Page 23 of The Billionaire's Teacher

A smile flashed across Wes’s face. He shoveled a bite of fruit slaw into his mouth and chewed.

I took it for the thought-collecting measure that it probably was and attended to my own food. Hopefully, he wasn’t going to try to turn this on its head when he was done. I’d been introducing him to the bulk of the people I still considered friends. It didn’t bother me that they were mostly business acquaintances. Luca had been the one who made friends easily. I was content to come along for the ride. Left to my own devices, I could make casual relationships and maintain them. And I could handle business relationships. But the deeper friendships? Those continued to remain outside my ability to nurture.

Wes swallowed. “Scott is probably the linchpin of the group. He’s the one who…collected us, I guess you could say. He’s the reason I have the money to do the scuba thing—the reason all of us in the group are able to pursue our dreams, honestly.”

I nodded. He had been careful to avoid mentioning money, but here again I realized that he definitely fell into the “more than I’ll ever manage in a lifetime” category. Which was fine, of course. Money didn’t fix the world. I’d seen that firsthand when Luca died. He had plenty of insurance—it was simply a good business decision when you worked a job like ours—and so while I’d been given quite a bit of money when he died, I would rather still have him.

Wes continued to eat steadily as he talked. “Anyway, Scott was made the guardian of his cousin’s child when she died. Then he ended up marrying the nanny.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding?”

“Nope. Whitney’s great though.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t think that happened in real life.”

He grinned at me while he reached for his drink. “You and me both. Still, they’re pretty happy together. As are Austin and Kayla. They were friends and teachers at the same high school. Then Austin finally got up the nerve to ask her out. Now they’re running a tutoring center together.”

“Can married couples not teach in the same school together?” If they both still loved teaching—which sure seemed to be the case if they were doing tutoring now—why had they left the school?

“Probably. There were some problems that meant they needed to leave. Rather than looking for a new school, they opened their own thing.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

I frowned slightly. What kind of problems? More to the point, why was I so invested in Wes’s friends?

Even as I thought the question, I knew the answer. I was invested because I was invested in Wes.

Not. Good.

“Next up is Cody, I guess.” Wes chuckled. “I’m kind of going in the order they all fell in love.”

“That’s not the usual order you’d go in?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I’d say I’m closer with Cody and Noah than the others. Not by a lot, mind you, but maybe by enough that I would’ve mentioned them first if I was having the conversation two years ago.”

I glanced down at my half-finished plate of food and gave it a tiny nudge away from me. A flicker caught my eye and I reached for my phone. “Hang on a sec.”

“Sure.” From the look he gave me, he was curious, but he also didn’t press.

I appreciated that. I stood and carried my phone outside of the bounds of the café eating area then tapped to call back the main charter number.

“Oh, thank goodness.”

“Hi, Zee. What’s urgent?”

The receptionist, and my favorite person at the chartering company, cleared her throat. “Are you watching the weather?”

“No. I’m having lunch.”

“Girl. You need to check it out. There are two storms forming south and east of us. They’re saying it looks like both will end up being named.”

“You know that doesn’t mean anything. There are a lot of variables—”

“And most of them right now are sending that storm in your direction. The boss wanted to be sure you knew and were keeping an eye on it. He’s not saying you have to hunker down—yet—but you know the drill.”

I nodded. I did. And I took safety seriously. “I’ll pull up the maps and see what’s what. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“You think he’s overreacting.”

I sighed. “Zee, I think I have his newest boat and the wealthiest client we’ve had in a while, so he wants everything to be perfect. He was in a sweat from the moment the reservation was made and I don’t think he’ll fully breathe out until the job is finished.”

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