Billionaires Dollar Series

Haven dances forward, stopping beside her father. She can’t be older than six. “Hello,” she greets me.

“Hi,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She smiles, revealing a gap where her front teeth should be. “Nice to meet you too. Your car’s broken?”

“Yes. The battery is dead and your dad is helping me fix it.”

“He’s good at fixing things,” she comments, rising up on her tiptoes to watch. “But he’s terrible at braiding hair.”

Ethan snorts. Valiantly, I stop myself from laughing by biting down on my tongue. “Is he?”

“Yes. Maria does our hair instead. You have really pretty hair,” she tells me. Her voice is clear as a bell, no shyness at all.

“Thank you. So do you. I love the curls.”

“Thanks,” she says. “Could you teach me how to bake brownies some day? Yours were reeeally good.”

Ethan puts a hand on her shoulder. “Bella might be busy,” he says. “But maybe she can give you her recipe, if you ask nicely.”

I smile at her. “I’d be happy to give you the recipe. And if you need help while you’re baking, you’re free to let me know. I’m here most days.”

“You don’t work?”

“Haven,” Ethan says.

I chuckle. “I do, but mostly from home. I’m a graduate student.”

“Wait for meeee!” A second child comes chasing up my driveway on round little legs, her pigtails bouncing. “I want to see!”

She barrels into Ethan’s leg and he gives me a glance that’s half-apologetic, half-embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says. “Seems this knight comes with quite the entourage.”

“I don’t mind,” I say, smiling at the new little girl. She peers up at me. “And who is this?”

“This is Evie, my youngest,” Ethan says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “And how did you escape, huh?”

Maria comes around the corner in the next second. “I’m sorry, she fooled me…” and then she scoops down and picks up the small girl. “We can watch from the other side of the fence,” she says. “Your father has to back up the car.”

Ethan nods. “That’s right. This is not a place for kids. Haven, I want you on the other side of the fence as well.”

“But-”

“Not a discussion.” Steering her toward their house, Ethan gives me a crooked smile. “I’ll park one of my cars here. We’ll have yours started in no time.”

“Thank you. You’ll have an endless supply of brownies after this in thanks.”NôvelDrama.Org: owner of this content.

His smile widens at that. “I might hold you to that.”

Mine fades as he parks his giant Jeep beside my little beaten-up Honda Civic. The difference between us couldn’t be any starker. But he says nothing about it as he pops open his hood. It opens automatically, revealing an engine that’s impressive even to a novice like me.

“Here we go…” he says, connecting wires, humming with life and competence. I’m still holding on to his suit jacket and the fabric is soft under my hands. Idly, I wonder what it would smell like. Does he wear cologne?

“What do you study?”

“Sorry?”

“You said you’re a graduate student,” he says. “What do you study?”

“I’m doctoring in systems engineering.”

His gaze snaps up to mine. “You’re a systems engineer?”

“Soon-to-be, yeah.”

“What topic are you researching?”

“How model-based project strategies provide greater efficiency.”

He nods to himself. “Very interesting,” he says, and there’s no artifice in his voice.

A small glow of pride starts in my chest. Ethan Carter, a pioneer in the tech industry for his work on nano-research and its commercial implications. For a second, I feel like the undergrad student who had sat second row during his guest lecture.

“We’ll have to talk about that,” he murmurs, walking around to the driver’s seat of his car. “Very interesting indeed. And you’ll be here all summer?”

“Good.” He slides into the driver’s seat. “Get in your car, but don’t start it until I tell you to, okay?”

“Okay.”

The deep rumble of his engine roaring to life is the only sound, followed quickly by the cheers of two small girls across the fence. I smile as I sit in my driver’s seat, the door open. There’s a large coffee stain on the passenger seat. I’d never really noticed that before.

“Now!”

“All right,” I tell my car quietly, hand on the car key. “I promise I’ll buy you a new battery if you just start now. We have an audience.”

And then I turn the key.

My engine growls to life in a far less flattering way than Ethan’s state-of-the-art Jeep, but it’s alive. “Thank you,” I tell it, putting the gear in neutral and getting out, the car still on.

“That’s it. All she needed was a jump.” Ethan reaches out a hand to me, expectant. I stare at it for a second before I realize I’m still holding his jacket.

“Right. Here. Thank you so much for this. I don’t know how to repay you.”

“Yes, you do,” he says, shrugging into his fitted suit jacket. “You already promised. Brownies in perpetuity.”

“Of course. How could I have forgotten?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll keep reminding you. I have two kids to feed.” And then he winks, bending over to remove the jumper cables from my still-roaring engine without pausing. “Now I want you to go get this car serviced, all right? First thing tomorrow.”

“Sure, yes. And I’m sorry if I’ve made you late to some meeting.”