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“That fuck can hit a ball.”
Harry smiled again; she’d never seen him so loose. “He had to learn fast when you kept pitching at his head.”
That was almost funny. “I didn’t know you played baseball,” she said.
“You don’t know a lot of things about him,” Harry said. “He had to be proficient in all positions of all sports. Best way to get him inside before he hit puberty.”
“You were using him in missions when he was a kid?”
“I’m right here,” Daire said.
“I can’t imagine sending a child into battle.”
“Best way to train him,” Harry said. “I didn’t send him overseas or into war zones.”
“But he did go overseas eventually,” she said. “And you went with him.”
That’s what the letters said. Harry’s smile faded. At her side, tension radiated from Daire.
“That was a long time ago.”
“He came so I didn’t end up dead,” Daire said.
“I thought he trained you half to death.”
“I did. But he’s always had a habit of putting others ahead of himself,” Harry said. “He has a problem…”
“Valuing himself,” she said, getting it.
With every new detail, her view of the inner Daire became so much clearer.
It wasn’t just that he’d been trained and constructed into a powerful Olympus asset, his mindset had been shaped to believe he was worth less than the whole.
That wasn’t how she felt. It took all of her restraint not to take his hand in hers.
“Can we stop with the psychobabble?” Daire asked. “Let’s talk about Harry’s inability to say anything positive or supportive.”
The comment offended her father. “I gave you the nod for bettering your sprint time this morning.”
“To his daughter,” Daire said, enunciating the words. “I don’t need your nods, old man.”
“Really, I don’t care about that,” Tess said, looking from one man to the other.
Daire leaned her way. “Harry’s not so good at softening things for the ladies.”
Harry scoffed. “Everything you know about women, you learned from me, junior.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Daire said, amused. “Tess is low maintenance most of the time. With her, it’s not about what you say, it’s how you say it.”
“Oh, you think you know so much?” she asked, leaning back to twist toward him.
His shrug didn’t hide his arrogance. “Yeah.”
Harry explained. “People who don’t share our training don’t realize how thoroughly we study them and adapt to best harness the asset.”
“I already know he played me. He knew what he was doing, I admit that,” she said, enjoying her milkshake. “He was exactly the right person I needed at exactly the right time.”
“And in your grief…” Harry said, “you ignored any suspicions.”
