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Linc wasn’t far behind, and I offered him a glare over my shoulder as I placed our food out in front of the two chairs that were directly across from each other.
“What the hell was that?” I growled.
“That,” he said, sounding amused. “Was me not pissing off the man you ditched. We may need him later. If he knew you lied, we may not get any information out of him about his brother—where clearly there is no love lost between them.”
Well, when he put it that way, it all made sense.
Which Pru confirmed as she walked in and started laughing the moment she did.
“He’s right,” she said as she walked over and stole one of my chicken fingers. “My dad and Jack have been putzing around this for the last week and haven’t found a thing. His brother might be the breakthrough they’re looking for.”
I sighed.
“I would have thought that they’d have found Tyson’s brother through Tyson. If they’re digging into his background that deep, wouldn’t they have seen that he had a twin brother?” I questioned Linc before shoving a bite of guacamole into my mouth.
“Yes and no,” Linc muttered, leaning away from his salad to reach his water bottle that sat at the end of the breakroom table. “Yes, because it’s something that should’ve been picked up in the background checks. No, because there has to be a valid excuse as to why it wasn’t picked up. And honestly, we were the ones to give Steel and my dad the name. Why would they think to look for a different person when we identified him?”
He pulled out his phone and started to type something out as quickly as his big thumbs would allow, then set the phone on the table with it still pulled up to his messages.
“Your dad?” I asked, tilting my head in the direction of the phone.
He grunted. “Yes.”
“So, I’m free?” I asked. “You’re going to stop coming up here every day for lunch when I’m working?”
He moved only his eyes to me and said a bit sadly, “You don’t like it?”
I opened my mouth to automatically say ‘Yes!’ but stopped. I didn’t want Linc thinking that I didn’t like when he came up here for lunches, because I did. A lot.
I looked down at the Band-Aid on my arm and pursed my lips.
“I do like it when you come up here,” I told him honestly. “But it’s also getting to the point where it’ll be hard to keep using my pregnancy as an excuse since I’m obviously not showing at all, nor am I showing any other signs of being pregnant. The lie won’t work for much longer.”
Linc shrugged. “Hence the reason we did what we did today.”
That was true.
“I wouldn’t mind if you still brought me Manillo’s on Tuesdays when I’m working, though. It’s delicious.” I paused. “And I love seeing you any time, Linc, so it’s really a no-brainer.”
Linc’s lips twitched, then his phone did a weird vibrating thing that had me looking at him in confusion.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Email,” he murmured, picking it up and looking at it. “I have a special ring when my publicist emails. She’s got her very own, super important folder in my email that she set up herself. When I get an email from her, they automatically go into that folder, and I’m to check there immediately since I need to be able to find her emails quickly in the eight thousand other emails that I get a day.” He looked over. “Those were her words, not mine. If it was up to me, I’d just as soon not answer any of them, but email seems to be everyone’s preferred way of contacting me—which I’m not complaining about. I’d rather get an email instead of a phone call that I don’t want to answer anyway.”
“God, this is so good.” Pru sighed and then reached for my drink as well, taking a hefty swallow. “I gotta go back out there. Being short nurses is a pain in the ass. I haven’t taken a real lunch break in a year since I took this stupid charge nurse job.”
With that, she walked away and left me alone to stare at Linc in expectation.
“Isn’t it like three in the morning in the UK?” I asked.
Linc nodded and pulled up his email, a smile growing wider by the second the longer he read.
“What?” I wondered.
“She sent me an email saying ‘Keep up the good work. FYI you’ve got a meeting with the board of your charity next week in North Carolina where the headquarters for the program are located. Love the pic,” he read.
“What pic?”
“This one.” He turned the phone around and showed me the shot from not even five minutes ago, as well as the three million likes and two hundred thousand comments.
