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Her hand tightened around the stylus she’d been using to take notes. “To you? Probably not.”
“Bradley is not my friend. He is my employee.” Andreas grimaced.
“He’ll figure that out right away when he finds out you’re selling the company and making his position redundant.”
“I plan to take Bradley with me.”
She wasn’t surprised, but looked into Andreas’s green gaze for confirmation of his words. Her trust factor was at an all-time low with this man right now. “Into your venture capital firm?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She wanted Bradley to be okay. And he worked well for Andreas.
Andreas smiled, that winner’s grin. The one he used when he was sure things were going his way. “You’ll have enough from the sale of the company to participate materially in the new company.”
“No.” She’d made plans for the money going public would give her. Changing the source of that windfall to an outright sale wouldn’t change her plans.
“We make a good team.”
“No.”
For the first time, Andreas looked disconcerted. “You haven’t even heard me out.”
“There’s nothing to hear. I’m not interested in changing careers. I love what I do and I plan to keep doing it.”
“You’d start a new business in competition with Hawk? Do I need to remind you that business is not your strong suit?”
Oh, if she were a violent woman! He’d have a hand-sized print on his cheek right now. Just to take that smug look off his face. “No. If I wanted to start my own software development company, I’d find a partner. But I don’t see any reason to leave this one. Sebastian Hawk respects my abilities and I’m sure he realizes that without me, the software development department would be crippled.”
Especially if she took the team with her.
“You have a high opinion of your abilities.”
“You used to too.”
“I still do.”
She didn’t reply to that. In fact, she was done talking. Kayla turned back to her computer and changed a line of code before inserting the new series she’d written over the last hour.
“Kayla.”
“Go away, Andreas.”
“Genevieve wants to meet with you.”
“I don’t know why. Anything she needs to know, she can send me an email.”
“I thought we could meet together.”
Because that went so well the first time around. “Go away, Andreas.”
If she kept saying it, he would eventually obey. Everyone did. Even Andreas.
He said her name again. She ignored him, putting in her earbuds and turning on her favorite work playlist. She began typing.
He stood behind her a lot longer than she expected, but after the second song, he was finally gone.
Kayla’s shoulders sagged and her heart hurt in her chest.
She looked at the computer screen that had been designed to be unreadable by anyone not directly in front of it. It was filled with a series of lines that all said the same thing. “I need you to go away.”
She carefully deleted the dozens of lines saying the same thing, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not get back into programming mode.
She needed to know what her future held, now that she realized it wasn’t going to have Andreas Kostas in it.
She left her development station with the computer with no conduit to the internet and moved to her desk and tablet. It was a lot easier than she expected to find a flight to Sebastian Hawk’s headquarters the following day.
Kayla marked herself as out of the building the next day, canceled the one meeting she had to attend and sent off two emails requesting coverage for the others she wouldn’t be at.
* * *
Andreas swore as he read the gushing but uncompromising email from Genevieve telling him he had to fill out the entire personality and interests form before their next consultation. He’d thought the intake form had asked everything pertinent.
Apparently, the matchmaker did not agree.
If Kayla wasn’t pissed at him, he could have asked for her help. As awkward as she could be socially because of her overly literal mind, she got stuff like this with surprising understanding.
The meeting between her and the matchmaker could have gone worse, but he wasn’t sure how. Both he and Genevieve had gotten Kayla’s back up.
It had been a couple of years since she’d tuned him out with earbuds. But when she did it, there was no point trying to communicate with her.
Kayla had a stubborn streak that could outlast his own when the issue mattered to her.
She was angry he’d decided to sell the company, that she’d learned today in the meeting.
Telling Genevieve his plans to sell before talking to Kayla had been a mistake. He could see that now.
He owed his partner more respect than that.
It was also clear that she believed as his friend, he should have talked to her about hiring the matchmaker ahead of time too.
He didn’t see it.
If anything, Kayla should have realized this was the next step. She was the only person he’d ever shared his plans with, but he had shared them.
A long time ago, when their friendship had included sex and no business partnership.
He didn’t like knowing she was upset with him. Kayla Jones was the only person whose opinion really mattered to him.
Breakfast apology éclairs might be in order tomorrow.
Hell, why not deal with it tonight and take her to dinner at that Vietnamese place she liked?
Kayla wasn’t in the computer lab when he got there and didn’t answer her phone when he called.
She was still ignoring him.
Too bad for her, he wasn’t in the mood to be ignored.
He’d just go by her condo. It wasn’t exactly a trip, a few floors below his penthouse that was double the size of her small one bedroom. At least she’d moved into his building and out of the hopeless apartment in an unacceptable part of town.
Forty-five minutes later, he sent a short text. Where the hell are you?
When she didn’t reply in five minutes, he sent another one. I can keep this up all night until your damn phone’s batteries die from all the alerts.
He was surprised when she didn’t reply after that one. Andreas didn’t make idle threats, though. He proceeded to blow her phone up with texts every five minutes, even more shocked when the first few did not elicit a r
esponse and moving into downright worried by the time his phone rang forty-five minutes and eight texts later.
“Stop!” Anger and exasperation warred in her shout.
More than a little annoyed himself, he demanded, “Where are you?”
“You’re not my keeper.”
Knowing he did not have to be worried for her safety allowed him to ratchet back on the irritation. He went for calm, rational. “We need to talk.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that little thing before this minute, you think?”
“We would have talked this afternoon if you hadn’t thrown a hissy fit and stormed out of my office.” Okay, maybe not so calm.
“That? Was not a hissy fit. I do not lose my cool, storm anywhere and I never throw fits, hissy or otherwise.” Oh, hell. Her voice had gone cold and devoid of emotion, like it did when she was protecting herself.
He didn’t like thinking she felt the need to protect herself from him. “Be reasonable, Kayla. You’re blowing this all out of proportion.”
“What exactly? The fact you’re planning to take my home away because that wife pimp says you need to?”
“I’m not doing anything with your condo.”
“Don’t play the idiot!” Kayla’s shout stunned him into silence.
She was right; she didn’t lose her cool. The only time he’d ever heard her raise her voice was when they used to sleep together. And no matter how good a lover he was, the times she let herself go enough to scream were few. Allowing himself to remember their sexual past was not productive, as he had learned early on after taking her on as a business partner.
He could not afford that kind of distraction from his goals.
Right now, his goal was figuring out what was going on with his best friend. “Kayla?”
“I’m taking the day off tomorrow.” The even tone of her voice after that primal scream of pain was almost worse than the shout itself.
“Why?”
“I have things to do.”
“What things?”
“How did your wife pimp put it? None of your business, Andreas.”
