“Right?”
“What I want to know is if you believe their concentration is what it is, because they think it’s a bad thing?”
And that was a mouthful, but he had to get it out.
Now he had to wait for her response.
“I think,” she said, her words dripping from her tongue like molasses, “they focus on it, at least on my end, because they think it’s something I haven’t admitted to, or that I’m hiding.”
Because hiding things from families like theirs, found and biological, was…not exactly forbidden, but fodder for curiosity and gossip.Which made sense.
Glad she saw that.
But was he interested in defining what was going on, or was he satisfied now that he figured she was probably right, at least on his side of the situation?
No.
He wanted to define at least part of what was happening, or more specifically what had changed between them, in a way that made it extremely clear he was okay with it.“And?”he asked, carefully.‘What do you think?”
She laughed.“Thank you for not asking while I had a mouthful of coffee.”
“Would have been a shame to waste that gorgeous brew.”
“You get it,” she said, smiling.“And you get me.I mean that’s why we’re—” She gestured between them, probably pointing out the way she’d casually put on his T-shirt, and he was sitting at her kitchen table in an old Empires sweatshirt, having made her breakfast.“I mean we’re here, right?”
They were.Which was the start of a conversation.
Because he didn’t just want to feel her out; that would freak her out.This was also about her family.“And your cousin…?”
Naomi laughed, that gorgeous laugh of hers that made him fuzzy and warm inside.“Leah can’t say anything because she admitted to, of all things, re-enacting that wild ‘fake dating’ thing that people say nobody does except in books or movies.So.”
Which…
“That’s…I…wow?”
“It was wild,” she said, shaking her head, as if she was remembering the situation and everything she’d seen.“Leah used a ton of excuses, explaining why this fictional concept was the perfect way to keep Samuel at arm’s length.Now they’re actually dating, and now she’s decided that she’s going to ask me about you.”
“She’s Asher’s agent?”
Another nod.“Yeah.Both now, and at the beginning of her career, she was the baby agent slated to take him on.”
“Before the injury?”
She nodded.“Yeah.That’s Leah.”
“And she’s the one who wants to interrogate me on behalf of your entire family?”
He watched as she nodded again.“That would be it.She’s also the maid of honor.”
“That’s why she seemed familiar, not the agent thing,” he said, the lightning bolt of realization hitting him.“We haven’t really started to talk aside from sending back and forth emails about general wedding stuff, but I know Samuel from wedding family poker night.”
She laughed.“That’s a mouthful.”
“It is,” he said.“It’s interesting.Ash and Lev invited Samuel and then Artur to play poker.Of course, then Artur started to talk about how he had way too many poker nights, which gave Ash the idea to start a poker game and play until some kind of sports came on TV and then watch that over pizza.”
“And not knishes?”
He shook his head.“No.Definitely not.Knishes require work and when they don’t require work, I spend the night feeling weirdly guilty.Anyway, so what is our position?”
