Page 46 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

"I know the difference."

She holds my gaze for a moment. There's something in her eyes — not quite amusement, not quite a challenge. Something between the two.

"So do I."

I look at her. The conference room is empty around us, the door half open, the floor moving outside with its ordinary midday noise. This is not the time or the place for what is sitting in the air between us right now.

"The follow-up documentation," I say.

"I need it before end of day."

"You'll have it by 3:00," she says.

She gathers the last of the folders and walks past me toward the door, close enough that I catch the scent of her — something light, something that has no business being as distracting as it is. She pauses at the threshold.

"Logan." She says my name the way she does when she's decided to say something real.

"I can handle a room."

"I know you can," I say.

"Then trust that."

She leaves. I stand in the empty conference room for a moment longer than I need to.

***

Saturday is golf.Paul is already on the first tee when I arrive, his bag over his shoulder, the specific unhurried quality of a man who has arranged his weekend exactly the way he wants it. Charlie pulls up three minutes later, coffee in hand, and the morning begins the way Saturday mornings always begin — without agenda, without urgency, the particular luxury of men who have earned the right to move slowly for a few hours.

The course is quiet. The fog is still burning off the bay, the light soft and gray over the back nine. We play the first four holes without much conversation, the rhythm of it comfortable, the score irrelevant in the way it always is after the first drink at the nineteenth hole.

Charlie makes a birdie on five and announces it with more satisfaction than the moment warrants. Paul ignores him. I line up my shot and hit it clean and we walk on.

It's Paul who brings it up. Sixth hole, midway down the fairway, the kind of moment that happens on a golf course because there's nowhere to go and nothing else to look at.

"Boston," he says.

I keep walking. "What about it?"

"You took her to the conference."

"She's my executive assistant. She attends conferences."

"Chicago too," Charlie says from behind us.

"And DC."

I look at Charlie. He examines his glove.

"She's integral to the operational side of those trips," I say.

"She manages the logistics, the room, the follow-up. It's efficient."

"Sure," Paul says.

We reach the ball. I set up my shot. The fairway is clean ahead of me, the green visible in the distance, everything exactly where it should be.

"She stayed in your hotel," Paul says. Not accusatory. Just placing a fact on the table.