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of their students? Was that why he suddenly became her protector?
    To protect his own interest, and buy her silence?
    He was wasting his money if that was the case. As if she was going to tell what they
    did to somebody else. What did he take her for? Did he think she’d tell her roommate Jessica,
    who didn’t even know she’d lost her virginity, or was a virgin to begin with? Did he expect her
    to say, ‘hey, Jess, there’s this guy who always comes into Stop Gap. They call him Brad Pitt.
    Well my shiftless little stupid behind decided to give that man my virginity, just gave it away to
    him. And guess who else he’s screwing? Franklin U itself!’ Please! She’d die before another
    human being knew about her private life that way.
    And she’d be damned if Matty Driscoll was going to make her feel even more
    insignificant than she already felt. She needed the help, Lord knows she needed it desperately,
    but she’d take out a high interest loan and work triple-shift at Stop Gap, before she sold her
    soul that easily.
    Instead of going to the library to research her term paper, and instead of going to her
    Comparative Studies class that was due to meet within the hour, she hopped a commuter train
    and traveled those short, but agonizing forty miles, into the heart of Baltimore.

    FOUR

    She stepped out of the cab in front of the massive Driscoll Systems, Incorporated building
    and had to lean back on all fours just to see the full breath of it. It was modern, made of green
    glass and marble, and immediately, just seeing the scope of Matty’s business, made her heart
    grow faint. What in the world was she thinking? This man didn’t have time for her
    foolishness. She could take the financial support or leave it, as far as he was probably
    concerned.
    Now her great idea, of confronting him to prove to him that she was no slut and
    absolutely nobody’s trick, seemed ridiculous. That man would probably laugh in her face. If
    he agreed to see her at all.
    But she was here now. She wasn’t about to turn around. And besides, somewhere
    deep within her knew he’d see her. She felt they had a connection. It wasn’t enduring, it
    wasn’t something that would make her daydream about him or anything like that. She knew
    how to keep it real.
    But she didn’t allow that man to touch her, the first man she had ever allowed to touch
    her, just for the hell of it. She felt something that night, something powerful. And she felt it
    again, when she saw him walk his beautiful self into Dr. Graham’s suffocating office, and said
    hello.
    She entered the revolving doors, stood in the huge marbled lobby that was literally alive
    with the energy of business executives coming and going and talking on their cell phones,
    pushed her book bag further up on her shoulder, and headed, as if she belonged there too, for
    the information desk.

    ***
Matty Driscoll leaned back in his high-back chair and exhaled. It had been a hard sell, and
    an even harder push, but he wasn’t ready to commit.
    “Not good enough, Sam,” he said to Sam Broughton, his vice president for Latin
    American operations.
    “Oh, come on, Matty, what more do you want? The cost projections are good, the risk
    analysis is favorable, their mutual funds have outperformed their Lipper averages nearly three
    years running. What more do you want?”
    “Everything you cite is good,” Matty admitted, “but Brazil is a tough market. If I’m
    going to commit, and commit that far south, good isn’t good enough. I’m adverse to risk right
    now, you know that.”
    “Yes, I know,” Sam said, his blue eyes aflame with passion. “And I agree we need to
    be cautious in this economy. But we’re talking Brazil, Matty! Brazil is tomorrow’s China.
    It’s got everything we want in an acquisition. I say we get in early and stake our territory. We
    buy low and that way we can sell high when the markets recover.”
    “ If they recover,” Matty corrected him. “If they don’t