“Cara,” he said, his voice easy, warm.
I stopped just outside of arm’s reach, because I’d learned that much at least. “What do you need?”
He angled his clue sheet toward me. “Walk me through this one. I’m not seeing it.”
“Try cross-referencing the second and third clues,” I said. “I’ll come back.”
“I’d rather hear it from you.” He smiled patiently, clearly certain I would stop and do what he wanted, and I felt the familiar low-grade exhaustion of being managed by someone who was very good at making it look like a request. He wasn’t confused by the clue. I was almost certain of that. He just wanted me standing next to his table.
“I need to keep things moving, Eric.” I kept my voice level and pleasant and hated that I had to work at it in my own shop, on my own night, in the middle of something I’d built from scratch. “I’ll circle back.”
His gaze held mine longer than the conversation required, that steady, patient look that was designed to make me feel like I was the one being unreasonable. Then he leaned back, spreading his hands in easy concession. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
I moved on because it was all I could do without making the scene I didn’t want to make. But I felt it—his attention following me across the room, tracking me the way it always did, steadyand unrelenting underneath the pleasant surface of it. Like being watched by someone who had decided to wait you out and wasn’t in any hurry. I set the last envelope down at the corner table and turned back toward the counter and took a breath and reminded myself that the rest of the room was full of people who were here for the right reasons, and that those people deserved my attention more than Eric Michaelson’s patience deserved my anxiety.
I caught Lucy watching him from across the room. She wasn’t being subtle about it. When she saw me notice, she lifted her chin slightly—a small signal—and then looked back down at her clue sheet.
I exhaled and went back to work.
By the final round, the energy in the room had changed, pulled tighter and more tense, but it was a good tension. Conversations had dropped in volume but not intensity—people leaning in, voices lower, theories trading across tables in quick, urgent exchanges. I could feel it, the way the evening had built toward this, and something in me went very still and warm.
I gathered the last envelopes from the counter. “Final round,” I said, and the room responded before I’d finished saying it—chairs shifting, papers rustling, a collective settling of attention that felt almost theatrical.
I stepped forward?—
And felt fingers close around my wrist.
Not rough. Just—there.
“Cara.”
My breath caught. I turned.
Eric stood close, closer than he should have been; his voice dropped low enough that only I could hear him. My pulse kicked hard against my ribs. Around us, Mystery Night continued—papers rustling, quiet conversations, someone laughing softlytwo tables over. “I’m working,” I said, keeping my voice even. “I’m in the middle of the final round, Eric.”
“This isn’t about the game.”
“I know it isn’t.” I looked at him steadily. “Let go of my wrist.”
“Hey.” Jasper’s voice, calm and quiet and absolutely deadly, came from just behind my left shoulder.
Something in me went slack with relief so fast it was almost embarrassing. Eric’s hand dropped, and the tension that had been climbing steadily up my spine for the last thirty seconds released, leaving me slightly unsteady in a way I hoped didn’t show. I felt my shoulders drop and resisted the urge to close my eyes for a second.
He stepped in beside me—not in front of me, not between us in a way that would make a scene, just beside me—and the solid warmth of him at my side was so grounding after the last thirty seconds that I had to make a conscious effort not to lean into him.
“Everything okay over here?” he asked.
“Fine,” Eric said, leaning back slightly, his smile returning with practiced ease. “Just asking her something.”
“She’s in the middle of the final round,” Jasper said. Still calm. Still pleasant. Not moving so much as an inch.
“I know that.”
“Then you’re good.” A pause, short and deliberate. “Sit. Down.”
I had a completely inappropriate reaction to that. His tone—quiet and immovable, with certainty that didn’t need volume—did something to my nervous system that had nothing to do with the situation and everything to do with the man standing six inches to my left. I kept my expression neutral and was grateful nobody could see inside my head.
Eric held Jasper’s gaze for a moment with the stillness of a man deciding whether to push back, and then something in hisexpression resettled. “Go ahead,” he said, nodding at me. “Don’t let me hold things up.”
