Page 12 of The Billionaire's Secret Kiss

"I miss you," I said. "I miss you, and I want to try again.”

"No, you don't." Ella stared down at the croissant, her long fingers picking at the pastry. "I haven't heard from you in two years, Noah. Not since we broke up. Now you see me once, and all of a sudden, you decide you want me back? No. Just, no."

"You think seeing you yesterday was an accident?" I asked. "You think I just stumbled across you and all of a sudden changed my mind about our breakup?"

"That's what it looks like," she said flatly.

"You're wrong," I said. "There was nothing accidental about yesterday. I didn't know you would be at the meeting, but I knew you worked for Vance and Maggie and I planned to track you down while I was here. Hell, part of the reason I picked them was to give me an excuse to be in Atlanta."

Ella took a tiny sip of her latte, swallowed, and tilted her head to the side. "So, you wanted to see me, but you couldn't make time in your schedule until business brought you here."

Shit. When she put it like that, it sounded bad. Explanations about the kind of pressure I was under and everything that was going on with the company were not going to make my case.

Shit.

Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense.

"Why are you working as a nanny? Why aren't you working in your field? Or in school? Shouldn't you have graduated in May?"

Ella's face closed down. Just like that, the vitality drained from her dark eyes, her shoulders went stiff, and she turned her face away.

"That's none of your business."

"Why won't you tell me? What happened?" I demanded.

Ella crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin. "I don't have to explain my life to you. Not anymore. I'm not your business. We’re not getting back together, okay? Even if I wanted to, I don't have room in my life right now—"

She cut off abruptly. I shifted from curious to alarmed. What the fuck was going on? My Ella was driven, determined, and completely focused on her academic career. Hell, she'd sacrificed our relationship for school and her future. It was that important to her, and now she’d left it behind?

I wasn't walking away without an answer.

"Ella, tell me what's going on. Tell me now, or I’ll start digging, and I'll find the truth. You know I will. Why don't you make it easy and just tell me?"

Her chin dropped, and she let out a breath. Yeah, she knew when I had her beaten. I wasn't a hacker, but with a little work, I could find out what I needed to know. More importantly, I knew people who could get every detail of her life way faster than I could on my own. I didn't want to invade her privacy that way, but I would. And she knew it.

"I had to drop out of school, okay?"

"Why?"

"I couldn't afford it anymore. My dad lost his job, and he didn't tell anyone, just kept borrowing money, and then it all fell apart, and there wasn't anything left."

"But you had grants, and you were working," I said, feeling sick at the thought of what she must've gone through. I'd worked my way through school too. It was one of the things we’d had in common.

"I did, but they weren't enough without my parents’ help. I tried getting a loan, but it's too much. I don't want to borrow money. I don't want to end up like my dad, buried under debt without any options. I'm not like you. I can’t design some software that’ll make me billions of dollars."

"I don't have billions of dollars," I said under my breath. You get one windfall in Silicon Valley, and everyone starts throwing around the term ‘tech billionaire.’ Ella snorted in derision.

"Close enough," she said.

"Then why didn't you ask me for help? You could've called me. You know I would have—"

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she demanded in a shout that had half of the coffee shop turning to stare. Ella flushed and lowered her voice, but her dark eyes glowed with rage. "You dumped me. You didn't even bother to come home for my college graduation. I told you I didn't want to see you anymore, and you never got in touch with me again. The next thing I know, you’ve got a new girl on your arm every week, going to movie premieres and being interviewed on TV, and you think I’d call you and ask you for money?"

"You could have," I said quietly. "You could've asked me for anything."

Her eyes hardened, and she shook her head. "How could you expect me to think that's true? You walked away from me and never looked back."

"Ella, that's not what happened."