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‘Why do you want to work at all?’
The snide question popped out before he could censor it and the hurt in her eyes made him feel like a bastard. It had been a bugbear of his back then, that she’d swanned through uni as if it meant little because she had the wealth of her parents to fall back on if she failed, while he’d had to work two part-time jobs to make ends meet.
‘Because I want to give something back. Because I want to help kids who need it.’ She tilted her head up, staring him down. ‘Because I’m not the rich bitch you wrongly thought I was all those years ago.’
He grimaced and swiped a hand across his face. ‘I was out of line. Sorry.’
‘Is it wealth that annoys you per se or is it me?’ She leaned forward, indignation pursing her plum-glossed lips. ‘Because I’ve researched you and you’re a millionaire ten times over these days.’
A fact he was infinitely proud of. He’d worked his ass off to prove he was nothing like his folks. With every dollar he saved he breathed a little easier. He would never, ever, be dependent on anyone for his livelihood.
‘I’ll admit I did resent you back then,’ he said, settling for a partial truth. The rest, where he lusted after her so badly he could barely concentrate in lectures most days, he’d keep to himself. ‘You didn’t have to be there and it looked like you treated the whole thing as a joke.’
‘I studied. I passed.’ Anger glinted in her eyes, sparking indigo flecks amid the deep blue. ‘I didn’t get a free ride.’
Brock stiffened at the jibe, glaring at her with obvious distaste, so he saw the exact moment she realised her faux pas.
Crimson suffused her cheeks and she shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean it like that—’
‘Let’s skip the trip down memory lane and focus on your needs.’ He lowered his voice deliberately, drawing emphasis to ‘your needs,’ wanting to make her as uncomfortable as she’d made him.
He’d hated being a scholarship kid in high school and that feeling of worthlessness hadn’t abated through four years of a university degree. The fact Jayda would fling it in his face...he didn’t like to admit it but her opinion mattered now as much as it had back then. It shouldn’t. They didn’t know each other. They never had. Beyond an intimate knowledge of each other’s bodies that haunted him to this day.
‘You need my IT expertise on getting a new business started, correct?’
She nodded, and absent-mindedly worried that bottom lip again. Yep, he should never have agreed to meet her.
‘I want the coding on the site to be state-of-the-art. Up to date, with the latest technology, and no room for error.’ Sadness clouded her expressive eyes. ‘That last one is imperative. I want to ensure every donation is easily accounted for and properly allocated.’
Something had happened. He saw it in her look-away glance, in the sudden rigidity of her jaw. But now wasn’t the time to delve. He didn’t want to complicate their business arrangement with anything messy and that was exactly what would happen if he started asking questions regarding her motivations.
‘You want to know what happened,’ she said, her tone soft. ‘You’re pretty easy to read.’
Bullshit, because if he was she would’ve known he’d had a permanent hard-on for her all through uni.
Feigning lack of interest, he shrugged. ‘You’ll tell me if you want to. Otherwise it’s not relevant to our prospective working relationship.’
She hesitated, as if contemplating the wisdom of divulging something to him, before giving a brief nod. ‘While working for my folks I discovered discrepancies in their accounting. At first I thought it was a software error but then I delved deeper.’
She dragged a hand through her hair when a thick lock tumbled across her face. ‘Turns out the only reason they wanted me working for them was because I’m a stooge, someone they can easily control and have done for longer than I care to admit.’
She took a sip of her soda. ‘So here I am. Utilising my trust fund and wanting to do some genuine charity work, making sure it’s all top notch before I launch.’
She pinned him with a piercing stare. ‘Think you can help me?’
Brock should say no. He could delegate this task to any one of the highly skilled staff he employed to run his IT empire. That way, he could be the good guy helping her out but from a much-needed distance. It was the logical thing to do and he always relied on logic.
Instead, he found himself nodding.
He’d once been a putz around this woman and it looked as if nothing had changed.
