CHAPTER TEN

"My dad passed Thomas Corporations down to me, the family company, last spring. He’d been priming me for it since I was fifteen years old. I own and operate it now, along with my mom, of course, who runs the offices and legal aspects of it."

My breath catches. I struggle to imagine how much money he must make, owning a growing computer technology corporation like that.

Mom always told me to follow the men with gold, but it doesn’t make me want him any less or any more. It’s just a surprise.

"Wow. I mean I figured you had a pretty high-end job to afford your Jaguar, but I didn’t expect that. What do you do? It’s computer technology, right?"

He nods and leans back a little so his eyes meet mine in the setting sun.

"We try to innovate mobile and computer technologies for modern-day society. After Windows 8, our system was in almost every PC in America."

I give him a smile, reassuring him that I’m only curious about his work and not trying to pry.

"Windows 8?"

"Yeah, once we put together