Filling up the Virgin(186)

I took the elevator up to the ground floor and spoke to someone behind the front desk. They sent me to the conference room Hal had reserved for us. It was big enough to hold a board meeting in, with a long wooden table surrounded by more than a dozen chairs. Far more than we needed for the interview, but it would do.

Hal kept me waiting almost half an hour before he showed up. Apparently big football stars didn't have to worry about being on time. He strolled in like he had all the time in the world, hands in his pockets, a bit of a swagger to his step. He was wearing a silk shirt and pants that had probably cost more money than I made in a week. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing a few tribal tattoos on his arms. I'd never seen a billionaire with tattoos before. It made me wonder if Bill Gates had any.

“Jane?” he asked, extending his hand. I shook it, noticing he had a very strong grip. That wasn't a surprise, considering what he did for a living. “Glad you could make it. Sorry to keep you waiting. If I'd known I had such a lovely lady waiting for me, I would have hurried down here sooner.”

I ignored his flirting. I was here for business, not to get hit on. “Can we get started?” I asked. I sat at one end of the table, with my notebook in front of me and an audio recorder sitting between us. “This won't take long at all. I just want to get some details about your investments, what led you to your financial decisions, that sort of thing.”

He sat down and propped his feet up on the table, crossing one ankle over the other. “Nobody ever asks me questions about money,” he said. “Usually reporters want to know what sort of thing was going through my mind when I threw the touchdown pass that won us the Superbowl last year.”

“I'm not that sort of reporter.”

“I can tell,” he said. He eyed me up and down, his gaze lingering on my large, firm breasts. “You're far sexier than the last reporter I talked to.”

My face heated up, but I tried my best to ignore the feeling. “What can you tell me about your involvement with GMS?”

“Eh, that's nothing too interesting,” he said, still running his eyes all over my body. I had generous curves, and his gaze was caressing every one of them. “I went to school with Brett. When I got my first signing bonus, I invested it in her family business. The better they did, the more money they made me.” He shrugged, acting like it was no big deal.

“And your other investments?” I asked, consulting my notes. “You've made quite a few smart choices over the years, usually bringing in many times what you invested in a company? What's your secret? Insider tips?”

He lowered his feet off the table and leaned towards me, a devious grin on his face. “You want to know my real secret?” he asked.

I held my pen at the ready. “Yes?”

He glanced over his shoulder, as if worried someone might walk in and overhear us. I licked my lips, waiting for him to reveal some kind of juicy dirt, something I could use to really put a twist on this story.

He leaned closer and met my eyes. “I let the game decide.”

I sat there, pen clutched between my fingers, and stared at him. “The game?”

He grinned and nodded. “Depends what the score is. Like, say we play against the Eagles and the score is 21 to 14. I check my stock app,” he pulled out his smartphone and held it up, “then scroll down to number 35 on the list, and I invest in that.”

I stared at him a moment longer. I set down my pen. “That...that's it?”

He shrugged. “That's it. Oh, unless it's a tie, then I add the scores together and double it. For good luck, right?”

I sighed. This story was turning out to be a bigger waste of time than I'd thought it would be. “Mr. Masterson, if you don't have any kind of investment advice to share with our readers...”

“Listen, babe.” He got up and sat on the table right in front of me, one leg dangling over the edge. He leaned in close, close enough that I could smell his expensive cologne. It was a strong, exotic scent, mixed with his natural, manly musk. “Stocks are a gamble, right? Any of them could go up or down at any time. It's like going to the casino. You pick a number on the roulette wheel, you hope to get lucky. The way you play smart is to hedge your bets, cover as many bases as you can, and wait until you hit big. I invest in dozens of companies every year. It's not completely random. The ones that do poorly, I pull out as soon as I see it was a bad investment. The ones that do well, I stick with as long as they're making me money. But there's so many stocks out there, and I could analyze them all day long and still end up with a crapshoot at the end of the day. So I have a little fun with it. And it works.”