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“Keep talking,” he added. “I like it.”
He pulled his fingers free, and I caught myself following before I straightened my spine. He was not into me. This was not what I wanted it to be. This moment was him showing kindness to a woman who needed a friend.
Up ahead, a large dump truck pulled out onto the road, kicking up clouds of dust. As we passed, I twisted, face pressed to the window to see where it came from. The frame of an extensive structure was tucked just behind a row of trees. People wearing hard hats milled around the area, and several trucks were parked around the perimeter.
“It’s a new distribution center,” Shade practically growled. I didn’t need my computer engineering degree from MIT to know he wasn’t a fan.
“And you don’t like it, I’m guessing. Won’t that mean more jobs?”
“Yeah, but until then, it’s a lot of people in and out that I don’t know.”
“New York was full of people I didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t really know the man I was married to in the end.” I worried at my lip before continuing. “The autonomy of a large city, of not seeing a single familiar face no matter how many times I visited the same spot or took the same routes, was lonely. Which, of course, didn’t end once I got home. I loved the people who worked for me. Those were the only really bright spots in my day besides Gracie.”
“Worked for you?” he asked.
“Yeah. Though I didn’t run the daily business side of the company at the end, I started it.”
“Smart and beautiful,” he muttered behind the hand that covered his mouth.
My cheeks heated. Again, I should not read into those words, the interest in his questions and tone. It was him taking pity on a woman deprived of praise, affection, love, touch… hell, everything.
“I’m a developer at heart, so managing the company wasn’t what I enjoyed.” My hands curled into fists on my thighs, which Shade noticed. “That was my husband’s role.”
“Developer. Like those apps?”
I arched a brow his way. “Those apps?” I mimicked. “How old are you? Or have you been secluded out in the middle of nowhere too long?”
A faint dimple popped on his cheek with a small grin. “Old enough to know how to work them but not rely on them.”
Hmm. That didn’t answer my question, but whatever. His size and broody demeanor made him seem older, but that damn dimple and shy smile I’d caught a few times made him appear younger than I first assumed.
“No, not ‘those apps.’ Code.” Pride swelled in my chest, remembering how I got started. “I was always good with computers, which was how I got into MIT for computer engineering. I was in college when my parents’ bank was hacked and the assholes drained the small community bank’s funds. Sure, the insurance helped, but my parents had little to begin with, so it really set them back. They ended up selling the farm—”
“Farm? In New York City?”
I shook my head. “Kansas. That’s where I’m from.” I stared out over the wide-open fields. “Maybe that’s why I feel so safe here. It reminds me of how I grew up. Knowing everyone, the good and the bad. But what happened to my parents set me on a path to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else. I worked for months, surviving on nothing but cigarettes and Red Bull, developing a line of code, an application that could easily be implemented in smaller banks. It’s a trapdoor of sorts. Once a hacker gets in, which the program allows them to do easily, it shuts them in and back-hacks them.” I grinned wickedly. “And then it pulls all their information and keeps them in a wormhole.”
“Wow,” Shade said after a minute. “I didn’t understand half of that. But it sounds brilliant as hell.”
I preened. “Thank you. That took off, as did my company, and down went my marriage. They say you can’t have it all. Guess they’re right.”
“Says who?”
“Everyone?”
“Then they don’t understand what ‘having it all’ really means. I’ve had it… lost it,” he choked out. “And want it again because I know it’s possible.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant about him and Trap, but I didn’t want to pry into their relationship.
“Well then, maybe I was looking in the wrong places,” I offered.
“Or with the wrong people.”
People.
Not person.
Interesting choice of words that didn’t slip my attention.
