“Not a lot of people would have had the guts to try and trap me like that,” he noted, watching her face closely. She was lovely—long dark hair that hung most of the way down her back, brown skin that graced high cheekbones. With her strong features and strong body—because there was no missing that—she looked like she could be Wonder Woman.
She didn’t act like the kind of women who tried to trap him with their feminine wiles. Instead, she sat across from him, drinking cheap coffee and no doubt waiting to tell him why he should cut her another check.
For a second—the amount of time it took for her to look up at him through thick lashes—Nate almost panicked. He wasn’t particularly good with women, as evidenced by that nagging feeling that he hadn’t handled Jennifer’s dinner invitation well and the fact that he had flat-out ignored that message from Diana—the third one this month.
Ever since things with Diana had fallen apart—and then really gone to hell—he’d kept things simple by simply not getting involved. Which meant that he was horribly out of practice. But there was no way he would let another woman take advantage of him. And that included Diana. Hence why he would just keep right on ignoring her messages.
Trish Hunter wasn’t doing the things that normally made him nervous—treating him like he was a sex god she’d been secretly worshipping for years.
She grinned, a small curve of her lips over the edge of her cup. That grin did something to him—made him feel more sure of himself. Which sounded ridiculous but there it was. “Did it work? The trap, that is.”
Nate smiled back. He was terrible about negotiations with members of the opposite sex. Money, however, was something he’d learned to negotiate. And the fact that this lovely young woman wasn’t playing coy—wasn’t acting like he’d gotten used to women acting around him—only made him more comfortable. Everything was out in the open. He could handle this kind of interaction. “That depends.”
Her eyes widened slightly and a flash of surprise crossed her face. It made her look...innocent. Sweet, even. “Upon?”
“Tell me about your charity.”
She exhaled in relief. It wasn’t a big gesture, but he saw it nonetheless. He wondered what she’d thought he would ask. “Of course. One Child, One World is a registered 501(c) charity. We keep our overhead as low as possible.” Nate sighed. He hated the boring part of charity work. It was, for lack of a better word, boring. “Approximately $0.93 of every dollar donated goes to school supplies...” her voice trailed off. “Not the right answer?”
He sat up a little straighter. She was paying attention to him. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t flattering. “Those statistics are all required as part of the grant application process,” he replied, waving his hand. “The lawyers insisted. But that’s not what I wanted to know.”
She raised a strong eyebrow and leaned toward him. Yes, he had her full attention—and she had his. “You asked about my charity.”
Oh, yeah—her words were nothing but challenge. This was not a woman telling him whatever he wanted to hear. This was a woman who would push back. Even though he had the money and she had a very cheap coffee, she’d still push back.
That made her even more interesting.
And as long as he kept thinking of it in terms of power and money—instead of noting how pretty she was and how she was looking at him and especially how he was no doubt looking at her—he’d be just fine.
“Tell me about why a young woman would start an organization to get school supplies into kids’ hands. Tell me about...” You. But he didn’t say that because that would cross the line of business and go into the personal. The moment he did that, he’d probably start flailing and knock the coffee into her lap. “Tell me about it.”
“Ah.” She took her time sipping her coffee. “Where did you grow up? Kansas City, right?”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“Any good trap is a well-planned trap,” she easily replied, a note of satisfaction in her voice.
He nodded his head in acknowledgment. “Yes, I grew up in Kansas City. Middle-class household. Father was an accountant, mother taught second grade.” He left out the part about his brothers. “It was a very comfortable life.” He hadn’t realized how comfortable until he’d made his money—and started looking at how other people lived.
Trish smiled encouragingly. “And every August, you got a new backpack, new shoes, new school clothes and everything on that list teachers said you had to have, right?”
“Yes.” He took a calculated risk. Just because she had black hair and skin the color of copper and was running a charity that helped American Indians on reservations didn’t necessarily mean she was a Native American herself. But there was no such thing as coincidence. “I take it you didn’t?”
Something in her face changed—her eyes seemed to harden. “My sixth-grade teacher gave me two pencils once. It was all she could afford.” She dropped her gaze and began to fiddle with one of her earrings. “It was the best present I ever got.”
Nate, being Nate, didn’t have a smooth comeback to that. In fact, he didn’t know what to say at all. His mom, Susan, had worked as a teacher, and she’d occasionally talked about a student who needed “a little extra help,” as she put it. Then she’d fill a backpack with food and some basics and that was that. But that was before she’d had to stay home with Nate’s brother Joe full-time.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said quietly. Once, he hadn’t believed there was a world where a couple of #2 pencils were an amazing gift. But now he knew better.
Her gaze still on her coffee, she gave him a quick, tight smile. He needed to move the conversation forward. “So you’re working to change that?”
“Yes. A new backpack full of everything a kid needs in a classroom.” She shrugged and looked back at him. The hardness fell away. “I mean, that’s the first goal. But it’s an important first step.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You have bigger plans?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, of course! It’s just the beginning.”
“Tell me what you’d do.”
“For so many kids, school is...it’s an oasis in the middle of a desert. The schools need to open earlier, stay open later. They need to serve a bigger breakfast, a bigger lunch and everyone needs an afternoon snack. Too many kids aren’t getting regular meals at home and it’s so hard to study on an empty stomach.” As she said this last point, she dropped her gaze again.
She was speaking from experience, he realized. Two pencils and nothing to eat at home.
“Indians on the rez love basketball and skateboarding,” she went on. “Having better courts and parks on the school grounds could keep kids from joining gangs.”
“You have gang problems?” He always associated gangs with inner-city drug wars or something.
She gave him a look that walked a fine line between “amused” and “condescending.” “Some people have perverted our warrior culture into a gang mentality. We lose kids that way and we rarely get them back.”
He thought over her wish list, such as it was. “I haven’t heard anything about computers.”
She paused, then gave him that tight smile again. “It’s the ultimate goal, one that will require far more than ten or even twenty thousand dollars of funding. Most schools don’t have the infrastructure to support an internet connection, much less cloud storage. I want kids to have basic supplies and full bellies before I get to that. You understand, don’t you?”
He