Page 51 of Saved By the Billionaire

“It’s fine.” Kate put a hand on Roman’s thigh without thinking, but the second she felt his muscle bunch beneath her touch, as though her electrical current had travelled directly into him, she knew it wasn’t a good idea to touch. She pulled away, went back to cradling her champagne flute. “I got a job, started saving. I thought that if I had enough in the bank, I could go back to uni but prepay all my expenses and just focus on study. Take on extra subjects to finish quicker, do summer school.”

“Sounds like you had it all worked out.”

“I thought I did.”

“So what happened?”

Kate shook her head slowly. “It was harder than I thought. I still had a lot of expenses, I couldn’t save as much as I wanted.” She hesitated, not inclined to talk about the discovery of her father. She shrugged instead. “Circumstances change. I’m okay with it.”

Chapter Eleven

“WAIT. YOU DID TWO and a half years of a law degree and you’re okay with it?”

Kate shifted in her seat. “There’s not much point feeling otherwise, right?”

Tia spluttered air between her lips.

Kate laughed, sipped her champagne and felt Roman stiffen at her side. She tilted him a challenging glance and took another sip, noticed the way his hands gripped his knee and bit back another chortle. “I take it you don’t agree?”

“I mean, no. I don’t mean to be rude but that’s a lot of work to put in and have nothing to show for it.”

“I don’t have ‘nothing to show for it’,” Kate disagreed. “I learned a heap.”

“Like how to read contracts?” Roman’s question throbbed towards her, loaded with curiosity. As though he had his own barrage of questions. For later. Only later made the hair on her arms stand on end with heated anticipation.

“First year,” she agreed, flicking a smile in his direction. His eyes held hers and the smile died, smouldering into ash. Her lips parted on a small rush of air. She turned back to Tia.

“But Kate—you don’t talk like someone who comes from money. You struggled through uni, right?”

“Tia, this isn’t your concern.”

“I’m just saying,” Tia continued regardless. “You must have known that once you graduated, your earning potential would increase exponentially. Surely that was worth fighting for?”

“I did fight,” Kate said quietly. “I fought every day from the moment I arrived. I survived on baked beans and my roommates’ leftovers for weeks on end. I didn’t go out, I didn’t drink, I didn’t see a goddamn movie. I fought for two and a half years, and then, I just couldn’t fight anymore.”

“But—”

“Tia,” Roman’s voice was no longer subtly warning. It was a command, tense with emotion.

Kate looked from one to the other, felt something between them that seemed to pre-date her. They argued, she gathered, not infrequently. Like siblings? Or passionate lovers? She quelled that thought. Roman had said things weren’t like that between them, and she believed him. He had no reason to lie.

But Kate had come to despise conflict. She’d known too much of it in her various foster homes and it filled her with an icy sense of dread, and a pervasive feeling of powerlessness, because she couldn’t always control what came next. And yet, she didn’t mind arguing with Roman, she realised. In fact, she liked it. She relished it. She never felt unsafe or afraid, just…excited.

“You know what we need,” she murmured. “Music.” She jerked to standing, limping across the room to where Roman had a multimedia tablet hooked up to discreet speakers throughout the penthouse. She’d seen him use it before and found it easy enough to scroll through the playlists. She was aware of Tia and Roman talking behind her in hushed tones, and didn’t turn around. She sipped her champagne, selected a playlist somewhat at random and hit the start button. Lily Allen filled the apartment, her debut album, full of attitude and spark, it was exactly what Kate felt like in that moment. She turned to the others with a smile on her face but it dropped when she saw their expressions.

They were both looking at her as though she’d strangled a kitten.

“What?” she said, looking down quickly at her clothes, her nightmare morphing into being naked in front of a classroom.

“It was her favourite,” Tia said, and Roman closed his eyes.

“Whose favourite?” Kate asked, wondering if the champagne had dulled her senses in some vital way.

“Grace’s.”

“Your sister’s?” Kate prompted.

Roman’s Adam’s apple shifted before he answered. “Yes.”