The Man Who Has No Sight - Victoria Quinn Page 0,6

not exactly sure how much you get paid now, but I know it should be much higher for what you do and how much he’s benefiting from all your long nights and weekends. Honestly, I can’t believe you work so hard for someone else. With that kind of dedication, you should work for yourself.”

She shrugged. “Honestly, I really like my job. I’m not just saying that. There’re a lot of clients in this building that I consider to be friends, not just people I work for. The salary has never been that important, because I had a nice apartment someone my age could never afford in a million years.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve that financial security. Do it, Cleo.”

She dropped her gaze. “I don’t know…”

“I can do it for you.”

Her chin lifted immediately. “No.” When she realized she’d snapped, she quieted. “I mean, I don’t need you to do that for me.”

I pushed the paper back to her. “I want you to have everything you deserve. I know I’m biased, but you shouldn’t have to hunt for an apartment that’s twenty minutes out of the way. You deserve a place with a doorman, with someone to pick up your mail for you, a place that’s just across the street.”

She smiled slightly. “I know. That’s sweet.”

“So, talk to him first before you jump the gun. There’s no rush to leave anyway.” I liked having her there. I liked coming home to her. I liked having her in my bed every night. I liked the easy companionship and the fact that it didn’t need to be a secret anymore. She got ready for work and went downstairs. I probably spent more time outdoors in the cold than she did. I would ask her to move in with me permanently, but that was too fast. Our relationship was new again. Didn’t make sense to force it to accelerate.

“I’ll think about it.” She took the paper back and returned it to her folder.

I kept eating.

She opened up a different folder and turned it toward me. “I thought about what you said, running the business side of things so you could spend more time doing your research. Well, without actually seeing the way you run things, I thought this could be a start.” She showed me how she would organize everything. “I think it’s best to protect your privacy as much as possible, so I talked to one of my clients about coding and encryption. He said we could set it up in a way where I would organize all your numbers in a spreadsheet, do all your organizing with it encrypted, and when I send it to you, you just turn it off and you can see the real numbers. That would give you most of the information you need to make decisions about your company. For payroll, there’s no way around that one. I can work directly with your accountant to handle all of that. But that eliminates most of the work for you.”

“But if the information is encrypted, you wouldn’t know if you made a mistake, like entered a number incorrectly.”

She shrugged. “It’s just one column. You can always redo the numbers yourself. But in general, it would cut down significant time.”

“How would you even have time to do this?”

“I can always make time. I don’t mind. Now, for your paycheck at the end of the month, I can send the encrypted number to you, you can send it to your account, and cut me out of it altogether.” It seemed like she didn’t want to know anything about my money at all, or she was so worried I would think she was a gold digger that she was doing everything possible to clear herself of the label.

But I already knew she wasn’t like that. “You already know I’m a billionaire, so does it really make sense to encode everything? It’s just going to slow you down and make your job more difficult.”

“I don’t mind the extra work. Honestly, I feel more comfortable not seeing those numbers every day. Ignorance is bliss.”

“But I trust.”

“I know,” she whispered. “And I never want to do anything to risk that trust. It means the world to me.” She closed the folder and put it to the side. “So, I think I’ve gathered everything for Thanksgiving. I picked up this really beautiful dining set we could use for dinner. Will Derek and Valerie be joining us?”

I didn’t want to tell her what happened, but it was