Название: The Nanny Plan
Автор: Sarah M. Anderson
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781474003087
isbn:
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said quietly. Once, he hadn’t believed there was a world where a couple of #2 pencils were an amazing gift. But now he knew better.
Her gaze still on her coffee, she gave him a quick, tight smile. He needed to move the conversation forward. “So you’re working to change that?”
“Yes. A new backpack full of everything a kid needs in a classroom.” She shrugged and looked back at him. The hardness fell away. “I mean, that’s the first goal. But it’s an important first step.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You have bigger plans?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, of course! It’s just the beginning.”
“Tell me what you’d do.”
“For so many kids, school is...it’s an oasis in the middle of a desert. The schools need to open earlier, stay open later. They need to serve a bigger breakfast, a bigger lunch and everyone needs an afternoon snack. Too many kids aren’t getting regular meals at home and it’s so hard to study on an empty stomach.” As she said this last point, she dropped her gaze again.
She was speaking from experience, he realized. Two pencils and nothing to eat at home.
“Indians on the rez love basketball and skateboarding,” she went on. “Having better courts and parks on the school grounds could keep kids from joining gangs.”
“You have gang problems?” He always associated gangs with inner-city drug wars or something.
She gave him a look that walked a fine line between “amused” and “condescending.” “Some people have perverted our warrior culture into a gang mentality. We lose kids that way and we rarely get them back.”
He thought over her wish list, such as it was. “I haven’t heard anything about computers.”
She paused, then gave him that tight smile again. “It’s the ultimate goal, one that will require far more than ten or even twenty thousand dollars of funding. Most schools don’t have the infrastructure to support an internet connection, much less cloud storage. I want kids to have basic supplies and full bellies before I get to that. You understand, don’t you?”
He nodded. He’d toured some bad schools—mold growing on the walls, windows taped shut to keep the glass from falling out, ancient textbooks that smelled like rot. But what she was describing...
“What is it you want from me, then? Just ten grand?”
The moment he said it, he realized that maybe he shouldn’t have phrased it quite like that. Especially not when Trish leaned back in her chair, one arm on the armrest, the other curled up under her chin—except for her index finger, which she’d extended over her lips as if they were in a library and she was shushing him. She met his gaze full-on, a hint of challenge lurking in her eyes. The air grew tight with tension.
God, she was beautiful and there was something else behind that gaze—an interest in more than just his bank account. He should ask her out. She wasn’t intimidated by him and she wasn’t throwing herself at him. She was here for the money and all her cards were up front, no hiding funding requests behind manipulative sexual desire. Hell. He didn’t meet too many women who could just sit and have a conversation with him.
Except...dating was not his strong suit and he was pretty sure that asking a woman out right after she’d requested a donation would probably cross some ethical line.
Damn.
“Of course, One Child, One World would be delighted with any funding the Longmire Foundation saw fit to disperse,” she said, sounding very much like someone who’d written a few grants in her time.
“How’d you get to be a Woman of the Year?”
“One of my professors nominated me,” she told him. “I didn’t know she was doing it. One day, I’m trying to organize a bake sale to raise a hundred dollars to cover postage back to the rez and the next, I’m being flown to New York and given a lot of money.” She blushed. “I mean, a lot of money for me. I’m sure ten grand isn’t very much to you.”
“I can remember when that much was a lot of money,” he admitted. He winced. That was a totally jerky thing to say and he knew it.
He was about to apologize when she said, “Tell me about your charity,” turning his question back on him.
He regarded her for a second. “Is that another way of asking why I’m giving money away for free?”
“You did go to all that trouble of earning it in the first place,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “Like I said, I had a comfortable childhood. We didn’t always get everything we wanted—I didn’t get a car for my sixteenth birthday or anything—but we were fine.”
How he’d wanted a car. Brad, his older brother, had a half-rusted Jeep he’d bought with lawn-mowing money that he swore made it a breeze to get a date.
Back then, Nate had absolutely no prospect of a date. He was tall and gangly, with dorky glasses and awful skin. They were still trying to integrate Joe into a mainstream classroom at that point and Nate was mercilessly mocked by his peers. The only possible way he could have gotten a girl was if he’d had a sweet ride to pick her up in.
Alas. No car. No date.
“Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head, “I made that first million and I felt like I’d made it. But a weird thing happened—that million spawned a second million, then a third. And then the buyout happened and now...” He gave her an apologetic smile. “Honestly, what the hell am I going to do with a billion dollars? Buy a country and rule as a despot?”
It wasn’t as if this background was entirely new information—he’d given interviews explaining the rationale for his foundation—but those were formal things with scripted answers, preapproved by his assistant, Stanley.
Right now, sitting here in a coffee shop with Ms. Trish Hunter, it didn’t feel like an interview. It felt like a conversation. An honest one.
Nate nodded toward her shirt. “I bought Superman #1—you know?”
A smile quirked at her lips. “I do know. Didn’t you pay the highest recorded price for it?”
“I did. It was wild—I felt like I was jumping off a cliff, to pay five million for a comic book.”
“Did you at least read it? Or did you lock it up?” The way she asked the question made it clear—she would have read it.
“I read it. Carefully.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, as if he were saying something salacious. She laughed. It was as close to flirting as he got. “With tongs. In a temperature-controlled room.”
Her eyes lit СКАЧАТЬ