Filthy Doctor(248)

I arrived at the hotel bundled up in the heaviest coat I owned, a thick scarf wrapped around my face. The snow had started early that morning, and the roads were already slick by the time I pulled into the parking garage. I was hoping that the bridges wouldn't be closed before I finished with the interview. If they closed both the Ben Franklin and the Walt Whitman, I'd be stuck in the city overnight.

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.”

Hal wasn't giving me anything I could use. Not for a serious news story. I spent some time asking him some more questions about the firms he'd invested in, trying to dig deeper and find some big secret, something I could turn into a major twist. He brushed off most of my questions and gave me useless half-answers. He was friendly enough, sure, but at the end of the day he was better suited to be interviewed by a sports reporter, rather than by someone like me.

Towards the end of the interview he flashed me a smile and asked, “Listen, babe, how about we quit with the business talk and go have a few drinks? My treat.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Masterson,” I said, gathering my notes. “I really should get going before the storm gets any worse.”

He frowned, looking genuinely disappointed. “You sure I can't change your mind? No sense rushing out into the cold. Not when we can stay here, relax, get to know each other a bit. You seem like a real sweet girl. Not at all like the kind that usually hangs around me.”

He scratched the back of his head and looked down at his feet. If I hadn't known better, I might have thought he was being bashful. Imagine that. A bashful billionaire.

“What kind of girl usually hangs around you?” I asked as I stuffed my notebook and folders into my briefcase.

“Ditzy types,” he said, shrugging. “Brainless sorts that can't hold a conversation. You seem like you're above that sort of thing. Like you know your stuff.”

“I definitely do, Mr. Masterson.”

“Call me Hal.”

He reached out and took my hands in his. His palms were rough, but his grip was gentle, yet strong. The sort of hands that could hold a girl all night long. I swallowed a lump in my throat.

“Just one drink?” he asked.

“I really can't,” I said. This meeting was starting to cross the line from business into something personal, and I didn't want to get personal with Hal Masterson. He was an attractive man, sure, and he was very flattering. But even if I wanted to, this would be a bad time for me to get involved with a man. My last relationship had ended in a whirlwind of fighting, infidelity, and crushed feelings. I still remembered the day I stuffed my ex-boyfriend's clothes and everything else he owned into garbage bags and tossed it out of the apartment window. When he tried to come inside to explain, ready to feed me lies about how the girl he'd cheated with “didn't mean anything,” I'd refused to let him inside. The police had eventually had to come and settle things. Since then, I'd avoided any kind of dating life, instead throwing myself into my work. Sometimes I didn't want to admit it, but my work was all I had anymore. Which is why I'd been so upset when Jim thrust this assignment onto me.

Hal sighed. He gave my hands a gentle squeeze. “All right,” he said. “If you can't. But I want you to know that you're breaking my poor heart.”

I snorted and shook my head. He was trying to play the wounded puppy routine, and I wasn't having any of it. Though the disappointment in his eyes was genuine.

“Maybe another time,” I said.

I finished gathering my things and headed for the lobby. It wasn't until I got there that I saw the blizzard outside had picked up to blinding levels. The snow was piling up so fast that the doors to the hotel were blocked.

A member of the hotel staff stood near the doors. He spread his hands when I approached and said, “I'm sorry, ma'am, but the city has declared a state of emergency. The roads are closed. You're going to have to return to your room. The hotel will give you a discount off your bill for being stuck here an extra night, but there's nothing we can do.”

I stared outside, trying to figure out what to do. “I don't even have a room here,” I said. “I was just here for a meeting.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” the man said. “I wish there was something I could do. I'm afraid we're completely booked up.”

“Great.” I huffed and turned away. Not only was I stuck here, but it seemed like I might end up trapped overnight with no place to sleep.

I found Hal in the lobby, checking on the weather. He saw me and hurried over. “Jane, hey.” He touched my arm, his touch gentle against my soft skin. “I just heard they closed the roads. Are you going to be okay?”

“Well, I'm stuck here,” I said, sighing. “I don't know what I'm going to do.”