“He’s early,” he said.
I set the knife down very carefully. “By a whole day.”
We looked at each other, and everything we’d ignored for the past few days came rushing back. The separate rooms and the no-contact clause. The stupid, fragile lie we’d both stopped maintaining almost immediately.
I wiped my hands on a towel and stepped away from him.
It felt wrong.
It felt worse because the space between us was exactly what we were supposed to have kept the whole time.
“Platonic,” I said. “Polite. You hate the matchmaking program. I’m wary of you. We’re two reasonable people stuck in an awkward arrangement.”
“I do hate the program.”
“Good. Hold on to that.” I took a breath and made myself stand still. “Let me handle the talking if I can.”
His eyes narrowed. “Maisie.”
“I’ve had practice acting calm in front of men who think they get to decide what happens to me.”
That was the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as his face hardened. Before he could answer, someone knocked. Kazan crossed the kitchen and opened the door.
The man on the other side was human, which surprised me. He was narrow and tired-looking, with a gray traveling suit, a tablet, and a lanyard that made him look official in the most annoying way possible.
He looked toward Kazan first. Then up. Then up a little more.
If he was scared, he didn’t show it.
“Pell,” he said. “Off-world Compliance. You’re Kazan?”
Kazan gave one sharp nod.
“The claimant.” Pell looked past him at me. “And you’re Maisie Declan.”
“That’s me.”
Pell walked in without being invited.
Kazan’s jaw tightened, but he let him. Barely.
Pell looked around the house with quick, assessing eyes. Not curious. Not impressed. Just measuring. Like the kitchen, the table, the half-cut figs, and the coat hanging by the door were all evidence waiting to be used against us.
I made myself not look toward Kazan’s bedroom. That was harder than it should’ve been.
Pell asked questions.
A lot of them.
About sleeping arrangements.
“She’s in the guest room,” Kazan said.
His voice was flat enough to scrape frost.
Pell wrote it down.
Had the arrangement been physical?
