I stroll out of the meeting room, Nathan in tow, just in time to catch Sarah glancing at her watch. She’s in an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse and cutoff jeans, which, while incredibly sexy, is a little out of step with the formality of the lobby sofa where she’s currently sitting and impatiently bouncing one knee on the other. A small suitcase and a funky denim beach bag are on the floor next to her.

She’s impatient as hell, and I wouldn’t have her any other way.

“I see you found the place.”

She looks up, startled but smiling, as Nathan and I walk over to her. Every other member of my staff is doing their damndest to not appear like they’re looking at us, and it’s hilarious to watch.

Nathan takes her hand in his. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Sarah.”

“You too, Nathan. We didn’t really get to know each other that well the first time we met. I hope we can make up for that soon.”

“That’s up to this guy,” he says, cocking a thumb at me. “He’s pretty much the opposite of a social butterfly, whatever that would be. A social caterpillar? Social moth?”

“Funny,” I say dryly. “Maybe I should fire you so you can pursue your stand-up career full time.”

He ignores me. “Although I gotta admit, he’s been getting out more since you showed up. Maybe there’s hope for him yet.”

“I think there is,” she says, taking my hand. “This trip to the Hamptons is proof.”

“Justin told me. So you’re staying with your friends, or are you going to crash at his place?”

“Millie and Tim have a beach rental,” I say. “And the whole point is to spend time with them, so…”

Sarah’s hand goes up as her brows go down. “Wait a minute—what does Nathan mean, your place?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I have a house on the tip of Montauk. Up in the hills.”

Of course I didn’t tell her; I wanted it to be a surprise and my so-called friend just ruined it. But at least I still have the other one up my sleeve.

“No, you did not tell me.” She laughs and then groans. “Why didn’t you?”

“I have houses all over the world. I can’t keep track of them all.” I grin. It sounds like an awful thing to say, but I worked hard enough to get here.

She scoffs and shakes her head. “Who even says something like that?”

“A billionaire with houses all over the world?” I offer.

Turns out that wasn’t the right thing, either, as she grabs her bags in a huff. But it’s a good kind of exasperation, because it’s not long before she’s smiling again.

“Have a great weekend, Nathan,” she says. “Mr. Billionaire here has to drive me to East Hampton in—” She checks her watch again. “Just under seventy-three minutes, which is pretty much physically impossible, especially in Friday traffic, so we’d better get going.”

Nathan frowns. “Aren’t you going to take—”

“So long, Nathan!” I bark. “Like the lady said, have a good weekend.”

I grab her suitcase is one hand and her arm in the other, and lead her to the elevator door. Inside, I push the up button.

“You hit the ‘up’ button,” she says with mild annoyance.

“Did I? Shoot.”

She gives me a look but says nothing as the elevator rises through the six floors that take it to the top floor. When the door opens, I grab the suitcase and step out.

“Coming?”

“What’s going on?” she asks warily. The area is basically just a stairwell that leads up to a metal door.

“We have to go. Don’t want to be late for lunch.”

She follows me up the stairs, frowning the whole way, until I open the door onto the roof of the building. Warm air blasts us as we leave the air-conditioned space for the midday sun, and our ears are assaulted by a low whine that forces us to raise our voices.

“What in the world…?” she calls.

I lead her around the other side of the door, which gives her a full view of the rooftop—and the Bell 525 helicopter that sits on the helipad twenty yards away, waiting for us to board.

She looks at me, eyes wide, her hair flowing in the wind created by the altitude and the chopper blades.

I shrug. “I never said anything about driving.”

* * *

“There it is,” I say into the mic.

“Where?”

I reach across her and point out the Bell’s window to the building below. Its three levels are set into the side of the hill, all gleaming white exterior walls, inset with floor-to-ceiling opaque windows. What little roof there is outside of the hill is covered in flat solar panels that glimmer in the afternoon sun. The front grounds are bisected by an Olympic-sized pool that runs almost the length of the yard. A circular driveway, paved with super-hard acrylic microbeads and lined with solar-powered heating elements, runs to the front of the house and back around the the private road. In short, it’s a cutting-edge smart home that takes full advantage of all the technology available to the discerning home buyer to whom money is no object.

“Where?” she asks again, holding her headphone tight. “Behind that hotel, you mean?”

“Hotel?”

She points at my house.

“That’s it,” I say.

“That’s what?”

I put my hand over the headset mic and let out a laugh while she’s still looking out the window. When I’ve composed myself, I say: “That’s my house.”

She looks at it, then at me, then back at it.

“That’s not your house,” she says.

“Charlie,” I say. “Is that my house under us?”

“If it’s not, then I’ve been landing in the wrong person’s front yard this whole time,” the pilot says from the front seat.

Sarah turns to me, staring. “Who could possibly need a house that big? It’s ridiculous!”

I shrug. “Fine. There’s a motel about five miles back, we can go there instead.”

“No!” she cries. “I mean, we’re here now, we might as well…”

“Uh-huh,” I grin. “Thought you might feel that way.”

Charlie brings us down on the grass next to the entrance to the driveway so as to avoid kicking debris into the pool. I grab Sarah’s bags and help her out the door and onto the lawn.

“All right, buddy, we’ll see you Sunday, 1900 hours.”

“Roger that,” he replies.

“Thank you, Charlie!” Sarah calls. “It was my first time in a helicopter! I loved it!”

He salutes. “My pleasure, ma’am. Have a great weekend.”

With that, he lifts off and leaves us to fend for ourselves on my 14-acre estate. I’m pretty sure we’ll survive.

* * *

The front door pops open an instant before we reach it, so I don’t have to put down the bags as we walk in.

“What happened?” Sarah peers around the room. “Was the door open when we got here?”

“Facial recognition. A scanner over the door frame reads my features and opens when I get within a few feet.”

Her eyes widen. “Shut. Up.”

I ignore her. “Music.”

The air is suddenly fills with the voice of Shania Twain, singing about how much she enjoys being a female of the species. Beside me, Sarah is giddy as a child.

“How does it know my favorite song?” she gasps.

“Remember when I asked you to show me your Spotify playlist on your phone the other day?”

“Ye-es…” She eyes me warily.

“I emailed it to the house.”

“How do you email a house?”

I grin and slide an arm around her shoulders.

“The same way you do stuff like this, I say, waving a hand at the walls and changing each of the half-dozen “paintings” in the room (that are actually ultra-thin flexible video screens) from Gaugins to Renoirs. “You pay a bunch of tech geeks a lot of money.”

Beyond the entrance is a front room with a window wall that faces out onto the pool. The furniture throughout the house is ultra-modern, but designed with comfort in mind. The upholstery is in various shades of bone-white, which I read is calming somehow. And that’s what I’m looking for when I’m here: peace and quiet.

Well, maybe not so much this time.

The kitchen is done in white with matte grey appliances. Sarah goggles at the sheer size of it, turning her head back and forth to take it all in: cabinets that reach to the 12-foot ceilings, an island with seating for eight, polished concrete countertops that sport the latest in kitchen gadgets.

“Your fridge is enormous.” Her voice is filled with awe. “And there’s a TV in the door.”

“That’s actually a tablet. It keeps an inventory of what’s inside and orders whatever I need when I need it.”

She turns to me and frowns. “Okay, now you’re just messing with me.”

“Seriously. I programmed it to have certain items, and when it senses that I’m out of something, it sends an order to the grocery store in town, and they deliver it.”

“That seems so incredibly wasteful,” she says, but it’s almost reluctantly. I get the sense that the Amish girl is struggling with the billionaire’s girlfriend for dominance.

“The grocery store charges me a fortune for it,” I say.

“What happens when they deliver it? Do they just drop it at the door?”

“I have a housekeeper here a few hours every day. She coordinates with them.”

Sarah scans the room in silence for a long time—long enough for me to get a little worried.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she says absently. “I just can’t help wondering what my GrandMa-Ma would have thought of this place. I mean, this kitchen is bigger than the main floor of the house I grew up in, and there were six of us. How often are you here?”

“Maybe once a month in the summer. A couple of Christmases.”

“Wow. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like I’m angry or anything; I’m not. It’s just that this whole thing is… alien to me.”

I’d never given it much thought, but now that she’s said it, it makes me wonder about my own reasons for having the place built. Why was it so important to me, when I hardly even spend any time here? That’s not even counting the places in Rome and Bangkok and London. I’ve got a duplex in Sydney that I’ve never even seen. It’s like the line in that old Joe Walsh song about how life’s been good to him.

“I grew up with nothing,” I say. “I swore to myself every night I went to bed hungry that, as soon as I was old enough to have any control over it, I was never going to go hungry again. I got my first job when I was twelve, and I guess I just didn’t know when to stop.”

“It wasn’t just money that was missing,” she says as she slips her fingers through mine. “Maybe you need to start focusing on the other stuff you want now.”

Suddenly I’m fighting a lump in my throat, so I lean in and kiss her. She strokes my cheek, which sends some blood down below, and now what I want more than anything is to show her the master bedroom.

* * *

“Holy shit,” she puffs. “Good thing your housekeeper has the day off. She might have called the cops if she’d heard that.”

Our sex was quick and dirty, because we’re still against the clock. My fly went down the second we got to the bedroom, her skirt went up and the whole thing lasted less than five minutes. But it was still incredible. It always is.

I pull on a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt from the closet and throw a few more items in an overnight bag. My breathing still hasn’t gone back to normal yet as we head out to the foyer and grab Sarah’s bags.

“How are we getting to Millie and Tim’s place?” she asks, glancing at her watch. “We’ve only got twenty minutes, and it’s still fifteen miles to East Hampton. Guess you’re not going to live up to your promise.”

“Ye of little faith,” I grin.

We head out the front door and the garage door rolls back into the wall as I approach. Sarah sees the car inside and her mouth drops open just a little. It looks a bit like a cross between a muscular Ferrari and the smooth lines of a BMW M4.

“Whoa,” she breathes. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

I tap my fob and the entire roof and door assembly of the sports car rises up on hydraulics to let us in.

“That’s because it’s the only one there is,” I say, tossing our bags in the little cubby behind the seats. “It’s a Saab Aero-X, specially built for me. The only other one in existence is the concept car that this is based on. It never went into production because the cost was too high for the market to bear.”

She climbs into the passenger seat and I take my place behind the wheel. Another tap of the fob brings the canopy back down over us.

“My father would shit a brick if he saw this thing,” she giggles. “And GrandMa-Ma would probably think it was a spaceship.”

I wonder for a moment what her family will say when they find out about me, but I file it away just as quickly. There’s no time for that right now: we’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

“Hold on tight,” I say as the engine rumbles to life. “I might break a few speed laws.”

Her hand drops on my thigh and I feel the pinch as her nails dig into my skin. Suddenly I’m stiff again, which makes me glad the Saab has a clutchless manual transmission.

“Do it,” she says, and the grin on her face as I punch the gas makes me feel like the teenager I never got the chance to be.