The moment he said it, he realized that maybe he shouldn’t have phrased it quite like that. Especially not when Trish leaned back in her chair, one arm on the armrest, the other curled up under her chin—except for her index finger, which she’d extended over her lips as if they were in a library and she was shushing him. She met his gaze full-on, a hint of challenge lurking in her eyes. The air grew tight with tension.
God, she was beautiful and there was something else behind that gaze—an interest in more than just his bank account. He should ask her out. She wasn’t intimidated by him and she wasn’t throwing herself at him. She was here for the money and all her cards were up front, no hiding funding requests behind manipulative sexual desire. Hell. He didn’t meet too many women who could just sit and have a conversation with him.
Except...dating was not his strong suit and he was pretty sure that asking a woman out right after she’d requested a donation would probably cross some ethical line.
Damn.
“Of course, One Child, One World would be delighted with any funding the Longmire Foundation saw fit to disperse,” she said, sounding very much like someone who’d written a few grants in her time.
“How’d you get to be a Woman of the Year?”
“One of my professors nominated me,” she told him. “I didn’t know she was doing it. One day, I’m trying to organize a bake sale to raise a hundred dollars to cover postage back to the rez and the next, I’m being flown to New York and given a lot of money.” She blushed. “I mean, a lot of money for me. I’m sure ten grand isn’t very much to you.”
“I can remember when that much was a lot of money,” he admitted. He winced. That was a totally jerky thing to say and he knew it.
He was about to apologize when she said, “Tell me about your charity,” turning his question back on him.
He regarded her for a second. “Is that another way of asking why I’m giving money away for free?”
“You did go to all that trouble of earning it in the first place,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “Like I said, I had a comfortable childhood. We didn’t always get everything we wanted—I didn’t get a car for my sixteenth birthday or anything—but we were fine.”
How he’d wanted a car. Brad, his older brother, had a half-rusted Jeep he’d bought with lawn-mowing money that he swore made it a breeze to get a date.
Back then, Nate had absolutely no prospect of a date. He was tall and gangly, with dorky glasses and awful skin. They were still trying to integrate Joe into a mainstream classroom at that point and Nate was mercilessly mocked by his peers. The only possible way he could have gotten a girl was if he’d had a sweet ride to pick her up in.
Alas. No car. No date.
“Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head, “I made that first million and I felt like I’d made it. But a weird thing happened—that million spawned a second million, then a third. And then the buyout happened and now...” He gave her an apologetic smile. “Honestly, what the hell am I going to do with a billion dollars? Buy a country and rule as a despot?”
It wasn’t as if this background was entirely new information—he’d given interviews explaining the rationale for his foundation—but those were formal things with scripted answers, preapproved by his assistant, Stanley.
Right now, sitting here in a coffee shop with Ms. Trish Hunter, it didn’t feel like an interview. It felt like a conversation. An honest one.
Nate nodded toward her shirt. “I bought Superman #1—you know?”
A smile quirked at her lips. “I do know. Didn’t you pay the highest recorded price for it?”
“I did. It was wild—I felt like I was jumping off a cliff, to pay five million for a comic book.”
“Did you at least read it? Or did you lock it up?” The way she asked the question made it clear—she would have read it.
“I read it. Carefully.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, as if he were saying something salacious. She laughed. It was as close to flirting as he got. “With tongs. In a temperature-controlled room.”
Her eyes lit up. “Were you wearing one of those hazmat suits, too?”
“No. Just gloves.” She giggled at the image and he laughed with her. It had been totally ridiculous. “But what else am I going to do with this much money besides buy comic books?”
“You donated a lot to mental-health research,” she said. She was leaning forward slightly, her body language indicating that she was really listening.
“I have a...personal connection to that.” When she waited for more, he added, “I keep my family private. It’s the only way to stay sane in this industry.”
Yes, he had set up an endowment into schizophrenia, depression and bipolar research. That was the public action. The private one had been setting up a trust fund for the care of Joe. Mom was able to stay home full-time with Joe now, and they had reliable home health aides to assist. Nate had tried to give his parents a million dollars or an all-expenses paid trip around the world, but it turned out that peace of mind about their youngest son was all they really wanted.
And after what had happened with Diana...
Nate’s private life stayed private. Period.
“Ah, understood.” She tilted her head. “That explains why there’s no press on it. I wondered.”
He stared at her. Yeah, he expected that she’d done her homework, but it was unusual to have someone admit to digging into his past—and then agree not to discuss it. As the shock of her blunt attitude wore off, he felt himself grinning at her even more. “Thanks. So, you know—I’m rich, I no longer run my own company—what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I set up a fund for my niece, bought my brother a house, took care of—well, I took care of the rest of my family, fended off a few lawsuits. That only left me with about a billion. Giving away the money seemed like something to do. The Longmire Foundation has given away fourteen million dollars and I haven’t even made a dent yet.”
That was the truth. He was making more in interest than he could give away. The simple truth was that her request for a matching grant of ten thousand dollars was the product of about five minutes for him, if that. He could add two or three zeroes to the end of the check and never even notice the money was gone.
“Is that what makes you happy?”
He looked at her funny. Happy? He was rich. He wasn’t the same gangly nerd he’d been in high school. He was a ruthless businessman, a hugely successful one. He owned his own jet, for crying out loud.
But there was something in the way she asked it...
“I’m doing good. That’s what counts.”
“Of course.” She opened her mouth, paused—and then angled her body toward his. Her gaze dropped again, but only for a second. She looked up at him through her lashes. Energy—attraction—seemed to arc between them as he stared at her.
Her eyes were a deep brown, like dark chocolate. Sweet, yes—but much more than that. There was innocence, but now it had an edge to it—an edge that held a hell of a lot of promise.
He leaned forward, eager to hear what she would say—and whether or not it would sound like legal boilerplate or if it would sound like something else.
He leaned right into his coffee and promptly spilled what was left of his grande mocha into her lap.
“Whoa!” she shouted, hopping to her feet. The dark stain spread down her leg.
“Oh, damn—I’m so sorry,” he mumbled. What had he been thinking? Of course she wasn’t going to say something along the lines