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“I’m thinking about going into venture capital investments.”
“You’ve been watching that show again, haven’t you?” she asked, referring to a favorite reality television show of his.
They’d watched the show about venture capitalists who invested in and mentored start-up businesses together many times. Andreas prided himself on being able to guess which entrepreneurs were going to get multiple offers from the “sharks” and which would leave the “tank” without a single offer at all.
“As fascinating as all this is, we need to wrap this meeting up.” Genevieve’s voice grated in unwelcome reminder of her presence as she glanced at her designer watch. “I have another client meeting.”
Really? Lots of superwealthy guys were looking for bride pimps? “How many clients do you take on at a time?”
“That is privileged information,” Genevieve informed her haughtily.
But Kayla had spent most of her life in the foster care system. Haughty wasn’t going to intimidate her. “Not with the kind of retainer you charged Andreas.”
“I was under the impression you paid out of your personal account?”
Andreas’s expression filled with annoyance. “Of course I did.”
“Then, I do not see where this is any of your business.” The matchmaker’s condescending tone might have annoyed Kayla, but she had concerns much closer to her heart right now.
She stood on shaky legs. “You’re right. It’s not. In fact, I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing here at all. If you’re going to sell the company, my tiny minority percent isn’t going to stop you. If you want to pay this woman more than a lot of people make in a year to find you some dates when I don’t see you struggling for company now, that’s none of my business.”
The cold inside her grew with every word, but so did Kayla’s resolve. “I do not appreciate being called away from my work for something you could have handled in a text.” I’m hiring a matchmaker.
“You expected me to tell you I was selling the company in a text?” Andreas demanded, sounding shocked.
“I didn’t expect you to sell the company at all, certainly not to tell me about it as a fait accompli in a meeting with a third party.” Dismissing Genevieve’s presence, Kayla met Andreas’s gaze. “But I’m realizing now I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”
He’d said this meeting was about the matchmaker. The selling of the company had come up as part of the discussion. Or that was how it had seemed. But apparently, it had been part of his agenda all along.
Kayla turned on her heel and walked out of the office, the numbness spreading with the cold. She’d been like this a few times before in her life.
The day she realized her mom was not coming back. She hadn’t spoken for two years after.
The day her foster mom died and she was placed in the first of another string of homes.
The day she realized Andreas wanted her for her programming skills more than her place in his bed, or even their friendship.
Andreas’s personal assistant stood up as Kayla came out of the office. “Are you okay?”
She just shook her head.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s getting married.” Kayla wasn’t going to mention the possibility he was going to sell their company. After all, that wasn’t supposed to have been the reason for the meeting.
“To her?” Bradley’s eyes widened, his face going slack.
“She’s the matchmaker.”
Bradley laid his hand on Kayla’s arm. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything else, but he’d been working for Andreas from the beginning. Other than Andreas, Bradley knew Kayla better than anyone else alive. Maybe better, because he’d realized the first year they worked together that she was in love with the oblivious Greek.
CHAPTER TWO (#u89921092-0748-5178-aaca-d0e4c0453361)
A COUPLE OF hours later, Kayla was lost in the code of a program they’d scrapped the year before as unfeasible when a hand landed on her shoulder. She knew immediately whom that hand belonged to. “I’m busy, Andreas.”
“You’re not on a development team right now.”
“I’m the director of research and development. That means I get to choose what projects I work on.”
“So, what are you working on?”
“A program that will make Sebastian Hawk another hundred million if I can get it working.”
“We haven’t sold our company yet.”
“But we are selling it.”
“I don’t know, are we?”
She spun around to face Andreas. “Don’t play games with me, Andreas.”
He sighed, running his fingers through his jet-black hair, his green eyes troubled. “Yes, we’re selling.”
“When were you going to tell me?” She wanted to scream, to rail at him and demand answers to how he could rip everything out from under her on one go, but she wouldn’t.
For one thing, he wouldn’t understand. The fact they were standing here having this conversation at all told her that. For another, if she let out some of the pain, it would all come out and she wasn’t about to let that happen.
“After our meeting with Miss Patterson.”
“Why did you pull me into that?”
“She wanted to ask you some questions.”
“Why?” Kayla did her best to stop that one word coming out sounding like the pain-filled cry it was, but she could hear the ragged edges to her voice if he couldn’t.
Andreas winced. “You’re my closest friend.”
“And she interviews your friends?” How invasive was that?
“Yes.”
“What happened to separating personal from business?”
“We’ve managed to stay friends.”
They had until today.
Did he have any idea how arrogant he sounded, or how hurtful his words were? No, of course he didn’t. Andreas was so far removed from human feelings, it was scary sometimes.
“We’re such good friends, you didn’t bother to tell me you wanted to get married. That you’d hired some high-priced matchmaker to make it happen. You didn’t talk over the plan with me, much less the plan to sell our company. Yeah, we’re great friends.” The sarcasm was so thick in her voice there was no way even Mr. Clueless himself could miss it.
“I did tell you about Genevieve.” He frowned, completely ignoring the issue of KJ Software. “Today.”
Kayla felt a headache coming on behind her left eye. “Friends talk about that kind of thing before they do it.”
“How would you know?”
“I just do.” She might not have a lot of friends, but she had more than he did. “I know how to be a friend.”
His green gaze narrowed. “Are you saying I don’t?”
“Unless it comes to throwing money at a problem, I’m going to go with no on this one.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that because I am aware you are upset over the sale of the company.”
How magnanimous of him.
She rubbed her temple. It didn’t help the growing headache. Only one thing would. Ending this conversation. “Bradley would have told me.”
“I pay him well, but not enough to hire Genevieve Patterson’s services. It would not have come up.”
“He doesn’t need them.” When Bradley decided to settle down, he would do things the old-fashioned way. He’d look for someone he loved.
“Is that relevant?”
Her hand tightened around the stylus she’d been using to take notes. “To you? Probably not.”
“Bradley is not my friend. He is my employee.” Andreas grimaced.
“He’ll figure that out right away when he finds out you’re selling the company and making his position redundant.”
“I plan to take Bradley with me.”
She wasn’t surprised, but looked into Andreas’s green gaze for confirmation of his words. Her trust factor was at an all-time low with this man right now. “Into your venture capital firm?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She wanted Bradley to be okay. And he worked well for Andreas.
Andreas smiled, that winner’s grin. The one he used when he was sure things were going his way. “You’ll have enough from the sale of the company to participate materially in the new company.”
“No.” She’d made plans for the money going public would give her. Changing the source of that windfall to an outright sale wouldn’t change her plans.
“We make a good team.”
“No.”
For the first time, Andreas looked disconcerted. “You haven’t even heard me out.”
“There’s nothing to hear. I’m not interested in changing careers. I love what I do and I plan to keep doing it.”
“You’d start a new business in competition with Hawk? Do I need to remind you that business is not your strong suit?”
Oh, if she were a violent woman! He’d have a hand-sized print on his cheek right now. Just to take that smug look off his face. “No. If I wanted to start my own software development company, I’d find a partner. But I don’t see any reason to leave this one. Sebastian Hawk respects my abilities and I’m sure he realizes that without me, the software development department would be crippled.”
Especially if she took the team with her.
“You have a high opinion of your abilities.”
“You used to too.”
“I still do.”
She didn’t reply to that. In fact, she was done talking. Kayla turned back to her computer and changed a line of code before inserting the new series she’d written over the last hour.
“Kayla.”
“Go away, Andreas.”
“Genevieve wants to meet with you.”
“I don’t know why. Anything she needs to know, she can send me an email.”
“I thought we could meet together.”
Because that went so well the first time around. “Go away, Andreas.”
If she kept saying it, he would eventually obey. Everyone did. Even Andreas.
He said her name again. She ignored him, putting in her earbuds and turning on her favorite work playlist. She began typing.
He stood behind her a lot longer than she expected, but after the second song, he was finally gone.
Kayla’s shoulders sagged and her heart hurt in her chest.
She looked at the computer screen that had been designed to be unreadable by anyone not directly in front of it. It was filled with a series of lines that all said the same thing. “I need you to go away.”
She carefully deleted the dozens of lines saying the same thing, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not get back into programming mode.
She needed to know what her future held, now that she realized it wasn’t going to have Andreas Kostas in it.
She left her development station with the computer with no conduit to the internet and moved to her desk and tablet. It was a lot easier than she expected to find a flight to Sebastian Hawk’s headquarters the following day.
Kayla marked herself as out of the building the next day, canceled the one meeting she had to attend and sent off two emails requesting coverage for the others she wouldn’t be at.
* * *
