He gave a huff as he dropped heavily into his own camp chair.‘Are you always this bossy in other people’s camps?’
‘You always this territorial over your paperwork?’The paperwork she was busily cross-referencing like she’d been doing it for years, as if his operation now belonged to her, pinning each pile with a rock for a paperweight.
He frowned over the lip of his cup.Her comebacks, her insistence on having the last word, were doing his head in.
‘You don’t play well with others, do you?’
‘I play just fine.I just don’t like being handled.’He sipped his coffee.It was bitter, rough, but also too strong, too hot.Just like her.
‘Who said you were being handled?When I’m just reorganising your intelligence.’
He huffed again.Not a laugh.Not a growl.Just something caught between the two.‘Do you always have to have the last word?’
‘Only when I’m right.’
They shared a smirk.
Damn.
What followed was the bliss of silence as they sipped their coffee, watching the last of the sun’s globe slip off the edge and bleed into the big blue to look like it had caught on fire.
The hum of cicadas picked up.A few crickets and other critters began their night song, as the breeze stirred across the open plains, cool enough to make the coffee worth it.
And still—he felt her beside him.Too close.But the thing is, she wasn’t just seeing his world, she was starting to understand it, too.
He cleared his throat.‘So go on then.Ask your questions.’
She sighed, with her coffee mug balanced on her knee.‘Alright… What aren’t you telling me, Finn?’
He held her gaze for a beat.The dying light had dipped low enough to throw something of a soft spotlight across her face.It’d be gorgeous if she didn’t look at him like a suspect.
‘You want answers?Start with the questions that don’t come from some auditor’s template.’
She arched an eyebrow.‘Then give me the right ones.’
‘You think that’s how this works?’He barked a humourless laugh.‘You walk in, grab the files, sort through my stuff like you’ve got clearance to my head, and I’m just gonna hand it all over?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she snapped, putting her coffee mug down.‘I’m not interested in your head.I’m interested in the truth.’
‘Same thing, isn’t it?You want intel, context, motive.You want thewhybehind the paperwork?And that lives here.’He tapped his temple.‘Not in some notebook.’
Taryn shoved back her chair and stood, holding up the file like a weapon.‘You think I’m just here for the paperwork?’
‘Aren’t you?’he snapped.
‘God, you really don’t get it.’She threw the file onto the chair.‘You hand me a jigsaw with missing pieces, then bite when I try to see the bigger picture.’
‘You weren’t meant to see any of it.’When he’d meant to control the flow of information.
‘Too late.’
She stepped in.So did he.Not that he remembered getting to his feet, it happened that fast.
‘You don’t get to control this, Finn.’
‘Neither do you.’
Their breath tangled.Fury.Frustration.The kind that scorches deeper than either of them wanted to admit.
