Page 36 of Forget

His rueful chuckle sounded forced. ‘We really don’t know much about each other, do we?’

Her eyes darkened with passion. ‘I know the important stuff.’

She pressed against him and slid her hands down to grab his ass.

His cock shot to half-mast but for the first time since they’d hooked up he wouldn’t obliterate the tough stuff with fucking.

Jayda wasn’t some one-night stand he wanted to remain closed off from. She’d trusted him with some of her innermost secrets and if he was going to spend the next few weeks with her and enlist her help for the awards event, he couldn’t treat her as if she meant nothing.

Because deep down, in a place he didn’t want to acknowledge, he knew nothing could be further from the truth.

Planting a soft kiss on her mouth, he disengaged her hands, holding onto one of them as he led her to the two-seat sofa beside a colour-coordinated bookshelf opposite the desk.

‘You know I attended uni on a scholarship?’

She nodded, her expression sombre.

‘High school, too. My folks were dirt poor but I was smart so I got into a respected private school in Essendon.’

Where every one of those privileged bastards had never let him forget he came from nothing.

‘I made dux in my final year and was offered a scholarship to study IT at uni.’

‘Good for you,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘You were the smartest guy in our year.’

Little good it did him when he finished his degree. Companies valued connections, and in every job interview they chose those rich pricks who weren’t as clever as him because they’d be able to advance the business with their old-school networks.

In a way, the constant rejections had fuelled his determination to make the IT world sit up and take notice, so he’d spent eighteen months developing the software that now powered many of the top companies in the country. He hadn’tlooked back and being a self-made millionaire ten times over helped him sleep better at night.

But he never forgot those rejections and how those same bastards sucked up to him now because he had six zeroes tacked onto figures in his bank account.

‘My dad runs a secondhand car yard in the western suburbs and Mum helps out.’ He screwed up his nose. ‘I had to work in that dump since I was a kid and I hated it.’

She cupped his cheek with her free hand. How did she do that, sense his need for comfort?

‘He’s your dad and he needs your help. You’re doing the right thing.’

He muttered, ‘Yeah,’ not prepared to tell her the rest, the whole convoluted story wrapped up in guilt and resentment and bitterness.

‘Thanks for sharing,’ she said, her tone soft.

Her sincere smile gutted him and he needed to push her away before he did something foolish, like reveal the rest.

‘I only told you about the car yard so you understood why I didn’t turn up as promised today.’

He withdrew his hand from hers, desperate to dispel the intimacy he’d created with his stupid revelations. He felt as if he owed her some small insight into his life to repay her trust in him, but the result, with her staring at him with pity, made him wish he’d kept his big mouth shut. ‘I value my stellar business reputation and I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea.’

‘And what’s that?’ She stood so abruptly their knees banged and she stalked towards the desk, where she squatted to gather up the brochures, her back to him. ‘That we’re growing closer by sharing parts of ourselves? That we might be doing more than fucking?’

She slammed the brochures onto the desk and swivelled to glare at him, her lush mouth pursed in disapproval and ire in her eyes.

‘It’s not that,’ he said, searching for the right words to make her understand how much of a screw-up he was, particularly when it came to trusting women.

‘I think it’s exactly that,’ she said, her frigid tone clipped. ‘Think what you like, Brock, but we’ve moved beyond fuck buddies, no matter how much you deny it.’

He’d fucked up. Big-time. ‘Jayda, I—’

‘I’ll let you get stuck into work.’ Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she entered her password and the screen lit up. ‘Everything you need is in the folder marked Educational Charity Business.’

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