An Accidental Date with a Billionaire
She shrugged. “I don’t have a thing. I just stopped caring about what other people thought about me when I…”
His brow lifted. “When you what?”
“When I walked away,” she admitted, though it wasn’t any of his business.
“What did you walk away from?”
“Nothing. Everything.”
He side-eyed her as a UPS truck flew by. “Let me guess. You used to be an actress, with millions in the bank, but now you choose to live a simpler life in Chicago, in a rent-controlled apartment, without the cash you acquired with your beauty and luck.”
He was closer than he might think.
She’d grown up rich. But when her parents stole money from their company and its employees and were sent to jail, she’d been shunned—with good reason. She’d been seventeen, in her senior year, about to go to college, and had to give up her Ivy League college acceptance because she could no longer afford the cost of tuition.
She lost everything all at once.
No one would ever be allowed to hurt her like that again.
She wouldn’t waste her time forming relationships that would fall apart.
“Am I right?” he asked, chuckling.
“Nope, not an actress,” she muttered.
“Damn.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” She cleared her throat. “What about you? Were you born with a silver spoon in your hand and a diamond in your pacifier?”
He snorted. “No. I could barely afford to have a clean diaper on my ass.”
“Really?” she asked, blinking.
He glanced at her, those green eyes of his pinning her to the soft leather seat more effectively than his actual touch would.
How did he do that?
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
Gesturing at him, she pursed her lips. “Because you’ve got the whole guy-who-never-struggled-a-day-in-his-life thing down to a tee.”
He laughed. “To succeed in my world, you’ve got to be cutthroat. Confident. Ruthless.”
Her parents had certainly been all those things, and more. “I’m sure you’re good at that last one.”
“I have to be,” he said, shrugging. “It’s my job.”
She said nothing, tapping her fingers on her thigh.
He pulled up to a red light.
“Keep going straight. What do you do, anyway?” she asked slowly.
She didn’t care. She was just making conversation.
“I acquire and consolidate businesses.”
No. He wasn’t that Mr. Jennings.