Page 5 of Love Around the Corner
“We’ll need to submit a proposal, but that shouldn’t be a problem. We probably won’t get an observing time until next spring, so between now and then, I need to write this program. Do you know anything about astronomy?”
“Not a thing. I’m in.”
“Wait...you’ll do it? I haven’t even told you how much the budget is.” There was cheap and then there was what she’d been planning to offer him.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Writing new code for Hubble data...see,that’sinteresting. I’m in. That’s the pitch I was looking for.”
“We can’t afford to pay you what you’re obviously used to.” Well, theycould, but then they might as well go with the guy they’d already scoped out and blow half the grant money onhim. The whole point of this was to find a cheaper alternative.
“I told you, I don’t work for the money. I mean, yes, people pay me, but the money doesn’t determine what jobs I take on.”
Whowasthis guy? How did he start where she started and end up here, having built this life for himself?
“Whatdoesdetermine it? I mean, what kind of jobs do you usually take?”
He shrugged before leaning forward and hooking his ankle around another office chair and pulling it closer. “Have a seat. I do whatever appeals to me. A little banking, although not as much of that as I did in the past. Some government work, a lot of consulting. Whatever I’m interested in, really. And only what I’m interested in. I have no interest in doing some tedious corporate gig, no matter how fat the paycheck.”
Taking the offered chair, she fiddled with the strap of her messenger bag and debated asking him any one of the hundreds of questions swirling around in her head. “I’ve heard some things about you.”
Leaning back in his chair again, Nick smiled—a full-on grin this time—and his eyes sparked with amusement. His voice dropped into a lower register, something flirty and sexy. “Oh, really? Like what?”
“You got kicked out of DeWitt.”
If she’d expected him to get defensive, she was mistaken. His expression didn’t shift in the slightest. “Kicked out, quit—it’s all in your perspective. DeWitt and I chose to part ways.”
“And you got arrested.”
Again, not even a ripple of a response in his eyes. She envied his confidence, even if it scared her a little bit.
“Unindicted,” he said with a careless shrug. “The government and I reached a mutually beneficial agreement.”
“Which is?”
“They didn’t file charges and in return, I did some work on their systems, to make sure nobody else can do what I did.”
“Which was?”
“I hacked into the Department of Defense.”
“You hacked thegovernment?” That wasnotwhat she’d expected to hear.
Another shrug. “It wasn’t that hard. Which is why they needed me. I made it hard.”
Well, he sure was confident in his own abilities.
“So you’re a hacker.” Which was super illegal, when the hackee was the federal government. Growing up surrounded by theotherside of law enforcement, she hadn’t so much as been chastised for jaywalking, never mind crimes of that level.
“Only theoretically now, to keep my skills sharp.”
“Because it’s illegal.” Surely he’d learned his lesson now, right? Figured out the difference between right and wrong?
Nick scoffed, swiveling back and forth in his chair. “Legal, illegal. What does that even mean?”
Apparently not. “Um, one is right and one is wrong.”
He spun back to face her. “Right and wrong? Right and wrong has nothing to do with what’s legal or illegal. Everything in this world, every person you meet, every choice they make, is all a murky shade of gray. You figure out right and wrong for yourself, Livie.” The way he said her name was like he’d just whispered it in her ear, followed by something dirty.
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
