motorcycle.
I preferred to simply write checks for whoever needed them and live my life in peace, even though it seemed like the high profile billionaires had all the fun.
I didn’t want to revert to my partying ways, but I couldn’t fathom diving into the dating pool again. It was bad enough that I always had to take precautions with women: performing several background checks, hiding my real occupation for the first few dates, and having Barry secretly screen their credit histories and financial accounts.
I knew I didn’t want to end up alone, but I couldn’t see myself spending another two years searching for someone compatible with my checklist.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come back to the company after all. Maybe I should have—
“Is that okay with you, Mr. Lockwood?” my trust advisor cut through my thoughts.
“What’s that?”
“The plan? What we just suggested? Are you okay with that?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. “I’m all for it.”
“Alright,” he closed his folder. “Meeting adjourned. I’ll have your flight set up by the end of the week and—”
“Whoa whoa whoa. My flight? To where?”
The board members burst into laughter and shuffled out of the room without glancing in my direction.
There was a knock at my door.
“Come in!”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lockwood,” my executive assistant stepped inside.
“Afternoon, Farrah. Let’s get these updates over with.”
“Okay. Um…Well first, you were nominated for the sexiest CEO award and you placed first again. Will you actually be accepting the award this year?”
Do I ever?
“No. Did you get the transcript from this morning’s board meeting like I asked?”
“Yes sir…” she toyed with a strand of her hair and looked down at the floor.
“Can you summarize the notes so I can figure out what’s going on?”
“Yes sir. There seem to be some problems with one of the Southern expansion sites. Revenues at this location are decent but they’re the lowest out of all our expansion sites.”
“And?”
“It’s the test store for the new Southern menu items,” she was speaking much slower than normal. “If we’re trying to have them solidified by the end of November, we’ll need to have at least fifty thousand customers’ votes by then. We don’t even have a tenth of that.”
“What’s your point?”
“The board thought we should send someone down there to really investigate what’s going on, kind of like an ‘Undercover Boss’ type thing so—”
“Sounds great,” I started checking my email. “Tell the board to pick one of the high level interns and set up the flight arrangements by the end of the day. Then get me a strategy meeting with whoever they choose.”
“The board chose you sir.”
“What?” I glared at her. “I’m the CEO.”
“They figured that since you keep a low profile and never put your face on any of the company’s documents or websites, you would easily fit in and—”
This is bullshit! This is clearly their way of letting me know that they haven’t forgotten about my exploits in 2010! I can’t believe them and their silly little idea. I refuse to do this.
“Get Barry in here. Now.”
She scuttled out of the room and within seconds Barry walked into my office.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it last night,” he shut the door. “Shouldn’t you be preparing for Hawaii?”
“Jade turned me down,” I opened a drawer and gave my stress ball a few squeezes. “She said she met someone else.”
“Ouch…She really said that? At your birthday party?”
I nodded and knocked her picture off my desk.
“Well, this ought to cheer you up,” he pulled out a sheet of paper and slammed it on my desk. “You’re going to be on the cover of Fortune! You’re officially the entrepreneur of the year! And you’re doing this photo-shoot, whether you like it or not. What did you want with me anyway?”
“I want to know why the board picked me to go down South to play undercover boss. I’m sure there were plenty of other alternatives.”
“Beats me,” he smirked and shrugged his shoulders.
“Barry…”