“Yep?” he answers.
“Still working on that thing I asked you about?”
“Yep.”
“Thank you.”
“You owe me the full story behind the request one day.”
I smile. “Can’t fully escape business life?”
“I can admire it from a distance.”
“Wow. You two take background checks seriously,” Daphne says.
We’re not talking about the background check I asked Oliver to run on Rhys’s old company, but Oliver doesn’t correct her.
I don’t either.
The fewer people who know what I’m planning, the better, and Oliver only knows I asked him to stall on distributing his shares to franchise owners, but not why.
He’s probably making a few assumptions, but since he left the CEO life behind, he’s taking theonly tell me what I need to knowtactic.
I appreciate that.
“They should be taken seriously,” I say to Daphne, but my phone makes an odd noise, and a moment later, beeps with the dropped call notification.
I text her that I lost signal—it’ll likely send when we round another corner or two—and sink even deeper into the truck seat.
We’re almost to the cabin.
“You lied well tonight,” Rhys says quietly.
“Do you think they’ll appreciate why I lied to them about who I am when they’ve also asked me to lie to their parents about who I am?”
He blinks slowly. Then snorts and shakes his head. “No.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s always different when you want someone to lie for you than it is when they lie for themselves.”
“Lies are lies.”
“Agreed. But human beings in general have abut it’s different for mementality.It’s differentfor them to ask you to lie so they don’t have to tell their parents a secret than it is for you to lie to them to protect your own secrets.”
“You have a fascinating understanding of humanity.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Mom taught me to watch. So I watched.”
And he’s good at it.
The thing that’s separated the people who stay on my security team from the people who don’t make it through their probationary period is the exact thing Rhys has.
The clear, keen intellect required to both watch what’s going on around him and then read between the lines and understand what’s not said as much as what is.
Cyril’s been with me as long as he has because he knows when to make up a situation requiring my attention to get me out of awkward moments with my family. He’s as much personal assistant sometimes as he is protection agent, and I’m positive he has an idea of what I’m planning for my father.
Just like I strongly suspect Rhys has been connecting those dots since the other hints I dropped on the lift.
