Page 44
“Well, damn.” His grin widens. “Are we at the part where you both fuck it out, or are we staging an intervention?”
I release Elias with a frustrated exhale. “You're late.”
“I'm fashionably on time,” he corrects. “Big difference.”
“Was that Sloane?” Elias asks as he takes a step back.
“Sure was.”
“Why are you calling her on a Saturday?” I demand.
Jace raises an eyebrow. “I didn't. She called me.”
That shuts me up, because of course they've upgraded to weekend phone calls.
“Apparently, our girl wanted to make sure we got home safely. Asked whether we'd eaten anything besides airport food and gotten some actual sleep.” His grin softens. “Sweet thing even threatened to start checking our calendars herself if we didn't take the rest of the weekend off.”
I glance at Elias, who looks considerably more pleased by that information than he has any right to.
“And what did you tell her?” I ask.
“That we're perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves.” Jace takes another sip of coffee. “Which she didn't believe for a second, by the way.”
“Smart woman,” Elias mutters.
“Exactly.” Jace settles into the chair across from my desk. “Anyway, I told her I picked up something for her in Vegas. Now she's trying to sweet-talk me into telling her what it is before Monday.”
“You bought her another gift?” I ask.
“Of course I did.” He looks genuinely confused by the question. “I saw something she'd like, so I bought it.”
Elias gives a quiet chuckle as he give me a look that says he's not going to like this.
Jace glances between us. “What?”
Elias folds his arms across his chest as he leans against my desk. “We were actually discussing the need to reset boundaries with Sloane.”
Jace's smile fades slightly. “Or, hear me out. We get rid of them altogether and let her choose what she wants. Maybe she surprises us.”
Elias’s snort is contemptuous, a pulsed exhale that doesn’t quite reach laughter. “You think she wants this? All of us? Together?”
“Are you two blind, or just willfully stupid?” Jace asks, “You’re so busy policing each other’s every move around her, you haven’t been paying attention to what's really going on. She’s been dismantling your walls since day one.”
I drag a hand down my face. “You’re projecting.”
“No, I’m not,” Jace says, throwing one ankle up onto his knee. “When’s the last time you actually looked at her, Nate? Not as a liability. Not as something to manage. As her.”
His gaze holds mine. “Everything is risk with you. News flash Nate, she isn’t trying to pull one over on you. She just wants to belong.”
That's the one thing I hate. Jace has always known how to drag truths into the open and leave the rest of us choking on them.
A knock interrupts us before anyone can respond.
The lead analyst steps inside, tablet tucked beneath his arm. “We have the final recording ready, gentlemen. It was submitted late last night, so the data processing wasn't completed until this morning.”
“Any issues?” Elias asks.
“None. Actually, the preliminary results look promising. Tester zero-four-five recorded some of our strongest response scores to date.”
