“No….” He pauses for effect and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Never having to work again? Laying around in your recliner with your hand in your pants watching sports?”
“No. Dude, I just turned thirty. I–” I break off my own sentence.
Son of a bitch. He’s an asshole.“Fine. Being set for life is not my goal. I enjoy working and creating. I’d still work even if I had all the money in the world. I need to work on something. I enjoy researching and designing software. It’s a rush to discover an untapped market and send my baby out to the world, hoping someone finds it useful. It’s a crapshoot. Some ideas take off, and others flop. But that’s also an adrenaline rush. It’s like having a gambling bug. I can’t imagine giving up my software design business. But I want to pay you and Cora for supporting me all these years. You deserve a big payoff for believing in me.” But at what cost? Continuing to back down to my father’s demands?
“Dude, you don’t have to do this for me. Cora….” He smirks. “I can’t vouch for her. But I’m good. I don’t need crazy amounts of money. I went in with you on this on a lark. And it’s been a blast. That’s all I was looking for.”
“Stop fretting.” I grab Sean’s shoulder. “I can have my cake and eat it too. I can get the company and keep everything intact. We can have it all.”
He shakes his head. “What if you already have it all?”
“I do. I have our company, and I’ll see to it that when my father retires, I’m in control of his company.”
“How? Are you going to marry that Josephine girl?”
I cringe so hard my neck pops. “Oh, hell, no.” I walk over to the liquor cabinet and pour a decanter of whiskey and tip my head toward him. “You?”
“Yes, sure.” He leans his shoulder against the window as I fill his drink.
After I return to him, I hand him his glass and take a sip of the amber liquid. It burns my throat. There’s no way I’m marrying anyone but Daisy. Her face floats to the front of my brain. Kissing her plump lips. Listening to her husky mews as I pleasure her. Watching her talk about the shelter and the people she helps there. Seeing her eyes light up when she aces a calculus exam. All of it. She’s the perfect woman.
“Who is she?” He raises his drink to his lips.
“Who is who?”
“The woman who has you looking like a sap.” One corner of his mouth arches upward.
“No–” No one is on the tip of my tongue, but I bite it back. He raises his eyebrows as if he’s ready to call bullshit. Fine. I’m tired of keeping it a secret. Sean is my best friend and business partner. He has nothing to gain from blabbing my personal life to anyone else. I clear my throat. “I’m seeing the woman from the wedding.”
“Your student?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a good idea?” He frowns and sets down his drink. “If you break up with her, she can ruin your life. Your father will never give you the company if you embarrass him.”
My jaw tightens, and I straighten my shoulders. “She’s not like that, even if we broke up, which we won’t. She has more integrity than that. She’s not the type of woman to intentionally ruin someone’s life.”
“If you cheat on her ass, I’d like to see you repeat those words,” he grumbles, picks up the decanter, and downs the alcohol.
“Asshole, I’m not cheating on her. I’ve had opportunities, and I’m not interested. She’s it for me.” The second the words are out of my mouth, the hairs on my arms stand, and I swallow over the lump in my throat. “In two months, my teaching contract is up, and she finishes her undergraduate classes. At that point, we’ll be free to go public. And I intend on spending the rest of my life with her.”
“Shit.” He shakes his head, drops the glass onto the desk again, and grabs my shoulders. “When you decide to go big or go home, you hit it out of the park.”
I chuckle at his veiled support of secretly dating a student. Hell, if one of my friends told me this story, I’d demand they run before it all blew up in his face.
“I can’t wait to meet her. Either she’s the best voodoo punanny in the world, or she’s an angel.”
“She’s an angel.” I wink. “A dirty, filthy angel with the biggest heart. You’re going to love her.”
He stands back. “I think I will.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Daisy
The Next Day
When Alexander walks into the shelter, I school my face to keep from giving anything away. As far as everyone here knows, he’s my professor, and that’s it. Here’s to making it through the next few hours without looking at him like he’s a bowl of warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top.