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Bianca felt a wave of anxiety. “Was it something about me?”
“Don’t worry,” Cassiel said. “I took care of it.”
“Cass—” she began.
“I took care of it,” he said, ending her inquiry. “I don’t want you worrying about her, or anything else right now except spending as much time with Elias as humanly possible, okay?”
That in and of itself was such a one-eighty, she had to blink to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her and she wasn’t talking to someone else.
“What’s going on?” she said, unsettled, while he led her back to Elias.
Cassiel nodded. “I want you to spend all your time with him. Best bodyguard ever,” he said. A thought occurred to him. “How do you think he’d like to come work for Arc A?”
Bianca shrugged. “Ask him. But don’t you dare assign him to me. That would be creepy. I mean, obviously, I don’t need a bodyguard when he’s with me, but I shouldn’t be his mission, or target, or whatever you call it.”
“Who’s a target?” Elias asked, because of course they made it back to him and Gabriel at the most awkward point in their conversation.
“How would you like to come work for me?” Cassiel asked him.
“Sorry, he’s already working for me,” Gabriel said, cracking a smile.
“Well, I didn’t actually accept yet." Elias replied, trying to pump the breaks.
“Besides, he’s doing a job for me first,” Rafe said. “A job he actually agreed to.”
“What’s that?” Gabriel asked.
“He’s going to teach Bianca self-defense.”
“You’re going to end up working night and day between the three of them,” Bianca said, not at all happy with how this was shaping up.
“I guess I now work for Arc A Enterprises then,” Elias said, looking over Bianca’s head at Rafe.
“It was inevitable,” Rafe replied. He put his arm around Abbe. “We are hard to resist.”
“Uh-huh,” Bianca agreed. “Like an infectious disease.”
That got a laugh from everyone, but the one that warmed her the most was Elias’.
She watched her Uncle Gabriel, not forgetting about the reaction he’d had to the mention of Diana Mansfield, but deciding to table it for now. There would be plenty of time to unpack that later.
Bianca felt Elias lean closer to her, tilting his head down so only she could hear him. “You are impossible to resist,” he whispered. “And I really tried.”
“I know,” Bianca said, turning around so she faced him. She was practically standing against him and had to look up to meet his eyes. “Did you know, I thought you were kind of a bastard when I first met you?”
He pulled a face. “Um,yeah,I knew. You kept calling me one.”
“I am so glad I changed my mind about you.”
“I didn’t give you much of a choice,” he said, resting his hands on her hips and angling her ever so slightly closer to him. It was enough to send a pulse of heat through her.
“None at all,” she agreed, not caring a bit that her brothers were watching as Elias brushed his lips quickly across her, like a promise.
“I think dinner is about to be served,” Abbe announced, and everyone started moving toward the beautifully set table.
Elias raised an expectant eyebrow at Bianca, waiting.
“Nope. I’m not going to make a hunger joke. Or a thirst joke. Though I have plenty.”
