Everyone thinks I’m a human version of a bulldog. I’m pretty direct and when I latch on to something, they compare it to a bulldog’s fangs around a throat. I don’t let go and I don’t give up. I follow every action to its logical end. Many think I’m the luckiest son of a bitch in the world when all I really am is prepared.

In everything I do, I make sure I’m as ready as possible to make it a pleasant ending for me. I’m more of a wolf in a bulldog’s skin, because I sniff around things from every angle I can think of to ascertain any weaknesses in the business or person. Never underestimate the value of research. Personally or professionally, I exhaust every avenue available to me before I decide on a plan of action. It’s one of the many reasons I have a successful business. If I have a new vendor or new customer, I find out all there is about them and don’t take anything at face value.

They may look good on paper but if I dig deeper, I may find out they’re right in the middle of an ugly divorce where their company may be compromised, or maybe they declared bankruptcy three years ago in another state. Some may be involved in affairs with either sex and not be particularly discreet, or associate with people of questionable character who may negatively impact their business, in turn, impacting mine.

I’m sort of like a venture capitalist, which can be a kind of term for legal loan-shark, if you wanted to get nasty about it. I’ve accumulated a little money over my life and managed to increase it substantially by investing wisely with people in whom I had a high degree of confidence. I’m not infallible. Some things don’t work out, but my success ratio is about 80%, so I’m able to absorb a loss and move on. Often, it’s a learning experience that gives me better insight into the next deal.

Widely diversified, I have a finger in a lot of things. I had a friend who was a hell of a trainer with several degrees in physical therapy and sports medicine. She was very good at what she did, but she had no business sense at all. When she approached me about opening her own business, I researched it with my usual fanaticism and dragged her along. She learned a great deal in a short time about how her industry worked and in the end, we agreed it was a viable opportunity so I set her up. I owned 60% starting out but wasn’t actively involved, except for the business aspects, and there was a standard buyout clause I put in every contract that allows the minority owner to buy me out over a five to ten year term. There’s also a clause in the contract that if the business starts failing, I step in, analyze the data and decide whether to take over management or shut it down. I’ve had to do that three times, and I took it as a personal affront every time.

I had invested in an advertising agency early on, and it was very, very, successful. They were approached by some heavy hitters who wanted to buy them out and have them work for their organization. Bob and Jan called me for help and we went over the offer. It was attractive, but I showed them that as their reputation grew they could be bigger than the company trying to buy them out in fifteen years. They declined the offer and over the years it’s been very profitable to me. I still own 20% through the structured buyout program we’d agreed to, and in four years they’d be completely independent.

My usual practice was to use who I had worked with earlier to help make my newer investments successful. Bob did a carefully crafted campaign for Jodie’s rehabilitation clinic, and in two years she franchised and now has offices in every Southern state and parts of the Midwest. I own just a bit of each one because she insisted it made her feel safer.

The guy who started me down the path I was on was an old-time wheeler-dealer who liked to fly under the radar. Over his lifetime he probably paid about twenty per cent of the taxes he really owed and got away with it. I wasn’t quite that brave, and my deals were pretty straightforward and transparent. Besides, with the advent of computers it was a lot harder to slip anything by the tax man. It was the reason Great uncle Harry avoided technology like the plague.

There had been a scandal at an accounting firm in my town. It seems no one was watching them watch other peoples’ money and they had taken advantage, to the tune of twelve million. They got caught and the owners went to jail. The money was never found.

It piqued my interest, so I bought the business for a song. The old owners were desperate to pay their lawyers, so they didn’t profit from it. I kept three of the junior accountants who weren’t involved and built the business slowly. Their core business came from making sure the companies I invested in were on the straight and narrow and provided expert advice when they needed it, and usually, they meant me. I had changed the name and the guys I had were good, managing to get about 25% of their old customers who hadn’t been stolen from back so it was starting to show a pretty decent increase in revenue stream.

I offered the three originals a buyout deal that they jumped all over: six per cent a year for ten years. They had seven more years to go.

...

By then, I was 32 and pretty happy with all aspects of my life but one. I was lonely. I dated a good bit but had never found ‘the one’. Harry’s wife had gotten tired of his many affairs and had raped him in the divorce. Seems she knew a good bit more about his business than he thought. When she got done with him, the I.R.S. came knocking. The only thing that kept him from jail was me. It was a near thing, but he had to pay an estimated amount of two hundred and fourteen thousand in penalties and taxes. If he could do that, they’d let him off with three years of probation. He had the money but couldn’t explain where it came from, so I loaned it to him. That put me under the microscope, but my transparent ways paid off. Harry was paying me back at a pre-agreed rate from his salary as one of my warehouse managers, plus twice the amount under the table. He’d be out of my debt by the time the probation was over.

My great-aunt was acting out of anger and pain, but it made me appreciate the need to get things out in the open should I ever find a woman I loved enough to marry. A prenuptial was a given, and I would make sure there were some pretty stringent penalties in the case of infidelity from either spouse. I’d even talked to my lawyer about it and he gave me the groundwork, with the details to be worked out when the time came.

An only child of parents who never had any deep family ties, I was pretty much alone in the world. It made me want a family, a large family, pretty badly. I wanted a minimum of three children and if one of them came with the mother I’d consider it a bonus. I was young, not unattractive and had enough money to make the dates high-end. There had been two pretty serious relationships in my life. One was going along fine and she was hinting for a commitment when I explained the prenup she’d have to sign. She balked, saying we were in love and would be together forever. When that didn’t work, she turned into a shrew of an epic magnitude. We just gradually drifted apart.

Six months later she married an up and coming businessman who came from old money. Six months later they were in divorce court, and she was trying to squeeze every dime possible out of him. She partially succeeded, getting almost everything he’d accumulated, but the family money was locked up in a trust and there was no way she could get to it. He almost lost his little company until I stepped in. Three years later he’s worth far more than he was when he was married, is engaged to a very nice young lady with a child from a previous marriage who seemed to love him more than her mother, and they were house shopping. I set it up with one of the two real estate offices in which I had an interest.

In the same time frame his first wife had married and divorced twice more, getting very little out of each failed marriage. I saw her at lunch one day and she blamed me for everything. I just grinned. “I’m not the cause of all your problems, honey. Just the big ones. All the rest is on you.”

It was bullshit, of course, but she believed it.

I had gotten frustrated looking for love, so I backed off. Love ran into me in the hallway of the advertising agency. I was a pretty big guy and she was a waif of a woman. I found out later she was five foot even and weighed ninety pounds when I met her. After I helped her up, admiring her legs, I apologized and introduced myself.

“Hi. I’m Roy. A pleasure to run into you.”

She bit back the sharp retort that was on her lips and looked at me more closely. I was giving her my most “I mean you no harm” grin, and she sighed.

“I should watch where I’m going. Sorry.”

“No harm done. Are you all right?”

“As good as one can get when they bounce off a stone wall. Let me guess; you work out a lot.”

I had to admit I was in pretty good shape, thanks to Jodie. She mapped out my meals, my exercise routine and would frown at me when I went off course. Then again, I had a thing for craft brews. Most were terrible, as brewers made the most common of mistakes: thinking higher alcohol percentage meant better beer. A lot of them figured it out, but some didn’t and they didn’t last. I financed the startup of my favorite brewer after he gave me some samples of what he did at home. He was a little afraid at first, but we guided him along. The accountants looked after his finances, the ad guys did a viral campaign, plus billboards, and ads in local and state magazines. His demand was higher than his production, but he was ruled by some pretty draconian restrictions, the result of the powerful lobby sponsored by the big boys. A few even tried to pass off some of their product as microbrews but were outed pretty quickly. I was one of his focus group and he thought a lot of my opinion.

I grinned at her. “A little. I wouldn’t classify myself as stone.”

She absently rubbed her bottom. The term “knocked on her ass: wasn’t just an expression any longer. “Sure felt like it from my end. As interesting as it is to meet you, I have to go back to work.”

We parted and I wondered what she did there. Jan told me she was a new associate, fresh from college with a Master’s degree and unbounded enthusiasm.

I saw her a few more times when I had to visit the office. When we got around to exchanging names it was all we could do not to laugh. My name was Roy McCoy, and hers was Jimi Chu. “Not related,” she told me, “and I don’t think his shoes are worth the price.”

We had coffee twice, followed by a few lunches before going on a real date. We got a few looks from other diners at the really nice restaurant I’d taken her for our date. I was over six feet tall and pretty thick, thanks to Jody, and she was a tiny little oriental beauty over a foot shorter. I never told her I’d bankrolled the restaurant and it was doing very well.

Jimmie was half Korean and half Japanese, and in my opinion, inherited the best physical traits of both. She told me there was a lot of resentment between the two, going all the way prior to World War II, because of the many atrocities the Japanese had inflicted on the Koreans, and it was what prompted her parents to come to North America. She was raised mostly in Canada and had only moved there four years previously. You could still hear the Canadian influence in the way she pronounced certain words and it was kind of cute.

I told her my story. Born and raised locally. One year of community college before I dropped out. An inheritance from a great grandmother I never knew existed gave me the seed money to start my business. I could tell she was impressed. “Wow! You must be really smart.”

“I grinned. “Not really. I just got some good advice from a really successful man. He told me you didn’t have to be the smartest man in the room. You just had to be smart enough to figure out who was and harness their intelligence. Most geniuses aren’t very business savvy. That’s where I fit in.”

“You must be very successful.”

I thought back on my failures. “Sometimes. There’s been a few times when I’ve fallen on my ass, but I consider each failure a learning experience.” I then put her in tears laughing over tales of a few of my failures.

“You really thought that was a good idea?”

“Not now, but at the time I thought it made sense.”

We had an enjoyable evening just getting comfortable with each other. After the meal I took her to a performance by our local amateur theatre group. They were pretty good and were doing the stage version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The plants in the audience kept things lively, calling the guy who played Brad ‘asshole’ at different times, and when the scene where Dr. Frank-n-Furter asked Brad if he had tattoos rolled around one of the plants yelled out “Assholes don’t have tattoos!”

The man playing the Dr. looked at the audience and grinned. “Mine does!” Jimi lost it, laughing so hard she gave herself hiccups. I was a sponsor and talked to everyone at the meet-and-greet after the show, and Jimi got into all kinds of conversations with the actors. The woman who played Janet appeared still in her bra and half-slip and struck up a conversation with her.

“Aren’t you uncomfortable wearing just your underwear?”

Celeste, the actress, grinned. “No, honey. I kind of get off on it. I got a pretty good rack (she reached up and hefted her breasts, which got EVERYBODY’S attention) and I like to show it off. You should see our vacation pictures.”

“What does your husband say?”

About that time her husband, Jack, appeared at her side, still in his jockeys. He’d played Brad in the production. I grinned when I saw Jimi’s eyes go to his groin. Let’s just say Jack didn’t have to stuff his shorts.

Celeste jumped a little and I knew he’d grabbed her ass. They had been married-five years and were devoted to each other, although after a late night and two bottles of wine they both told me they were ‘adventurous’ and not adverse to playing with discrete partners. Celeste was looking at me with naked lust, but what freaked me was her husband had the same gleam in his eye while he stared at my crotch. I left shortly after. Just as I reached the door her bra flew by me. I didn’t turn around.

I took Jimi home and she asked me to wait in the hall for a minute. When she called me in, she was standing on a stepstool, wearing a robe. As soon as I closed the door, she dropped the robe and stood before me in a white bra and half-slip. “Toucha-toacha-touch me, I wanna be dirty,” she sang as she motioned me closer. It was a very prolonged goodnight kiss that involved a lot of light touches until she finally pushed me away. “That’s a really good start, baby. It’s too soon to go farther, but time will take care of that, if you continue to ask me out.”

Later on, I found out to my surprise that when we were horizontal we were exactly the same height. I tried to be gentle because of her size but she was having none of it. “I won’t break, baby, but I’d like you to try.”

After that, I tossed her around like a rag doll, rolling her into one position after another until she screamed, orgasmed, and passed out. I stopped, not sure what to do. She came to her senses a few seconds later and started back like we’d never stopped. She was purring with happiness as she lay on top of me after we were done, going to sleep instantly.

After that we were joined at the hip. Three months later she was living with me. Six months after that she was wearing my ring.

It was her birthday and I gave her the first of her gifts, a pair of Jimmy Chu’s with a four-inch heel. Jimi grinned and told me I’d wasted my money, but tried them on anyway. “Ouch! There’s something in the toe of this one!”

She shook it into her hand and a ring fell out.

She just stared at it for a few seconds. Then she looked at me. “Is this...”

By then I was on my knee. She was pretty strong to be as small as she was, knocking me on my ass when she launched into my arms. I noticed by the time I managed to get us off the floor she had the ring on her finger.

We married with the correct amount of pomp and circumstance in front of friends and family the next June, went somewhere warm and mostly clothes optional for our honeymoon, and settled into domestic bliss.

I was truly happy. Jimi loved her job; one she was very good at and I muddled along in my usual fashion. I invested heavily in a security firm when the principal owner caught his wife fooling around and handled it badly. Ruined genitals for the lover, permanent limp for the wife, off for five years as a guest of the state. It had been fairly successful and I got it at a huge discount because he needed all the money he could raise to pay off his ex and criminal lawyers. He’d had a prenup or she would have taken the business.

The guy I got to run it was retired Army with fifteen years as a CID inspector. I was surprised that there was very little actual detective work. It was the digital age and he assembled a group of geeks with very good skills, so most of what they did required very little leg work. He trained them all, anyway, and they were perfect. Who’s gonna think a geek with a laptop is any threat? I worked with them setting it up and it made me paranoid as hell. If you had any digital presence at all you were toast, not mentioning cameras. By the time all the changes had been made there were only three original employees left. They did mostly corporate work. I had them do a once over of all the businesses I had a hand in.

Jimi was not happy when I presented the prenuptial agreement to her. We almost didn’t get married over it until my lawyer and hers worked out a compromise. I put a quarter of a million in a trust and had to add five percent a year to it. If the marriage broke up because I cheated, she got the money and that was it. If she was caught cheating then she walked away with nothing other than what we accrued jointly, excepting my business. It seemed to me there at the end it was more of a business transaction than a marriage, but I knew neither of us would ever cheat so it was just so many words written on a paper both of us would forget about over time.

Apparently, I was wrong.

We’d been married a little over four years. I thought life was good. We were both fit active people with a good circle of friends. A cousin got me hooked on whitewater kayaking. Jimi went a few times before deciding it was not for her and urging me to be careful. My cousin drove the point home. “You’re not indestructible and you can’t breathe water. Every time we go out you push the envelope a little farther, wanting to shoot rapids that are frankly just a little too dangerous, and that need portaged around. There’s a reason water has classifications. And you don’t need to go out alone; who knows what you’re liable to do without calmer minds around. You keep taking stupid chances and I’m not going out with you, any more. I don’t want to be the one to tell Jimi you died doing something you knew was dangerous.”

Jimi got hooked on the local theater guild productions, we got season passes and often took friends along to enjoy something a little different. Three of the companies I was involved with were patrons, as well as my company and Jimi and I individually. I worked summers in construction growing up and I often helped with set construction. Jimi came along, painting, sanding, everything she could do to help out.

One night a few hours before opening curtain on a new production, one of the actresses called. She’d been in an accident and was in the hospital with a broken leg, in traction. The director was about to panic when his eyes fell on Jimi.

“It’s two lines and very little movement. Help me out here.”

She was scared to death the first night. You could tell by the look on her face. By the time the curtains closed on the final performance she was hooked. Everyone said she was a natural and as she gained experience, her skills improved until she was often in second lead rolls.

The time commitment was a lot larger than I expected, but she loved it so I didn’t complain. Much. I finally expressed how much I missed our time together and she cut back, roughly skipping every third production. She bonded with a lot of the actors and they were frequent guests in our home. Celeste and Jack became good friends and while the flirting and innuendo flew when we were alone, they were careful to respect boundaries.

That didn’t stop us all from getting naked one night in the hot tub. Four bottles of wine and almost constant sexual bantering all night set the scene. When the girls wanted to lose their tops, I shocked the hell out of them by saying we should all just get naked. Even Jack turned red when I stood casually and threw my suit on the deck. I wasn’t porn star size, but I wasn’t ashamed and I was secretly a little pleased that I was longer than Jack. Celeste all but tried to hump me in the tub and Jack was getting really close to Jimi when I put a stop to all of it, declaring the night done, rising out of the water and slinging a very surprised Jimi over my shoulder. They got a great view of her ass as I walked away.

“Stay as long as you like. Jimi and I have things that need doing. Do not fuck in the tub! I just cleaned it.”

We made it into the kitchen and I dropped her on the counter. It was exactly the right height and we were soon going at it like rutting animals. I kept noticing that as much as she got into it she kept glancing outside. I turned her sideways and there were Jack and Celeste, banging like bunnies on one of our loungers. She was riding him and he had his hands firmly locked on her boobs. She let out a small shriek and went limp. Jack just dragged her up and grabbed her ass, pounding her so hard it looked like it hurt.

Jimi took advantage of the distraction to slide off the counter, going around behind it and wiggling her ass. They were facing us and we watched each other until everyone had a big finish. Jimi almost passed out. Celeste stood up, grabbed a towel and wiped herself and Jack down, turned around and grinned at me while she tugged on her nipples. “‘Night Jimi, Roy! Thanks for a pleasant evening.” She led him to the car, carrying their clothes. I guess it was a nude ride home. I carried Jimi to bed and we were out within minutes.

We woke a little hung-over, but grinned at each other. We showered together, and we while we played a little grab-ass that was as far as it went.

Jimi sat sipping her coffee, a faraway look on her face. “Last night was ... interesting. I’ve never seen live sex before. It was hot, wasn’t it?”

“It was. I think it will be awhile before we invite them back to the hot tub, though. I know them, and they’ll take it as an invitation to push the limits. To reinforce my stand on sex outside the marriage I’ll say this. If you want to play, we’ll play. Just be prepared to move out right afterwards. There will be no coming back from it, you understand?”

Jimi started a little like she was coming out of a dream. “Of course, honey. There was no need to say that. Still, it was fun to watch and be watched, wasn’t it?”

“It was, but there again it’s not something I think we should repeat. What happened was a too much wine and heat of the moment type thing.”

She agreed but I could see in her eyes she was a little disappointed.

Jimi came home from a theatre guild meeting a few weeks later looking starry-eyed. “I got the lead!”

I knew she was excited and gave her a big hug and kiss. “You’ll kill it! Celeste better watch her ass!”

She giggled. “Jack and Philip are taking care of that.”

“Well, good for them, then. I like them but I can’t help but think they’ll push it too far one day and it will be the end of them. One or the other will do something they just can’t come back from.”

“They’re totally in love! I know it’s not our lifestyle, but it seems to work for them and from what they tell me it keeps things exciting in the bedroom.”

I grinned at the way she gushed. “Not rethinking this whole monogamy thing, are you?”

She blushed and grinned. “Never. I like what we have just fine. In fact, why don’t we go into the bedroom and I’ll remind you of that.”

“One problem.”

“What’s that honey?”

“The bedroom’s too far away.”

I was on her before she could react. Maybe I got a little too excited when I ripped off her panties but I made it up the next day with a trip to the local high-end lingerie shop. That place had been in business before anyone knew who Vicky was, and their selection put the national chain to shame. It was a lot of fun and I almost laughed out loud when the grandmotherly woman who waited on us gave Jimi a tour of the fetish room, barely containing her excitement as she showed her the floggers. Jimi did pick up something from the room, a chainmail bra that looked great on her perky little boobs. She told me she was going for something I couldn’t tear.

We were rocking right along and had even started talking about children. Jimi didn’t have any siblings, either, and she would waffle between three children one day and four the next. I was onboard whatever number she picked.

I had another project going. Our favorite restaurant went out of business due to poor management. The chef came to me with a proposal. We’d buy the defunct restaurant, furniture and all, remodel a bit, line up really good staff to help in the kitchen and an experienced host or hostess to manage the dining-room. I’d invested in a restaurant early on and had turned a pretty good profit on it. It folded about a year after I got out; with no one there to oversee the finances or keep the ego of the chef in check, it went downhill fast. He called, trying to get me to reinvest, but I declined. He’d already damaged the reputation of the place too badly to come back.

Restaurants on the whole have a horrific failure rate, and my accountants were dead-set against it, this time. The security guys checked the chef out and he came out squeaky clean with a really good reputation. He’d already turned down two lucrative job offers because his wife didn’t want to relocate, and I knew he was pitching his idea to two more investment groups.

In the end, I decided to go for it. I could write most of it off if it failed, but I believed in my heart it would last. I got the business for a song; the owner trying to make just enough to keep from declaring bankruptcy. I held a 60% stake in it, the chef putting up a little cash and his reputation to make his 40%. As usual, I wrote a buyout clause into the agreement, 5% a year after two years.

The real estate company lined us up with some very good construction contractors, the refurbish looked even better than we thought it would and came in under budget. Maybe it was time to look into the construction business.

Jimi put together a very good ad campaign, including viral, and the first night we were open we were at full capacity. The meal was free and the diners were selected at random through a lottery, online. We reserved a few tables for food critics and writers. They got a sampling of the best dishes, and the articles and word of mouth were amazing.

I made it a point to be there. Jack and Celeste were our guests, mainly because Celeste ran a food blog. They brought their friend Philip along and I thought he was a little conceited and thought way too much of himself as an actor. He’d been in a few local commercials, some bit parts in films being made in the area, and had done a six-week guest run on a daytime soap. He just couldn’t seem to understand why Hollywood wasn’t knocking on his door. Despite that, he seemed harmless and was actually a bit funny. It occurred to me maybe he’d missed his calling as a standup comic.

His date was Cynthia, one of the board members and main director. She was about ten years older than Philip and obviously smitten. She was also very married, to a man with an unforgiving nature. I wondered if he knew where she was.

She knew me, and more importantly, knew my ethics. “I’m so glad when Celeste called and asked if I’d fill in so Philip wouldn’t be a fifth wheel. With Jim being gone for a week and not getting home for another four days, I was climbing the walls. It’s so good to get out with friends!”

She was selling, but it smelled like snake oil to me. I wasn’t buying it, but maintained a neutral demeanor. Not my problem, but if what I suspected was true and Jim ever found out, Philip wouldn’t be auditioning for leading man roles, anymore. His facial modifications would put him in ‘the quirky sidekick’ zone, and he’d deserve every lump he was going to get.

Celeste looked at me and grinned. She knew what I was thinking. We’d become good friends, better friends than Jack and I would ever be, and she lived her life by her own standards, openly, so I had nothing to judge.

The food was excellent and the conversation was stellar, except for Philip’s contributions. Celeste would deliberately say things he couldn’t understand and then grin when he floundered. It was mean, but enjoyable. If looks could kill, Cynthia would have had Celeste on the ground. Oddly, it seemed to upset Jimi, as well, although she tried hard not to show it. It made me wonder how long it took before he was able to remember his lines.