Insecure (11 page)

“People died in the fire yesterday. People died outside my front door today. Nothing is as certain as you think it is. My mother gave up what made her truly special to the world and she died too young to change her mind about it. I worry sometimes I'm making the wrong sacrifices. I'm tired. I didn't expect you to be so...” She flapped her hands. “I thought I was the one in control.”

He'd upset her. He really needed to leave her be. “I'll go.”

“I want you to stay. I want to help you get your funding. Jay will come for breakfast. We'll talk to him then. If what you've got interests him, he'll be straight with you. If he agrees to fund you, you won't need to work at Wentworth anymore.”

She stood up and smoothed her dress over her hips.

He followed her to his feet. She was giving him the opportunity to make his life's work happen, to realise his ambition. He made a move towards the paintings to put them back the way he'd found them. She deserved that much, and more, from him.

“Leave them. They don't matter.” She was by the door, her hand over the light switch. He'd invaded her privacy and he expected her to want it back.

“Take me to bed, Mace.”

He was halfway to her side and stopped. He shouldn't want that so much. He shouldn't need to feel her body cleave to his. This was way more than he'd bargained for, but for now he was ready to pay for it with every heated, heart-stopped breath.

Mace fought against sleep's drowsy weight. He wanted to watch Jacinta even as she was drifting into its grasp. What they'd done in her big tousled bed wasn't the one night stand of I want you material, it was something else entirely.

He had experience of how I want you played out, and found it mostly to be about ego and mindless animal need, satisfying enough when it wasn't pathetically drunken and fumbled.

What they'd done was the opposite; it was slow and gentle, careful and considered and it rocked his world. They'd caressed and flowed and rippled together, the boiling and melting so evenly shared, so exquisitely paced, it left him alive to the notion he'd been screwing women for more than decade and had never known what it was to make love.

Because that's what'd gone down.

It filled him with both awe and regret. Regret that he'd wasted a lot of time being satisfied with good enough. Awe at having found that incredible tension and rhythm with a woman he'd never imagined trying for. Regret that it was only through divine circumstance it'd happened at all and wouldn't happen again after tonight.

Because as beautiful as it had been, it was also goodbye. Jacinta had used her body to tell him to go, tell him he'd gotten too close and didn't fit well; was too big and silent and clumsy, too intense and stubborn and quick to misunderstand, to be part of her well ordered existence that didn't include a personal life by choice.

He watched her breathing deepen, her body soften. Her face was so pale, her body so slight, her hair so dark and messed up from his hands. She was physically delicate, yet she could face down the tornado that was Malcolm without a flinch. She didn't look severe to him anymore. She wasn't starched and she hadn't needed alcohol to rub away the armour. It was a skin she shrugged off when she felt safe enough to.

He'd made her feel safe enough, but without trying, he'd threatened her too. She'd ricocheted between military and malleable in her reaction to him all day, but she'd wanted him to stay, and now he didn't want the last moments of being with her to pass.

She stirred, her eyes opened, closed, then blinked to focus on him. She lifted her hand to his face and he moved his head so he could kiss her palm.

“How are you still awake?” She pulled her hand away. “Don't be nervous about Jay.”

He'd not spared a thought for Jay. Insanity, when nothing he or Dillon could have deliberately done would've led to it.

“Sleep, Mace. You'll need your wits about you. You'll need to articulate exactly what it is you've got.”

He pushed out a breath. He was code, not words. Words were Dillon's black magic. He was the wrong man for this job and no amount of debugging would ever make him right for it.

She smiled. “He won't laugh at you.”

“He can laugh all he wants. We know what we've got.”

“Then it'll be easy to explain. Jay speaks tech, you won't need to dumb it down.”

He watched her face, her eyes studying him.

“Mace?”

“I went alpha dick on him.”

She laughed. “You did. You thought you had to fight him for me.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I liked it.”

“He didn't.”

“He's protective of me.”

“And why is that?”

“You sound jealous. You can't be jealous of Jay. You can't be jealous at all, there—”

He kissed her. It was enough to know it. He didn't need it said. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his back and for long moments he didn't think about anything but the deep peace of having her in his arms.

And that's the way he slept, curled around her, breathing in sync with her, till he opened one eye to witness her slip away in the blue-grey dawn and alone, he dreamed of drowning in a hot, gritty, mist-filled sea.

She brought him coffee. She was dressed, her hair tied back. She kept her distance, moved her hand on the bed so he couldn't take it.

“I've told Jay you have a proposal for him. He's ready to listen. Hit the shower, get dressed. Come and meet him again. He's cooking breakfast. When we're done you can pitch him.”

“I. Yeah.” He needed more than coffee, a shower and shave. He needed a power cord for his laptop. He needed Dillon. He'd been wearing the same clothes since Friday, when he'd been wearing any. He still wasn't sure if his foot would go in a shoe. And he needed words to explain to one of the world's most famous venture capitalists that he was a wildcard entrepreneur who had the smarts to change the face of personal identity management.

Wasn't going to happen.

She kissed his shoulder and moved away. “You'll be fine.” That's what she'd say to all the aspiring entrepreneurs she took to bed.

He showered, considered his suit or the white business shirt with jeans, and knew that wasn't right, aside from the fact it was so crushed it looked like he'd slept in it. His black t-shirt had green print across the back, a cartoon drawing of the evolution of man from ape to android. There was no way not to look like a bum, so he might as well commit to it.

He padded into the kitchen barefoot, about as ready for ritual humiliation as he was for Jacinta to be in Jay's arms. They were in the kitchen. The bastard had one hand on her back and was feeding her yoghurt or some crap off a spoon. She hadn't said he was gay. She didn't use that word but he'd assumed, and he'd still been jealous. Now he wanted to jam that implement down Jay's throat until the dude stopped kicking.

Fuck.

He needed to shake that off. Get hold of himself.
Shit
. He had one shot at this. She was a one fucking night stand who'd gone cold on him for no good reason and Jay was his future.

He cleared his throat and Jay's eyes came up. “Good morning. There's bacon and eggs, if you'd like? Tomato? Mushrooms, and hash browns?”

He sat on one of Jacinta's aeronautical kitchen stools, the cost of which would likely fund two months of testing work Ipseity needed. “Thanks.” He couldn't even manage to sound gracious about food, and he was hungry.

“They're hoping to lift the lockdown soon. They have the bomber surrounded. It's a stand-off, but they want him alive if possible. It's an awful business.” Jay put a plate in front of him, chunky toast on the side and a fresh cup of coffee. Jacinta moved to stand with her back against the cupboard that hid the fridge.

“How is your foot?” Jay again.

Cinta wouldn't look at him. She studied her fingernails as if she'd never seen the miracle of them before. Mace took a bite of the toast. Crunchy and doughy from some arty bakery.

“I made the bread, do you like it?”

Jay baked.

They couldn't lift the siege quick enough.

“Mace, Jay baked the bread, and he asked about your foot. Did you hear we're still in lockdown?” she said.

Fuck. Wake the fuck up and pay attention
. “Bread's great. Foot's great.” Imbecile.
Fuuuck.

He shovelled scrambled egg and bacon, and slurped coffee, while Jay turned his back and cleaned up. The only way this could be more awkward was if Jay was Malcolm and he'd been caught out doing the walk of shame by his boss' boss' bosses.
Fuuck.

“Cin tells me you work in Wentworth's IT group.”

Shit, she'd done nothing to sell him up. “Yeah. Day job.” She still wouldn't look at him. She'd slipped away without waking him and kissed him on the fucking shoulder as if she couldn't stand to touch him.

“You wrote a program for assessing shareholder vote preferences based on prior deal activity and portfolio spend.”

Any halfwit coder could've done that. She might as well have stuck him in a boat and shoved him down the river. Well fuck her.

“Yeah, though what I wanted to do was create a new algorithm that would've given a long term indicator of investment propensity, but the company didn't see its value.” And fuck and fuck and fuck. Now he sounded like an arrogant shit.

He had to clench every muscle not to fling thousands of dollars worth of stools across the room when she put her hand on his back. “Take it easy, Mace. Tell Jay what you told me.”

At least she didn't say, in the bath.

“You obviously know who I am, Mace. I fund speculative IT businesses. I make a lot of money doing it. I don't have to bake my own bread.” Jay came around the counter. “Cin asked me to hear you out so here I am, but if you don't want to do this, if it's not right for you, I understand.”

God. Fuck
. The man was worth billions, he'd cooked Mace breakfast, and was offering him a chance hundreds of dudes would give their left nut for and he was stuck in a funk because he'd thought last night meant something and Jacinta might've wanted more than what they'd started with. More than the day and two nights.

He was a fucking idiot.

He stood and took his plate around to the sink. “I'm the developer. It's my idea, but my partner Dillon is the business head.” When he turned back Jay had settled on the lounge with Jacinta. “I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk to you. If you'll bear with me, I'll do my best to explain what we've got. What we plan to do.”

“I can't ask for better.”

He took the enormous winged chair and looked down at his bare feet. He felt more naked without his laptop. Jay was casually dressed in jeans and a shirt. He had boat shoes on. He probably owned a boat. He could probably afford to raise the Titanic.

“Start with your professional background.”

He looked up. Dillon had economics and marketing qualifications. He had two degrees and the kind of work experience that easily demonstrated his credential. He was a mad git, but he had professional stripes. Mace was entirely self-taught. No degree, no history of approved study, no faculty to grant him a certificate for his wall, just hours and hours of experimentation, development, and his own study. There were two schools of thought about self-taught programmers. He hoped Jay wasn't affiliated with the school that thought they sucked arse.

He felt more comfortable when he moved on to talk about the program. From dream to inception to plan and prototype. He forgot where he was, forgot Jay was a rich fuck who baked bread and made Jacinta comfortable. He forgot her. He talked. He let it flow out, in detail, descriptive and explicit. He was logical, persuasive. He was comprehensive and authoritative. He was his best self when he lost all sense of time and place and was so heavily in the zone he was indestructible.

“You're talking about predictive modelling. There are a number of—”

“Not just predictive.”

Jay sat forward. “If I understand you correctly, you're saying—”

“That's just the beginning.

Jay stood. “You've built this already?” He turned to Jacinta. “Can I borrow a pad and pencil?”

She unfolded from the lounge and went to get them.

“I've got a working prototype but we need to test it. I want to build it out so it stands up now and is robust enough not to be challenged.”

“And you have a business model?”

He nodded. They did, but that's where he genuinely turned into a blue screen of death. Jacinta came back. Jay scribbled a few notes.

“Tell me about funding requirements.”

“I, ah.” Shit. Nothing he'd yet said, from his own lack of formal qualifications to the disruptive nature of the modelling, had wiped the look of concentration off Jay's face. Talking about the product, the interface was easy. Mace lived it, he breathed it; if you analysed his blood, it'd have basic algorithms in it, but competitive pressure, the legal, jurisdictional ramifications, privacy issues, the ramp up, the scale, the burn rate, these were all Dillon's dropdown.

“Call him.” Jay looked up. “Your partner, get him on the phone.”

Mace stood. “Okay.” He patted his back pocket, but his phone was lying dead in the bottom of his duffel.

“Catch.”

Jay tossed him his phone. “Put him on speaker.”

He had to think. Dillon's details were pre-programmed into every device he owned. What a time to go blank. Jay was watching him. He dialled on speaker. It rang out. Dillon wouldn't know the number, he might not pick up. He dialled again.

“Who is the fuckwit waking me this early on Sunday morning?”

He winced. “Dillon, it's me.”

The call disconnected.

“If would be good if you could get him to take the call,” said Jay with some amusement. He reached across to Jacinta and petted her arm.