Page 6 of Blood and Trouble

He barked a laugh. “Long night.”

“What’d you get into, if you don’t mind me asking?” I kept my tone friendly, conversational, not letting my curiosity show.

“A bit of this, a bit of that,” he replied, suspiciously vague. “What about you?”

I sighed and looked away, my chest tightening with the shame of drinking myself into a stupor and crying myself to sleep. “Same.”

My phone rang just as we pulled up to the office, and I narrowed my gaze at the caller ID.

“Scott,” I said as I answered.

“Hi, Lonnie,” he said. “I wanted to catch you before you got too busy for me.”

I ignored the hint of resentment in his tone.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking about your proposal,” he said. “Stop by my office when you’re in London. We might be able to come to terms.”

I laughed at his audacity. “I don’t just stop by offices for probabilities. Send me something worth considering.”

“God, I missed that about you,” he said. “Always playing hard to get.”

“I’m not playing, Scott,” I said. “I am hard to get.”

Which he remembered well.

Scott laughed. “Fair enough. We’ll talk soon.”

I hung up and turned to Lycan, who had one eyebrow raised and his jaw set in a tight grimace.

“He doesn’t want me to involve his sister,” I said. “He wants to say it was his idea.”

“Maybe that’s part of it,” Lycan admitted.

That piqued my interest. “Only part?”

“He’s still infatuated with you,” Lycan said, reaching across the divide between us to gently brush my index finger, sending a quiver through my body. I shouldn’t like his touch on me as much as I did.

“No, he’s not,” I said. “He’s married with three kids and⁠—”

“His wife was your best friend,” he said. “And the way he looks at you…” Lycan cleared his throat, his gaze turning distant, his thoughts seemingly drifting off. “Trust me, I know the feeling.”

I forced a smile before looking out the window. “In any case, I’ll wait until he sends me his proposal before we schedule time with him. He needs this as much as we do.”

By the time we finished the endless meetings and agreed the CEO needed to go, we were back in the limo on our way to the hotel. I could barely hold my eyes open, and I thanked the fates we had the night off. Lycan escorted me back to my room, Locust did his security sweeps, and then we parted for the evening with plans to regroup tomorrow.

A few hours later, I still hadn’t heard back from Maeve. I started to think I should call off the rest of the trip and head home early so I could see her myself. I sat in front of my mirror to do my skincare routine, debating whether to call Guin before deciding to give Maeve one more shot. She answered on the second ring.

“Finally,” I said. “I’ve only been trying to reach you for days.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been busy.”

I froze, that nauseating suspicion creeping up my esophagus. For the few weeks before I left, Maeve and I believed our sisters, Sol and Guin, were keeping something important from us. Perhaps it had to do with why Sol had married the vice president of the Royal Bastards so quickly after meeting him. Maeve had thought she was pregnant. I thought she was being young and dumb. Whatever it was, they communicated in knowing looks and hushed tones that set off alarm bells in my mind.

Now, Maeve’s tone and clipped response raised a red flag. What the hell was going on while I was here? Could she have had another episode? Was she in the hospital right now and didn’t want to worry me?

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Maeve said—an obvious lie. My twin telepathy sounded a fire alarm, and I ached to locate the source. “It’s just this corporate hellhole I’m drowning in.”