He continued, “When I couldn’t get inside the house, I hiked over to the Halverson farm, which was the next farm over. Even old Mrs. Halverson, who knew everything about everybody, didn’t know where they’d gone. She said she’d heard my father had gotten tired of farming, so they packed up and left. I still don’t know where they are.”
“I can’t believe your family just left you like that.” Her eyebrows lowered, and her mouth set in a harder line. “Wait. Actually, I can.”
Interesting.
She looked around the private plane, taking in the polished, burled wood and soft leather of the seats. “And you were never able to find them?”
Ah, a quick insinuation of the plane and the money to buy it. Nice. Yes, Tristan had the means to look for them, but he also knew not to waste his money. “I have at least eight brothers and sisters that I know of. They probably didn’t notice I was missing. I don’t know that they were one hundred percent sure where I went to high school, other than it was far away, somewhere. Considering how surprised Mrs. Halverson was to see me, they might’ve been telling people that I dropped out of school and ran away.”
“And you were fifteen,” she said.
“That was my first trip home in over a year, so I haven’t seen them since I was thirteen.”
“That’s so sad.”
Tristan stretched his arms out to his sides and then interlaced his fingers behind his head, returning her reference to the jet plane they were flying on. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I turned out all right.”
She nodded pensively, puckering her lips like she was sucking on her teeth. She finally said, “My family waited until I was twenty to throw me out.”
Tristan raised an eyebrow. “So, what happened to you?”
She began shredding the paper napkin her coffee was sitting on. “Family stuff. And then when college didn’t work out, I was in debt because I took out a bunch of student loans. Those loans are the reason why I can’t seem to make enough money to even eat on a regular basis.” She patted her hip and scowled. “Not that you would know it.”
“Don’t.” Tristan said.
She looked up. “Don’t what?”
He let his voice drop just a little, but she was his employee, not his plaything. However, he was trying to make a bit of a difference in her life, and she was only twenty-three. “Don’t put yourself down like that. I’m your employer, at least for a week. You can use me as a job reference when you get back to Phoenix. Tell me good things about you, things I should put in a letter of recommendation.”
She batted her brown eyes at him like a fawn lingering at the edge of a forest. “Okay.”
“Let’s hear one good thing to balance that.”
Colleen blinked again and held her breath. “I’m—reliable.”
They would have to work on that. “Good. Now proceed to tell me about your family doing what families do. You took out loans for college?”
She nodded and paused a beat, settling back into her story. “My student loans, right. I have to make the minimum payments on those loans, or else they’ll go into default. I can’t even declare bankruptcy to get out from under them. You can’t declare bankruptcy on student loans.”
He replied, “Yes, that’s a problem,” to encourage her. “What happened with college, though?”
Colleen flinched and kept her gaze on her fingers decimating that napkin. “I don’t know.”
Again, Tristan was her employer, and not anything else. Even though he liked showing his littles the world, giving them new experiences they would never have been able to encounter otherwise, Colleen was a temp for his business, and that was all.
Outside the porthole window, the ground was rising under the airplane. “We’re landing. Do you want that first-class ticket back to Phoenix or not?”
She stared right at him. “Tell me the truth. Do you know if someone is after you?”
Tristan shook his head. “I have no idea who they were, and I don’t know if they were coming after me. If they were shooting at me, I could make several conjectures about who and why, because anyone in high-level businesses can make enemies or accidentally transgress. However, I don’t know anyone specific who wants to kill me. And the people who might be the kind to kill me have more of a vested interest in keeping me alive, anyway.”
She sighed and looked at the ceiling of the airplane. “It’s a lot of money. I don’t think I can walk away from that much money. That’s change-my-life kind of money.”
Tristan nodded. And damn, the paltry amount he’d offered her shouldn’t be change-her-life kind of money. It wasn’t that much.
She raised one finger in the air. “If there are any more bullets flying, I’m out of here. I will scoot around a corner and hail an Uber and go straight back to the airport.”
He smiled. “Understood.”
