Page 49 of Work with Me

“Is that how you feel about me?” She looked down at her flip-flop.

“No. Never.” I placed one finger under her chin and tipped it up until she met my gaze. “And that’s why I can’t kiss you.”

Her smile was a little sad. “We both care too much about our businesses to let a kiss become anything more.”

I jammed my other hand into my pocket to keep from smoothing it through her hair, from touching her soft skin. “I like you, Alicia. Do you think we could drop the office rivalry and be…friends?”

“Friends?” An inscrutable expression crossed her face. “I guess we could try.”

It was tepid at best, but I’d take it. I couldn’t pretend to hate the woman with the titanium core I’d taken a month to discover. I wanted to reach out and hug her—friends did that—but considering the rigid set of her shoulders, I stuck out my hand instead.

She shook it. “Thanks for bringing my phone.” Then she turned and walked briskly up the walk, flip-flops slapping the concrete.

When she shut the purple door, I circled the front of the truck and clambered inside. I leaned my head back against the headrest. After four months in Austin, I’d made my first friend.

And yet, I wanted so muchmore.

19

ALICIA

Jackson: Please tell me you’re the coach so I can imagine you lording it over a bunch of 8-year-olds with a whistle.

I must’ve grinned because Tiannah elbowed me in the side. “What’s that about?”

“Nothing.” I dropped my phone into the cupholder in my nylon chair.

“Doesn’t look like nothing. Looks like something’s making you blush.”

“Oh, you know. Just a text from someone at work.” Shit, I shouldn’t have mentioned work. Why couldn’t I have pretended I’d met someone at the grocery store or in line at the DMV? I stared out at the kids running drills before the game, hoping she’d drop it.

“From Jackson Jones?”

Crap. Her eyebrows had all but disappeared into her hairline.

Esmy leaned around me. “He came over for dinner last night.”

Tavon clambered up into Tiannah’s lap and stuck his thumb in his mouth. She tucked one arm around him and plopped her chin onto her other hand. “Jackson Jones, multimillionaire, came over for meatloaf at Casa Weber?”

“He brought Alicia her phone,” Esmy said. “Is he really a multimillionaire?”

One-handed, Tiannah tapped out a search on her phone. She flipped the device around. In the picture, Jackson wore a red jumpsuit covered in patches for petroleum companies and an auto manufacturer, and his hair was disheveled and sweaty like he’d taken off a helmet. Below that was a figure so large I had to count commas.

At least she hadn’t found the shirtless photo of him. I’d thought about searching for it last night, but friends didn’t do skeezy things like that.

My mother whistled. “You’d think a guy with a bank balance like that would have someone to run phones out to people.”

“Mom.” I leaned back in my chair and fanned myself. All those commas had made my brain swim. “He’s just a regular guy.” At least, he’d seemed that way at work. His Converse had a hole in one side.

“Alicia. This is not a regular guy.” Tiannah waved the phone under my nose again. “He paid more in taxes last year than you’ll earn in, like, ten years. And that’swithour unfair, regressive tax system that favors the rich. Jackson Jones is the freaking one percent. He’s, like, the one-tenth of one percent. Think of how much he could afford to give to charity and not even feel it.”

I slumped back in my chair, keeping my fingers well away from my phone. Until a minute ago, his ownership of the company had been abstract. A vague kind of power he could’ve wielded over me and the other guys on the team, over everyone in the building, but, so far, had not. He’d acted like your run-of-the-mill cowboy coder. And the money? What did a person do with all that money? Was it at the local credit union, like mine, earning minuscule interest every month? Or invested in the stock market and bonds like my IRA? Did he keep it in his mattress? That’d be some thick mattress.

“Have you asked him about it?”

“About the money? No, of course not. We’re coworkers. And we’re starting to be friends.” The word still felt strange in my mouth.

She put her hands over Tavon’s ears. “Oh, hell, no, you are not. What you are is delusional if you think you and that many-times-over-millionaire are equals. That is some dangerous game you’re playing with your flirty texts and your home-cooked suppers.”

---