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I swipe to answer. “What’s up?”
“I’m at the airport. I’m about to fly out on a remote research trip, and I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Who are you flying?” I ask out of habit.
“LATAM Brazil.”
“Traitor,” I say without heat. LATAM is fine, but the truth is I like it better when the people I care about are on one of my planes. When I was fourteen, my dad made me memorize every commercial plane crash in recent memory and what could have been done to prevent them.
I step off the trail to stretch. “What did you want to talk about?”
“My sister.”
I fall out of the stretch. I’m on the verge of protesting that I didn’tdoanything, looking doesn’tcount,when Cooper continues.
“Stop being an asshole to Hazel. If you said you’d do the interviews, do the fucking interviews,” he says.
Oh. Right. That.
I start stretching again. “We worked out an arrangement yesterday.”
“Good,” Cooper says. “If you make her professional life hell, I swear I’ll...”
I grin. “What, kill me?” Cooper is the most even-tempered man I know. He doesn’t even kill spiders, just gently carries them outside. It was something of a sticking point for his ex-fiancée.
“No,” Cooper admits. “But I’ll be very disappointed in you.”
“Ouch.” I wince. I think I’d genuinely prefer it if he tried to kill me.
“Also,” Cooper says, warming to his theme, “I’ll tell Hazel tons of embarrassing stories about you for her book.”
“It’smybook,” I remind him.
“Remember that time senior year when I felt bad about embarrassing myself in front of that girl I liked? And to make me feel better you told me about that time when you were in high school, and a cute cheerleader kept saying the word ‘erection’ during her presentation about the history of New York Skyscrapers and you got a hard-on in front of the whole class?”
“I willendyou, Cooper,” I threaten.
He laughs. “Just be nice to Hazel, ok?”
He knows better than anyone that I’m notnice, but I grumble something that sounds like agreement.
“It’ll be fine,” Cooper promises. “Hazel’s a compassionate writer, you know? She gets straight to her subject’s heart, and then shares it with the world.”
That was exactly what I was afraid of.
* * *
I’min the middle of a phone call talking one of our lead engineers off a cliff when Joey knocks on my door.
“She’shere,” he whispers.
My pulse leaps.
I keep my expression bored. “Tell her to wait five minutes.” This call will wrap in two, but it doesn’t hurt to remind Hazel who’s the boss here.
I turn my attention back to my phone call.
“They’re not going to cut your funding,” I tell my lead engineer for the millionth time. He’s brilliant but neurotic, and the assholes in accounting like giving him heart attacks. “Stop going to finance meetings. It always freaks you out. Send your assistant instead. She’s better at office politics than you are, and I need you finishing that project by next Thursday.”
