Read The Brat (The Playgirls #3) for Free Online Page A

that,” he said, pointing to the white one.
    She nodded.
    “Yep: backup only. Let’s say I get compromised, or my bag get stolen; white’s always with me. One code, and every other system gets flushed; all the data is transferred to this one. White is my baby.”
    “What about Red?”
    She had to laugh; he would love to know about that one.
    Switching it on, she synced it with his TV, and a red screen with an evil laughing Chucky on the background appeared.
    There only were a few folders, in there; she deleted the ones she didn’t need after using them. Right now, they listed every single member of the Barnes and the Vaughan family, as well as a handful of her friends, and the ex-boss she was going to have to deal with at some point.
    She opened Shane’s folder, separated into two subgroups: files, and blackmail material.
    “What the…”
    There were a fair few embarrassing pictures in there, as well as videos – some, she’d gotten from bystanders who’d filmed his falls, his really bad hair days or any other ways he had made a fool of himself over the course of the last decade. Others came from security cameras.
    “Shit. Mh… Brooke. We can put the whole pool thing behind us, can’t we, honey?”
    “Not. A. Chance.”
    She thought he’d taken the moments of silence to reflect on his impending doom, but when he spoke, it was to ask about the second file.
    “Oh, that’s a backup of your computer. Don’t worry, I don’t actually look at it; but I do get a report when you manage to crash it,” she told him, rolling her eyes. That had happened often. “I just put your files back.”
    He stared at her like she had grown a second head, which was surprising; Jack knew she did that on both of their computers. She’d assumed he’d told Shane.
    “Fuck. I clearly remember losing a huge presentation for a potential client on our first property. I didn’t save anything, but when I managed to log back in, it was there. That was you.”
    “2009?” She guessed. “Sure. So, see – you should be nice to the red phone. Red is good. Potentially embarrassing if I decide to release the blackmail material, but otherwise, pretty useful.”
    Shane ignored her tirade, visibly lost in his thought. Soon enough, he was sharing them:
    “Why do you do all that? I mean, I’m seriously thankful, but I don’t get it.”
    Well, he wouldn’t, would he?
     
    Truth was, she wasn’t babysitting him because of her crush on him; she’d started on her sixteen birthday, and he wasn’t the only one she monitored.
    She was born in July, when everyone partied hard before returning to college.
    That year, her birthday had fallen on a Saturday. She knew for a fact Shane and Jack had been invited to tons of parties, with cute girls and a lot of beer.
    The systematic, consistent answer to any invitation they got by text or phone call, had been a simple: No. It’s BB’s birthday.
    Yep, they’d tagged along to her silly, pink, sparkly sweet sixteen, although she’d celebrated it by going bungee jumping – something both of them, along with most of her friends, still hadn’t forgiven her for.
    Brooke had thought back to three years prior, when she’d been sulky, shy, withdrawn and pretty friendless. Her brother had been there, then, and that was it.
    That day, she had a dozen people around her, following her lead and taking the damn jump although they’d screamed all the way.
    She’d felt like the luckiest girl in the entire world thanks to them all, and there had been no words to express her gratitude.  Ensuring they never got hacked, scammed or let down by a computer seemed like a good start. She’d never stopped; it rarely took her more than an hour per month.
     
    “You were a good friend,” she summed up, rather than getting into the whole pathetically mushy sentiment. “And that’s easy for me to do. As you see, you aren’t the only one on Red. Don’t feel too special.” 
    “We should pay you for