Page 51 of Baby for My Billionaire Rival

“Gram and I talked and I told her how I feel about you.”

I continue to bite my tongue. However, I want badly to ask, “Howdoyou feel about me?” We haven’t exchanged “I love you’s” and I can’t even get Caroline to come out to our grad school class as a couple. So, what the hell are we even doing here?

“Would you look at me?”

We make it to the doors of Trilby. I might not care for her right now, but I’m still a gentleman. I grab the door and hold it open for her.

“Jake…”

Our eyes meet. My stomach flips. I’m nauseous and want to throw up because of how beautiful she still is to me. How I want nothing more than to kiss her and make up. I can’t though. Not after the hurt.

Around her neck, she wears my scarf.

I do my best to stare through her.

Caroline’s face falls and she walks slowly past me into the building.

Grad school just got a lot harder.

“Globalization is a necessity to the modern corporation,” Amy Trilby pipes up after Fig calls on her. “Without international influence, a company loses ninety-five percent of its market value.”

Fig scoffs. “Where did you read that statistic?”

Amy lifts her head high. “I’m trying to speak with more authority.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean lying.”

The class laughs.

“I think what Amy is getting at is that having a foothold in the global economy can separate the wheat from the chaff. More an argument of pathos than objectivity,” Caroline adds.

I laugh disdainfully on my own this time. The rest of the class is silent.

“Simmons? You have something to say?” Fig asks.

Caroline sits up straighter, not daring to look at me.

“Well, I can only speak from experience, but local economies are just as important if not more so than the global economy. We’ve learned trickle-down is a fallacy, so we have to start –”

“Saysyou,” someone pipes up.

I resist rolling my eyes. “If you know your market and you cater to it, globalization can be a vestigial organ in the makeup of a business.”

“Vestigial… alright, Mr. Thesaurus,” Fig says with a gleaming smile.

“You’d be a moron to imply the global economy doesn’t apply to you,” Caroline says without even looking at me.

I stare at the back of her stupid blonde head. “Are you trying to have a conversation with me, Gladstone?”

She flips around in her seat. “Obviously, Simmons.”

“Oooo…” a group of people call out.

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m teaching a remedial freshman English class,” Fig says.

Caroline and I stare at each other. I can’t get out of this now. It’s part of the class, to argue in class. And I’ve just walked into the belly of the beast, facing off with someone who has been sitting on an argument so long she might combust.

“Globalization has led to vast amounts of human rights abuses. I can run a company, pay for fair labor, and disseminate product across the country without taking advantage.”

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