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“Go ahead.”
“You had to know that you wouldn’t be able to lie to them about the things that’d happened, but you tried anyway. Why’d you do it?”
“I wanted to help people,” I said simply. “I have a degree in criminal justice from Columbia, and when Clay came to me my senior year and suggested I join, I thought I might as well try it. If I was going to get caught hiding my past, I figured why not do it with the FBI.”
“You don’t do anything by half-measures, do you?” he asked wryly.
“I don’t see the point,” I admitted. “But you’re the same way. Graduated MIT with a doctorate at twenty-one. A millionaire by twenty-three after selling a business that came out of an app you created in college. And now you have Sylph Industries.”
“You did your homework on me.”
I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea to know who I was getting into bed…” Heat flooded my cheeks. “I mean, business. Who I was getting into business with.” I squirmed in my seat. “It was a good idea for bed too.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up in a partial smile. “That reminds me. I still need your invoice for Meka’s case.”
“With everything that’s been going on, I completely forgot.” I dug my phone out of my purse. “I’ll set a reminder right now.”
“Are you going to try to manage Burkart Investigations on your own?” he asked.
“Adare had a receptionist for a while,” I said, “but she worked the cases alone. I’m thinking about doing the same. Have someone at the office to answer calls and keep the calendar, but do the actual investigations myself.”
“If I was working on something that could be used to find missing people, would you be willing to work as a consultant? Answering questions, pointing out flaws, that sort of thing.”
“You want me to help you with an app?” I was flattered but wasn’t entirely sure how much good I could be at something like that. I really hoped that he wasn’t offering because he thought he needed to.
“I’m still in the brainstorming stage,” he said. “Which is part of what I’d like your input about.”
“Maybe you should tell me what you’re trying to do first.”
He flushed and gave me that self-deprecating grin I liked so much. “Sorry. Sometimes my mouth and my brain aren’t in sync.”
I flashed back to the other night when his mouth and brain were very much in sync, and a rush of heat flooded me. It took far more effort than I liked to bring my attention back to the present.
“I want to come up with ways to track people,” he said, then hurried to clarify. “Not in a creepy way. I want something that’s a combination of a GPS, so if a kid like Meka goes missing, there’s a quick and efficient way of finding her, and a panic button. Even though Meka and her dad were having issues, when she realized what her boyfriend had done, I’m sure she would’ve used a panic button if she’d had one.”
I let the idea turn over in my mind, looking at the possibilities – both negative and positive – as well as possible complications. I wasn’t a tech person, which meant I didn’t know how feasible the logistics were, but I could see some of the legal issues that would come up. I wasn’t going to assume that’s what Jalen wanted though.
“What, exactly, is it you want me to do?”
He leaned back as the waiter returned to clear away our appetizer plates and refill our wine. “Mostly, just let me pick your brain about problems we’d have, suggestions, recommendations, anything that you can think of that we might possibly need to know and answers to any questions I might come up with.”
“Can I have some time to think about it?”
“Of course.” He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I don’t want you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.” His thumb brushed across my knuckles. “And I don’t want you to feel obligated. It’s a sincere offer, but I don’t want to risk what we have going here.”
It was the perfect opening to ask him what that was, to get him to put into words this thing between us. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I told myself that it was because I didn’t want to sound like one of those women who want to know where things were going from moment one, but I knew that it was fear, plain and simple. I was terrified that he would tell me that what he felt wasn’t the same as what I felt. That he wanted to keep things casual and we could both see other people.
I didn’t want to see other people, and the thought of him with another woman made my stomach churn. In my head, I knew it’d be better to get it all out in the open, but logic wasn’t ruling here. So, I smiled and turned the subject to our meal. We’d have a nice, uncomplicated date, and I’d figure out the rest later.
