Page 30 of His Custody

A frown, more curious than irritated, crossed her face before she shook her head and headed back to where she’d come from. And when he turned to face Keyne again, they both burst out laughing. What a sound.

Chapter Eleven

October

She stormed down the hall, walking on the hardwood floors instead of on the lux runners that lined all the hallways in Jasper’s house. She wanted to hear her feet slap on the floor, wanted the pain that shot through her heels when she brought her soles down too hard. Where was he?

Not in his bedroom, not in the library, he must be in his office. She didn’t bother knocking when she reached the door, but pushed the heavy mass of wood out of her way. There he was, elbows on his desk as he massaged his temples with his fingers. If he thought he had a headache now...

“No, Carson. We can’t do that. We’d have to sell at the current price and we’d lose millions. Find me some other way—”

She threw down the newspaper on his desk, the pages whipping so close to his face she might’ve grazed his nose. Jasper looked up at her, his eyebrows raised with something she couldn’t quite call annoyance. “You’ll have to excuse me. Could we pick this up in ten minutes?”

He was looking at her, but he was talking to the people on the phone. Jasper never made her wait. The warming of her heart got smothered when she looked down at the article again. How could he?

Jasper clicked the phone off and cocked his head. “Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, you can. You can tell me what the hell this is.”

She slapped her hand onto the surface of the paper, the words already smudged because she’d handled the pages so much. Jasper gingerly took hold of her wrist and moved her hand. Even though he was gentle, her breath caught with the touch. She didn’t have time to dwell on what exactly that feeling might be because when his eyes caught the headline, his jaw tightened.

“Where did you get this?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me. Where did you get this?”

“Someone at school put it on my desk in physics.”

“Look, Keyne, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see this. I didn’t think you would.”

She wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Curtis Bowen. It’s not like she read the goddamnWall Street Journal. But apparently Curtis did, the slimy smug-faced rat. He’d put it on her desk knowing it would upset her. She’d had to ask Miss Donegal to excuse her so she could freak out in the girls’ room instead of in the middle of the lab.

And now she was losing it in Jasper’s office. Half a dozen children’s faces smiled up at her from the newsprint. Half a dozen kids who were dead because there’d been a fire at a garment factory in some province of China she’d never heard of. The whole article was about the unsafe labor practices, how many children had been injured or killed in these types of environments. It listed several American companies that were heavily invested in the industry, including Jasper’s.

“Would me not hearing about it make it okay? What the hell, Jasper? You have kids working in sweatshops?”

“No. I don’t. What I have is a significant stake in a few companies in the clothing manufactur—”

“You killed those kids.”

He flinched, his blocky features cracking, and she wished she could take it back. She knew he hadn’t held a gun to their heads or closed a door when they were trying to escape the flames, but this was almost as bad.

“No. I didn’t.”

How could he be so goddamn logical about these things? It drove her crazy that her mind got twisted up and paralyzed with guilt and sorrow and rage and all kinds of things she couldn’t even name, while he sat there cool as a cucumber. While she struggled with grief, lonesomeness, and god, the guilt of what had happened, especially to Gavin, he just plowed on through life. It made her half jealous and half furious.

It would be easier if she could think of him as a heartless monster, but she knew he wasn’t. And honestly, there was a smidge of gratitude that he could keep his shit together; it made her feel less bad about spewing her psychic ruin all over him. Still, this was not acceptable, and she would make that crystal clear.

“Well, whatever you have, you need to not anymore. You need to sell it, all of it. Is any of my money invested in this stuff? Get rid of it. I don’t want this blood on my hands.”

He closed his eyes and looked as if he were gathering up the scraps of the patience he had with her. When he opened them, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. His blond hair was messed up, like he’d been raking fingers through it and she wondered what it would be like to touch. It was short. She wouldn’t be able to grab it between her fingers, but she could run her palms over it, the strands smoothing under her touch like a pelt. But she didn’t want to soothe him right now; she wanted to kick him in the shin or someplace even more painful.

“If you must know, I was trying to plan for that on the phone call you walked in on.”

“Oh.” Well, that took some of the wind out of her sails.

“It’s going to take some time, but I was going to divest myself of those holdings. I can make sure your trust doesn’t have any investments in that sector, either, if it bothers you.”

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