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“Fine. I looked awful from the lack of sleep. My eyes were… I just needed to look better for my meeting.”
“Since when do you know how to apply makeup or own any?”
Shit. Why did she have to ask so many questions? “I… um… I borrowed some from a friend.”
“At seven in the morning, you just called a friend and borrowed their makeup?” Her lips curved up into a wicked grin. “You spent the night with someone, didn’t you? Go, Julian.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like you think.” It was exactly like she thought. I had slept with Lance, and it had been amazing. That was part of the reason I’d had so little sleep, but that wasn’t all of it. “I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“I know I told you to get out more, hook up, and have fun, but I didn’t think you’d do it the night before a big meeting with a donor. You really are trying to find your wild side.”
“No. I’m really not.”
At that exact moment, the main library door swung open. Gwen and I both turned to see Lance striding across the library, staring at me like he wanted to eat me alive.
“Hold on,” Gwen said. “You aren’t just trying to bring out your wild side. You’ve fucking released it completely.”
“Shut up.”
“Is he as good as I think?”
I couldn’t stop my smile. “Better.”
The way Lance was looking at me had my heart banging against my chest. When he reached us, he turned to Gwen. “How are you this morning?”
“Not as good as Julian, sadly. I don’t suppose you have brothers or cousins or something.”
He laughed. “I’ve got plenty of those, but I couldn’t recommend most of them.”
She sighed.
“I’ll just have to live vicariously through Julian, then.”
She headed back to her desk, and I turned to Lance. “Is something wrong?”
He shook his head. “Our mission was successful.”
“You found the guy?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“We did. Dax is questioning him now.”
I didn’t want to think about what that meant. I doubted the man was going to give the information they wanted freely.
“Don’t you need to be there?”
“No, I’m too angry. I don’t have the patience to extract the information we need.”
I swallowed hard. That wasn’t a reality I wanted to face. They were going to kill the man when they were done with him. I was sure of that. “So… um… why are you here?”
“To take you to lunch. It is your lunch break now, right?”
I stared at him. “How did you know that?”
“I told you. I know a lot of things about you.”
“That’s creepy.”
“It’s necessary in my line of work, but also, the schedule’s posted in the break room. I saw it when I was checking the place out, making sure it was safe for you to come in this morning.”
I let out a breath. “Right. I guess there’s not some database of library employee lunch breaks your friendly neighborhood hacker could look into for you.”
“Our guy, Blackjack, can find out pretty much anything, but it’s not quite that straightforward. Now let’s go to lunch.”
I considered the offer. I was technically supposed to get an hour off. “Do you promise to bring me back?”
Lance hesitated.
“I have an hour for lunch, but I need to work this afternoon.”
“You met with your donor, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What do you need to do this afternoon?”
Now I was the one who hesitated. “Nothing special, but—”
He tugged on my hand, and, not wanting to make a scene, I let him tow me toward the entrance.
He stopped at Gwen’s desk. “I’m taking Julian to lunch. I’m not sure when we’ll be back. Can you manage without him?”
She grinned. “Absolutely. It’s never busy on Wednesday afternoons. We’ll be fine. Julian never takes any time off.”
“So I understand. I intend to work on that.”
What did that mean? Lance seemed to imply he was going to have influence over me past the time I needed protection. That didn’t seem realistic. Surely he’d want someone more exciting by then. Lance didn’t seem like a man who was interested in a long-term relationship anyway, though I wouldn’t have thought that of his brothers either, and apparently, they were both engaged.
We dropped Tony off at Lance’s apartment, then he took me to Emile’s, a tiny restaurant a block away. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but inside it smelled amazing. I noted they’d kept the architectural details of the old building intact: the ceiling, the wood floor, the bar that looked like it must be original to the structure.
The servers were all dressed in black pants and white shirts. Ours brought us glasses of water, introduced herself, and asked if we’d like something else to drink. “Do you have any more bottles of the Château Bourgneuf Pomerol?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please bring us a bottle.”
