How can a fully grown adult CEO of Hunter Interactive have a biological crisis over a woman’s lower lip in the middle of a work day?
Grandfather would have been appalled. Dr. Adler would have been delighted. And I was somewhere between losing my mind and maintaining professional composure.
I cleared my voice and spoke. "I need the Jackson’s file delivered to Legal. Fourteenth floor. In person."
She looked at me in confusion. "You want me to walk a file to the fourteenth floor."
"Is there a problem with that?"
"You could email it."
"I’m aware of the existence of email, Ms. Wilson. I’d like it delivered in person."
She held my gaze for a second longer than was comfortable. Then she nodded, took the file, and left.
Miles appeared in my office doorway and watched her go. Then he turned to me with one eyebrow raised and a grin that could power the Miami grid for a week.
"Should I call Mom? Tell her you might be bringing someone home soon?" he asked, with a smug grin.
"Get out of my office," I shot back.
Instead he walked close and his gaze dropped to my laptop. Her desk was still visible on the security camera feed.
"Really smooth, Jace. Send the woman on a fake errand because she was laughing with your brother. Should I be concerned about you?"
"The errand is not fake."
"You have never once in seven years hand-delivered a file to Legal. You email everything. You email people who sit ten feet away from you."
"Perhaps I’m evolving."
"You’re jealous."
"I don’t get jealous."
"You just sent your assistant to a different floor because I was at her desk. If you didn’t have a thing about physical contact, I’m fairly certain you would’ve punched me."
I imagined it for half a second. My fist connecting with Miles's jaw, the satisfying crack of it, and then the blood—warm, wet, on my knuckles—and my stomach turned so fast I nearly tasted my breakfast. Couldn't even fantasize about hitting my brother without my own brain shutting it down on hygiene grounds.
Miles was watching my face. "You just imagined it, didn’t you?"
"No."
"You did. And then you got disgusted by the blood part." He was grinning. "I know you, Jace." He paused. "Her interaction with me is very normal," he said. "People do that, Jace. It’s a thing humans do. It doesn’t mean she’s in love with me. It means I’m funny."
"You’re not funny."
"I’m hilarious and you know it." He paused at the doorframe. The grin changed. "She’s beautiful, by the way. Anna. Really beautiful. And if you keep being this slow about whatever this is, I’ll have no choice but to go ahead myself." He tilted his head. "And you wouldn’t like that, would you, dear brother?"
He held my gaze for exactly long enough to make his point. Then he winked, whistled something obnoxious, and walked out.
The office went quiet.
I sat at my desk. The cube was in my hand but I wasn’t solving it. I was turning it slowly, absently, the way other people fidget with pens.
Jealousy. Miles called itjealousy. I turned the word over in my head the way I turned the cube, examining each face of it, looking for the flaw in the logic.
I'd never been jealous. Jealousy demanded possessiveness. Possessiveness meant proximity. Proximity meant trust. Trust meant contact. And contact, for me, only ever led to one place.
