late I realized how that probably sounded.
“Your sister lives here? In Tower’s house? Do they…? Um…?”
I scowled. “No, my sister isn’t screwing the boss.” Nothing could be further from the truth. “She’s his top Binder—the only one he really uses anymore—so he keeps her close to keep her safe. She has a small apartment near here.” And she was always under guard.
“Oh.” Holt looked relieved, and briefly I wondered why he cared who Jake was screwing. Was he a prude or a perv?
“I used to live here, though,” I said, picking at the seams of his reaction. “In this house.”
“You used to…?” He glanced from me to Jake and back, and I could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes as he tried to puzzle out a polite way to ask a crude question.
I rarely bother with polite. Makes things much simpler.
“Were you and he…?” Holt let the question trail off to its obvious conclusion.
“Do you ever finish a sentence?” I asked, and his cheeks darkened slightly as his brows rose in challenge.
“Do you ever think before you speak?”
I blinked, surprised. Jake said impulse control was my biggest character flaw. I’d always assumed he meant my tendency to hit first, then survey the situation as an afterthought, but Holt was clearly caught off guard by the verbal version of that.
“That’s your problem.” I backed slowly toward the foyer, leaving him to follow. “You think too much.”
“I don’t consider caution and forethought a problem.”
“It takes you forever to order at a restaurant, doesn’t it? And to pick out a tie?” I stepped closer and flicked his obnoxious little bow tie, then turned and stepped into the foyer, desperately hoping Kenley’s stupid stilettos didn’t seize that moment to betray me on the slick marble. Why do women insist on crippling themselves with footwear obviously designed by sadists?
Holt caught up with me, his mouth open to reply, but I spoke over him. “I tell you what. If you can dig up enough nerve to ask what you really want to know, I’ll answer the question.”
“Nerve isn’t the issue.” He stared straight into my eyes, practically daring me to argue. “What makes you think I care, one way or another?”
“The fact that you think too much. You overanalyze everything, like life’s one big puzzle you can solve, if you can just find the pattern, and now you’re thinking that neurotic tendency will help you figure out where you stand with one of the most powerful men in the country. You asked for a blonde liaison, and he gave you a blonde, so you’re thinking—correctly—that that means he really wants you.”
“You’re on track so far,” he admitted, amusement peeking around the edges of his skepticism.
“I know.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re a Reader now?”
I almost laughed. “Hell no, I’m still just a Traveler.” Readers, like Julia Tower, read the truth in a person’s words. I read people. Their posture. Their expressions. The things their brains didn’t even know their bodies were saying. That was the one quality I had that might actually come in handy for a recruiter.
Holt looked relieved, and I wasn’t surprised. Readers make people nervous. Everyone lies, and no one wants to be called on it.
“So what else am I thinking?” he asked, and his grin said this had become a game.
I was not a fan of games, but when I played, I liked to win. So I swallowed my trepidation over the direction the discussion was headed and pressed forward, wearing my game face.
“You know Jake wants you. But now it’s a little more complicated than that, right? If I’m Jake’s sloppy seconds and you take a big bite, it’s gonna look like you’re satisfied with his leftovers. And that’s going to lower your value. But on the other hand, he’s given you what you asked for, and turning your nose up at a gift from Jake Tower could look like a massive insult. And you wanna play hard-to-get, not difficult-to-stomach,
Bwwm Romance Dot Com, Esther Banks