Jasper raises his coffee cup. “To Theo. Keeper of buffers.”
I raise mine. “May your spreadsheets always balance.”
Theo’s mouth twitches despite himself. “You could at least pretend to care.”
“I do care,” I say. “I just don’t need a PowerPoint to know you’ve got this.”
“And also,” Jasper adds, “we’re mostly here for the food.”
Theo gestures at the plates. “You can’t deny that the investment has paid off.”
I glance around the café. The polished wood. The chalkboard menu. The sense of it beinghis. “It has,” I say. “You’ve built something good.”
Theo softens slightly at that. “Thank you.”
Jasper leans back in his chair. “Plus, if it all went tits up, we’d just take it out of your inheritance.”
Theo snorts despite himself. “You’re both insufferable.”
“Genetic,” Jasper says cheerfully.
We eat in the easy, comfortable silence of people who’ve known each other too long to need to fill every gap. Theo finally closes the laptop and joins us, pulling up a chair.
“So,” Jasper says, licking sugar from his thumb. “What else is new?”
Theo glances at me. Too casually.
I catch it immediately. “What?”
Theo lifts a shoulder. “Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing look,” I say.
Jasper’s eyes flick between us, interested now. “Oh, this is promising.”
I lean back in my chair. “Has Ivy said anything?” Christa made her promise to not tell Theo about the baby so I could tell my brothers. I can’t believe she would break her promise. Apparently, she swore on cake. Ivy wouldn’t jinx cake.
Theo exhales slowly. “No. However,” he adds, “she did insist that the three of us meet. Soon. As in this week. As in she would not stop pestering me until I agreed.”
I feel my stomach tighten. Just a fraction.
“And,” Theo continues, “that tone generally means she knows something and is about to combust from not telling me.”
Jasper grins. “She is a gossip.”
Theo turns back to me. “So. If you don’t have one—”
“I absolutely do not,” I say, immediately. Too immediately. I am so nervous, it is ridiculous and I am not sure why. Maybe I just don’t want them to judge me.
Theo raises a brow. Jasper’s grin widens.
“Then,” Theo says mildly, “it must be Jasper.”
Jasper chokes on a mouthful of pastry. “What? No!”
“You’re very defensive for an innocent man,” I point out.
“Because you’re accusing me of something,” he says. “I don’t even know what.”
