Page 15 of How to Bang a Billionaire

Another of his hesitant offerings of comfort. It was getting embarrassing, really, how much I kept making him do that. Part of it was just surprise I could, that he would. My pathetic little insecurities seemed such an unlikely thing for him to care about. I glanced his way, smiling, trying to salvage the situation before he concluded I was utterly hopeless. “Hey, what do you say to an Oxford English graduate?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I have fries with that?”

This time he didn’t laugh. “Why English, then? If you didn’t think it would take you anywhere?”

“Oh God.” I fiddled with the fraying sleeve of my jacket. “I was super passionate about it when I was at school.”

“And now you’re not?”

I shook my head. “It’s just how it goes, isn’t it? It’s not the way you think it’s going to be and the stuff you think is important when you’re eighteen…kind of isn’t anymore.”

We stepped beneath the archway. I tried not think how intimate it could be, standing with him in those gold-struck shadows. Surrounded by centuries of conveniently oblivious stone. I sidled a little closer.

Just, y’know, in case.

I didn’t really believe he was going to be overwhelmed by lust at the sight of me looking vulnerable and available in a gloomy corner, but a boy could dream, right?

“What’s important to you now?” he asked.

That was unexpected as well. You wouldn’t have thought a man like Caspian Hart would be a good listener, but there was a quietness to him that intensified my tendency to babble. All the same, I wasn’t so desperate for his attention that I couldn’t see the other side of it: the more I spoke about me, the less I learned about him. I shrugged and muttered evasively about still trying to figure it out before changing the subject. “What made you go for PPE?” Not exactly deft but it did the job.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Oxford carries a certain cache. And PPE was…a subject.”

“Wow, see praise comma faint comma damning.”

He looked a little abashed. “It seemed most likely to be useful to me.”

“No great adolescent passion for the German philosophers, then?”

“I’ve never been particularly driven by passion.”

I leaned against the wall and tilted my head back so I could look at him. I’d thought he was joking, but his face reflected no hint of it. His mouth was very stern, very sexy. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get to be the third or fourth richest man in the UK without passion for something.”

“On the contrary, that’s achieved through hard work. Passion is a hindrance to business.”

“But you must be pretty driven? Otherwise we’d all be billionaires instead of people with Twitter accounts.”

“Perhaps. Though I think I would call that resolve.”

“What kind of headline is that? ‘Caspian Hart: Mildly Inclined to Succeed.’ How are they supposed to write you up in the Arrow now?”

“They’re not. I don’t give interviews to school magazines.” I couldn’t quite suppress a giggle at that. The Book of Making You Feel Bad About Yourself was meant to be taken very seriously indeed. “And besides,” he went on, “attaining success is considerably more than a mild inclination for me.”

I realized then how easily he wore his wealth. How naturally power became him. “I can’t imagine you growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.”

“Everything I have, everything I’ve done, is mine and mine alone.” He didn’t sound proud of it, though. Just sad. “But you’re right, my family has always been prosperous.”

“Is that what it’s about for you? Proving something?”

“Perhaps.” He turned his head away, offering me only the cold outline of his profile. “But as a point of principle, I don’t take anything I don’t deserve.”

“Caspian—” If I’d had time to think about it, I wouldn’t have had the bollocks to say his name, but there it was, between us like an outstretched hand.

“We should go.”

He turned abruptly, vanishing up the spiral staircase, and there wasn’t much I could do except hurry after him.