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“You’re an asshole.” He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. “Fuck knows why I stick around.”

  “You stick around because you love me. I might be an asshole, but I’m your asshole.” I watched his curly hair bounce as he shook his head at me again.

  “How’s it hanging, Jude?” a marketing manager who had taken care of a few campaigns for me called. The guy wore a suit as shiny as the sequins on the dress of the girl hanging off his arm, with a shark-like smile spreading on his face when he saw me.

  “All good, bro.” I gave him a salute.

  He tipped his chin at me in response before dragging his girl toward the bar.

  The server brought our drinks. Before he’d even unloaded everything, I grabbed two of the shots and passed one to Shane.

  Holding up my own, I ignored the girl in my lap for a minute and looked into my friend’s worried amber eyes. There was a crease between his brows, and his gaze kept darting around the room.

  The VIP section was small. Apparently, that meant it was more exclusive. I wouldn’t know and I didn’t really care. All I cared about was having a good time, and Percussion was the best time to be had in the city at the moment.

  Eventually, some other club would take over as the ritziest. It always happened that way. When it did, I would move on to that next place when I wanted to have fun.

  For now, Percussion was my spot.

  Whenever I needed to blow off some steam, I came here. After the week I’d had, there was a lot of steam to be blown off.

  Shane needed it, too. His mouth had that anxious-twitch thing going that it did sometimes, and his fingers were drumming against the table.

  “Cheers, man.” I held his gaze and lifted my glass in his direction. “Let’s stop with the worrying for tonight. You can always make up for it with some extra worrying on Monday.”

  He glared at me but raised his glass to his lips and dropped his head back to take the shot. I grinned, followed suit, and picked up two more glasses.

  This time, however, I directed my attention to the others sitting around the table. They noticed me holding up the tequila almost immediately. Everyone reached for their own drink and raised their glasses for the toast.

  “To a great night for us all,” I called above the music, then threw the smooth liquid down my throat.

  It didn’t even burn going down anymore, which was great for tonight but a bad omen for tomorrow morning. Again, though, I didn’t really care.

  A hangover was part of the package I was paying for tonight. Luke, my son, was with his mother for the weekend.

  No doubt there would be some drama or other when I went to pick him up tomorrow afternoon, but that was just fueling my desire to drink as much as I could tonight. Sharing a seven-year-old with the devil tended to be bad for my liver occasionally.

  There was also the fact that whenever I had to deal with Audrey, I had to deal with my former friend. My ex had turned to him for comfort after she bailed on me.

  Comfort in this context had turned out to be his cock. Oh, and his sizeable bank account.

  Nothing in this world was more important to Audrey than the size of his bank account. Not even providing a stable home for our son.

  When I’d first started my business, she’d pushed me to work day and night—which I’d been doing anyway. I still didn’t achieve success fast enough for her, though.

  She’d never had any intention of working for a living, and evidently, she’d gotten tired of standing around waiting for me to pull a miracle out of my ass. So she’d decided to start over with another man, Jett.

  Shane, Jett, and I had grown up together. We played for the same rugby teams, attended the same schools, and used to be pretty tightly knit.

  Until Audrey realized Jett had a trust fund.

  She’d left Luke and me so fast I’d checked the floors for scorch marks because it had certainly seemed like her ass had been on fire.

  Luke hadn’t seen his mother for months while she’d been on Mission Seduce Jett, which was why our son lived with me. Audrey hadn’t even tried to take him with her.

  Wonderful woman, my ex.

  Provided she wasn’t busy or didn’t come up with some other excuse, Luke went to visit his mother every second weekend. I could have taken her to court to fight about it, but I hadn’t.

  Luke loved his mother, and since she was a bitter hag, it was up to me to be mature about things. The truth was that he wasn’t in any kind of danger with her. She just wasn’t terribly interested in him.

  A weekend twice a month was more than enough time for her to sacrifice to spend time with him. She was bitter that I’d struck gold just after she’d left me, and a part of me wondered if seeing Luke now just reminded her too much of what she could have had.

  Either way, she was a petty asshole, and I was glad she’d left me when she had. It had taken me some time to get over her and to realize she’d done me a solid by shoving off out of my life, but I had gotten there.

  Now, I had more than moved on. I only wished I didn’t have to have contact with her so often. But there was nothing I wouldn’t do for my son. Dealing with his mother, walking through the fire she breathed at me, and seeing her every second weekend to hand him off was all just a part of it.

  For Luke, I could pull up my bootstraps and take the motherfucking high road. I just didn’t have to be one-hundred-percent sober in the run-up to our encounters.

  Just thinking about her made me drain what was left of my glass of champagne. The girl on my lap was chattering with a woman sitting next to me, seemingly completely oblivious to the lack of attention I’d been giving her. Or just not caring about it. Probably the latter.

  As my head came back down after I’d swigged the remainder of my bubbly, I caught Shane’s eye again. He was watching the girl dancing on me with anxiety flickering in his gaze.

  “This is reckless, Jude,” he said, not giving a damn about whether she could hear him or not. I was pretty sure she couldn’t. She was leaning almost halfway off the other side of me, and her eyes were glassy by this point.

  Soon, I’d have to get my security to take her home. There was no way she was coming home with me in the state she was, but I also wouldn’t throw her to potential wolves by herself.

  “Would you relax?” I replied to my friend. “She’s fine. No one made her drink so much. I’ll give Gary a call to come get her. He’ll see her home.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about.” He raked a hand through his curls, but they bounced right back into place. “Well, that’s not the only thing I’m talking about. I know you won’t take advantage of her, but she’s still spent the last hour basically giving you a lap dance.”

  “Has she?” I glanced at her, then shrugged. “She’s just enjoying the music. No harm, no foul.”

  “Isn’t there?” He frowned at me, then made a circular motion with his index finger to indicate the room. “There’s a lot of harm being done tonight, Jude. Just like there is every time you decide to celebrate fun and freedom.”

  “Hey, we’re not only celebrating that. We’re also celebrating being young and hot.”

  He rolled his eyes. “We’re thirty-five, man. That’s not exactly young, and you might be hot, but I’m most certainly not.”

  “You’ve just got some extra pudge around the belly now. Come to the gym with me. We’ll—”

  “I don’t need a self-esteem boost. I need you to stop acting like you’re the life of the fucking party.”

  “Why?” I widened my eyes at him. “Am I not the life of the party?”

  “This isn’t good for your reputation,” Shane muttered almost under his breath. To be fair, it was probably at his normal volume, but it came across as being under his breath when compared to the pounding music.

  I’d still heard him, though. On the other hand, maybe I’d just seen his lips form those words so many times that I didn’t need to actually hear them anymore to know he had spoken them.
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  He scratched behind his ear, pointing discreetly behind him. “The press has already got at least a half-dozen shots of you. There’s no telling how quickly they’ll sell their prints off to—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t care about my reputation?” I asked dryly. “You need to loosen up, Shane. Here. Have a drink. Or six.”

  Shane rolled his eyes at me again but took the champagne I passed over to him. “I’m not going to convince you to leave here early and sober, am I?”

  I curled my elbow to glance at the wide metal-faced watch on my wrist. “Ship’s already sailed on both counts. Sorry. We’ll try again next time.”

  “Fine. I’m still not happy about it, but I’m also not going to spend the rest of my night nagging my boss and best friend.”

  “That’s the spirit.” I grinned at him, then heard my name being called from somewhere outside our booth again.

  “Hey, man,” I called and waved back to the older guy I didn’t recognize. Nearly everyone in the VIP room had noticed me by now, and people arriving made the effort to stop at our table to say hi.

  More shots were downed. More champagne corks flew.

  At some point after that, I got a hold of the DJ for the VIP room. He had his own setup for later on in the evening. I grabbed the microphone from him and decided it was an excellent idea to make a sweeping declaration.

  “Hey, everyone! The bar tab is on me tonight.” I smirked before lifting my fists into the air.

  Silence fell before a raucous cheer broke out. Our DJ took the microphone back and whooped into it, then started pumping out his own music.

  The night got wild. I forgot about everything but letting the fuck loose, and even Shane eventually joined in.

  Now this is more like it.

  Chapter 3

  ROSE

  “Have you seen my Global Business textbook?” I asked Anna, my roommate. She was lying on my bed in the apartment we had shared since our first year, scrolling through her phone.

  Her golden-blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, but the longer tendrils framing her face rippled as she shook her head.

  “No, I haven’t. I think you mentioned packing it last night, though.” Anna flicked a manicured finger toward the suitcase lying open near her feet. “Did you check if it was in there?”

  Abandoning my search of the well-loved spines of the books on my built-in shelf, I went back to the bed. “It might be. I feel like my brain has fallen out. My stomach is in knots and my hands have been shaking since this morning.”

  I held one up to demonstrate, then sighed and frantically tossed half the clothes out of my bag again. Anna propped herself up on her elbows, watching me undo the packing that had taken me all day so far.

  “You have plenty of time,” she said. “You’re only flying tomorrow. Everything is on track, okay? Get your panties out of that twist and look at me.”

  “My panties aren’t in a twist.” I scoffed, but lifted my gaze to her soft hazel greeny-brown one. “I’m just nervous.”

  “You worked for this for years,” she said firmly and evenly. “You will be fine, Rose. It’s the rest of us being left behind that might not be.”

  “How’s that?” I finally unearthed the books lining the bottom of my case and lifted the first heavy pile out. “Your mentor is in London. You’re going to be staying with your parents in the city you grew up in. You will definitely be fine.”

  “Well, yes.” She picked up her phone and unlocked it. “But my mentor doesn’t look like this.” Sliding the device under my nose to grab my attention when I didn’t look up, she tapped the screen with her thumb. “I’d have given my left ovary to have a mentor who looked like him.”

  Jude Hudson smirked at me from the photograph she’d opened up. It was a good one of him, for sure. He was shirtless at the pool of some fancy hotel. To make it even more sexy, the pool was on the rooftop overlooking all of Sydney’s most famous landmarks.

  “He’s a dreamboat,” Anna said. “I mean, look at those abs. And that tattoo. Ugh. I’m so jealous.”

  She wasn’t wrong about him being a dreamboat, although that wouldn’t have been my choice of word to describe him. The guy was hot with a capital H and two Ts.

  In the picture, his dark chocolate-brown hair looked almost black. It was slicked back and his large hands were still in it, as if he’d been captured just climbing out of the water. Although I couldn’t see it from this particular pose, I knew he kept his hair longer on top than at the sides.

  With his tall athletic build and a full-sleeve tattoo on one arm that wrapped around his shoulder and ran down to his wrist, he was undoubtedly one of the sexiest men I’d ever seen. Smoldering grass-green eyes looked directly into the camera, and it was like I could feel the intensity of them caressing my skin, even though the man was on a different continent.

  Miles of golden skin covered a frame that, according to the internet, stood six feet and two inches tall. Six feet and two inches of pure sex, as he’d been described by the obviously besotted journalist who had written the article I’d read about him. Six-foot-two of pure sex that I did not need to go all gaga over. Which was why, even if it killed me, I needed to keep looking for the chinks in his armor.

  I’d heard about Jude Hudson, of course. Most people in the world knew his name and about the apps he had created. I just hadn’t realized he looked quite like that.

  The phone’s screen turned black and mercifully took the picture of my stunning new mentor with it. “I just wish he wasn’t so handsome. I’m doing this for my education and my career, not to ogle an Australian billionaire for six months.”

  “It’s a nice perk to have such yummy eye-candy while furthering your education and your career.” Anna shrugged, reaching up to take the rubber band out of her hair and shaking the silken threads out. It tumbled past her narrow shoulders and settled around her cinched waist.

  If I didn’t love my gorgeous roommate and best friend as much as I did, I’d have shaved her eyebrows off in her sleep for being so effortlessly beautiful. Just like my new mentor.

  “It’s not a perk,” I corrected her. “It’s a dangerous distraction.” I finally spotted the not-so-missing textbook and piled the clothes back on top of everything.

  “You’re such a glass-half-empty person.”

  “No, I’m practical. My parents have given everything so I could get into this school and I won’t repay them by getting caught up in a good-looking party boy.” I rolled my eyes and zipped up my suitcase. With all the books in there, I had to weigh it before I could add anything else. “I can’t believe Oxford couldn’t get a worthier mentor for me. I mean, I realize he’s successful and all, but he’s not exactly… professional.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course, he is. The man founded the biggest tech firm in his hemisphere.” She waved the phone at me again. “He’s widely regarded as one of the strategic geniuses of our time.”

  “Why? Because he’s proclaimed himself to be the man who fixed dating?” I scrunched up my nose. “Don’t tell me you buy into that crap.”

  Her perfectly waxed brows arched as she blinked at me. “That crap? What are you talking about? It’s not crap. Every person on this campus, including you, has one of his apps on their phones.”

  “Both came pre-installed on my phone, and I’ve deleted them.” I sniffed, reaching up to fix my earring. “I’m not interested in finding either love or sex.”

  “Bullshit.” She pointed her finger at my chest. “You, my friend, might be lying to yourself about your interest or lack thereof in using his apps, but you have to admit his strategy was genius.”

  “All he did was revamp ideas that have been out there for decades. How is that genius?” I turned away from her to hunt down my headphones on my desk. There was a mound of paper on there, but the headphones had to be underneath it somewhere.

  The springs on my bed squeaked as she moved to swing her legs over the side of it. “It�
��s genius because it’s more than just a revamp, and you know it. Girl, he completely revolutionized the way people go about searching for what they want.”

  “Revolutionized?” I tossed her a look over my shoulder before I resumed my packing. “That’s a really strong word for what he did.”

  She pursed her lips to hide her smile. “It’s a strong word but an accurate one in his case. Think about it. He created a safe space for people searching for love and a judgment-free zone for the ones who only want to hook up.”

  “No, he created algorithms that filter through people’s messages. It’s an invasion of privacy being lauded as a revolution.”

  “You can’t seriously think that.” She laughed, tossing a rolled-up pair of socks at me. “In fact, I know you don’t really think that. This is just the nerves talking.”

  “Okay, so it’s not an invasion of privacy, but why do people think he’s such a genius? He’s just a really good programmer.”

  “A really good programmer who had the foresight and business acumen to corner the online-dating market from both sides,” she said, her teacher’s assistant voice coming out. Her tone was a mix of patience, gentleness, and listen-the-fuck-up. It was impressive really. It was no wonder she was one of the favorite TAs around.

  “Those algorithms he created might be doing the work for him now, but they were a stroke of genius,” she explained. “People looking for love register on All for Love. Those people are automatically protected from any unsolicited dick pics, sex requests, and other inappropriate content.”

  “Sure, but you even have to tell it what words you find offensive when you’re registering.” The admission was out before I could stop it.

  Anna snapped her fingers, grinning at me like a cat about to get a whole bunch of cream. “So you have used it?”

  “I, uh,” my cheeks flushed, “I might have registered before I uninstalled it.”

  “Did you register on Just for Fun, too?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “I bet you did.”

  “I did.” I sighed. “I suppose there’s no point in hiding it. I’ve never used either of them, though.”