Page 89 of One Wealthy Wedding

“Theo?”

I’m staring. Shit.

“Hi.” I grin and block her way into the study.

“What are you doing?” She peeks over my shoulder, and I raise my arm to obscure her view.

“We’re working,” I say.

“We?”

“We’re good, Mr. A,” Kai says. I let my arm drop. He’s saved the precious code. We’ve been at it for months and we make sure to save it whenever there’s an interruption. If it were anyone other than Cat at the door, we’d be locking up the laptop too.

“Cat this is Kai, my mentee. Kai, this is my wife.”

Kai waves from his chair, looking serious and a little awed. I get it, man. I do. I felt the exact same way at eighteen, utterly taken by her liquid brown eyes and her perfect pink lips. Even as a teenager, she made my stomach flip.

“Nice to meet you, Kai. I hope he’s not being too hard on you.” She smiles at him. His eyes widen and he darts a look at me. Cat hasn’t been home to meet Kai the last few times he’s been over. I wasn’t sure how she’d be around him, since she grew up blissfully unaware of circumstances like Kai’s. But now I see she’s a natural with kids, kind and warm in a way that she isn’t with adults.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. A.”

“You didn’t tell him I didn’t take your last name?” she whispers. She’s still smiling, but she turns it on me. I nearly take a step forward, but tighten my hand on the door instead.

I shrug. “He’s a kid. What’s up?”

“You said we had an event tonight. I came to remind you. What are you doing in there?” She cranes her neck, and I shut the door.

“Coding.” I stretch, and her eyes arrow to my stomach. I smile to myself.

“Code for what?”

“Trading stock.”

“Can I see?”

“It’s not done yet,” I say. “Right now, we’re working on how the program interprets signals and pricing data. It buys and sells stock algorithmically, but how it interprets data is something I’ve created.”

“So, theoretically, it could trade incredibly quickly? It would make decisions instantly once you’ve told it what to do.”

“That’s right.” She’s smarter than she gives herself credit for.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Give it to Kai, I guess. It’s not like I’m going to use it.”

“Because it’s not profitable?”

I shake my head. “Because Kings Lane doesn’t have any use for this.” Jonah and Miles don’t need to run some black-box trading operation. They’re not interested in that. It’s experimental and nothing more.

“It makes money, doesn’t it?” She crosses her arms. “You can always make more money.”

“It’s not really our thing.”

“You’re selling yourself short,” she says. Her lips are pressed flat.

“No, I’m not. I just know my business partners don’t need this. It’s okay. Kai can make a whole bunch of money with it.”

“How much is this worth?”

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