“I was ten, I think. Old enough to know better, I was informed.” His parents had been more than a little exasperated with him, but his dad hadn’t been able to stop snickering when Eric had described the rockslide. “It was only a couple hundred dollars. No big deal.”
Well, that and his parents had made him get every single rock out of the pool. His mother was of the opinion that they didn’t need the pool boy to suffer for Eric’s foolishness. Still, it had taken three people to get the boulder out of the deep end.
Sofia rolled her eyes at him, which made him grin. “Maybe to you. My mother was horrified that we’d have to pay it back somehow.” She was talking to him now, sounding more like the Sofia he remembered. “There was no way we could have afforded that. Not then.”
“That’s why I took the blame.” He leaned against the desk, his arms crossed over his chest. He wished they weren’t in this office. He’d give anything to be out on the lake this morning. There, with the sun on his face and the wind in his hair, he’d be able to think clearly. Here, his mind was muddled.
She looked at him again. Her color was better and she seemed...well, not like the girl he’d known. But maybe someone he could still be friends with.
Friends who didn’t kiss, that was.
“You always were,” she murmured before she took another deep drink of the water.
“Were what?”
“Kind. One of the kindest people I’d ever known.” She dropped her gaze. “You still are. This job...” She swallowed.
Kind? This wasn’t kind. This was calculated. He was building loyalty and ensuring morale. This was keeping an eye on his business. And if it didn’t work out, well—he’d show her kind. He’d have her out of her buttoned-up jacket and skirt so fast her head would spin.
He laughed at his own thoughts, a bitter sound. “I’m not. I’m ruthless. A coldhearted bastard of the first order. Don’t you read the headlines?”
Eric stared at her for a long moment, a dare in his eyes. Then he turned away and went to admire his view of the lake. The way he looked, silhouetted against the window, his shoulders broad and his hair curling gently just above the collar of his shirt—to say nothing of his backside in those custom-made pants...
She had seen the headlines, of course. He’d been left at the altar. He’d been named one of the “Top Five Billionaire Bachelors of Chicago.” He’d been ruthless in his business dealings. But none of that was who he really was.
Was it?
Even if life had changed them both, she knew that deep down, they were still the same people they’d been back when they’d been kids. He wasn’t a heartless bastard, no matter what people might say.
Heartless bastards wouldn’t have rubbed her back when she’d had a panic attack. They wouldn’t have gotten her water. They would have laughed her and her crippling anxiety right out of the office and slammed the door in her face.
Heartless bastards wouldn’t have looked like they were going to kiss her and they most certainly wouldn’t have stopped at just a look.
At least, Sofia thought that’s what Eric had been thinking. She hadn’t been kissed in a long time so she couldn’t be sure. She and David had enjoyed a passionate four years together before she’d gotten pregnant. But after her body had begun to change, so had their love life. The intimacy had been deeper, richer—but at the cost of some of the heat.
She fanned herself. It was unnaturally warm in here.
“Are you sure you want me to work for you? Good office managers don’t have panic attacks.”
“Of course they do,” he answered without turning around. “They just choose their locations wisely. I’ve always found it’s best to have a panic attack safely behind closed doors. No one wants to pass out next to the coffeepot.” He glanced back at her with a smirk. “Location, location, location—right?”
“Eric...”
A ripple of tension rolled over his shoulders. “Does that happen a lot?”
“It’s...better.” How to answer this question without making it sound like she was incapable of doing the job? “They started after David collapsed. One of them actually triggered early labor, but they got it stopped in time and I was on bed rest for five weeks. I hadn’t had one in a few months, though. I just wasn’t expecting any offer to be that...”
“Generous?”
“Insane.” This was the first time an attack had been triggered by something positive. “Eric, I can’t take that much money. The position was for seventy thousand. You can’t just randomly double it because we used to be friends.”
He made a scoffing sound and at that moment, he did sound a little ruthless. “First off, we’re still friends and second off, I absolutely can. Who’s going to stop me?”
A hundred and twenty was slightly more than she and David had earned together in a single year. The things she could do with that kind of money...but she didn’t want to be Eric’s charity case. “Most comparable positions are fifty to sixty thousand,” she protested.
That made him snort. “Comparable to what, Sofia? If you’re saying this position is just like running your suburban brokerage, you couldn’t be more wrong. I can promise you regular hours most of the time, but I’ll expect you to travel to potential sites occasionally. This isn’t just ordering paper clips and deciding how ten agents divide them. I employ forty lawyers, architects, agents, tax specialists, lobbyists—”
“Lobbyists?” The fact that she had no idea why he would have lobbyists on staff was probably a sign that she was in over her head.
“To negotiate with municipalities and influence laws, of course. We’re pursuing a project in St. Louis as we speak. If we play our cards right, we’ll get tax breaks from the city, county and state.” He grinned like he’d won the lottery.
“Of course,” she mumbled, unsure what else she was supposed to say. He was right. She was vastly out of her league.
“Besides,” he continued, sounding more than just a little cold as he turned his attention back out the window, “what’s a spare fifty thousand or so to a guy like me?”
Nothing, probably. She could see how that wouldn’t bankrupt a billionaire. Still, though. It was the principle of the matter. “But—”
“By the way,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “I have a better boat now. You should come with me sometime. I like to sail in the afternoons.”
He still wasn’t looking at her, but it was clear from the tone of his voice that the conversation about salary was finished.
“Is it a sailboat?” she asked.
“Nope. It’s a yacht. And we won’t sink this one with a rock, so don’t worry. You could...” He paused and then continued, “You could even bring the kids. I bet they’d love being out on the water.”
What was happening here? Eric was giving her a job and paying her way too much money. And now he was inviting her boating? With two rambunctious toddlers in tow? “Eric...”
“Never mind. I hear you’ve got a real bastard of a boss who won’t let you take off work just to go jetting around.” He turned and she barely recognized him at all—his face was that hard. “Come on. Let’s find out what you’ve gotten yourself into, shall we?”
More than she could handle, she thought as she followed him to the door of his office and into the heart of Jenner Properties.
* * *
Three