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“RedWhite?” She shook her head. “No.”
“It was the first start up I bought into.” He handed a glass to her and put an arm around her waist, leading her to the terrace. It brought back a searing memory of the last time they’d made love.
“Start up? As in internet?”
“Yeah. Technology, at least. It’s an app that helps soldiers keep in touch with their families back home. It removes any trace of geotracking, and it was designed to automatically encode any information that the military classed as sensitive. It was obviously a brilliant program, but they needed funding. I gave that to them, and RedWhite became one of the biggest apps of the year.”
She put a hand on his forearm, her pretty face tilted at an angle. “Now, you do know that, when it comes to technology, I’m pretty much an Eskimo.”
He nodded. “The tech is sort of besides the point. I saw something brilliant, something wonderful, something no one else had quite harnessed the potential of, and I didn’t hesitate to put my money into it. I couldn’t see a way for it to fail. More than that, I felt it would be a true gift to soldiers abroad.”
She nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
“You’re my new RedWhite.”
“Huh?” She screwed up her nose.
“I want to invest in you.”
“What?”
He laughed. “Have you checked your internet banking lately?”
She shook her head. “No.” It was, perhaps, the biggest difference between people who had money, and people who didn’t. Jane hated logging into her internet banking and seeing the dwindling funds and increasing outgoings.
“Log in. Do it now.” He handed her his phone.
Nonetheless, with a dubious look, she loaded up her bank’s browser and typed her login information in.
“This must be some mistake,” she whispered shakily, when she saw the number that appeared before her. More than two million dollars was sitting in her account. She lifted helpless dark eyes to his face. Her voice was a shaky whisper. “What have you done?”
“I’ve made this easy for you.”
She swore. “What the hell? What have you done?”
He raised his hands in defence. “You have a funding problem, Jane. I’ve looked at the figures, and I’ve looked at the problems, namely, that big old sense of duty of yours. Even with a full scholarship, Anita will have expenses. Frankly, you’d struggle to cover those, rent, and your own fees.” He lifted his finger to her lips. “I know you. You would sooner give up your own college course to fund hers. Now, you don’t have to.”
“It’s too much, Carter. I simply can’t accept this.” She was physically shaking with surprise and emotion. She stood up and paced across the room. “I don’t want it,” she seethed, thrusting her hands on her hips and glaring at him.
“Why not?”
“Because! I don’t want to owe you money. I don’t want you to think that’s why… that’s why I’m interested you.”
His smile was so confident it bored on arrogant. “But you are interested in me.”
She bit down on her lip. The words were on her tongue, but she didn’t say them. She couldn’t. “I don’t know.” She loved him, but their future was anything but clear.
“Why would you give me that much money?”
He reclined in his seat, his expression a mask. It occurred to Jane that they were both hiding something. Finally, he sighed. “I ended things with Renata because she gave me an ultimatum.”
“Huh?” She blinked, and tried to refocus her mind.
“We’d been sleeping together, on and off, for a fair while, I guess. But in my mind, it had always been clear that we had no expectations. That we owed one another nothing.”
Jane turned away, feeling sickened by the thought of him with the beautiful blonde. “I don’t really want to think about it,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, but I need you to know this, Jane. Please, please come here and listen.”
