Page 127 of Twisted Knight

“Hello?” He waves his hands in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m sorry. Just thinking. What was the question again?”

He studies me for a beat but then replies, “Do you still have a bad feeling about this?”

I sigh to buy time. “It’s complicated.” My smile is half-assed as I toe the line between black and white. “I think keeping all options open at this time is the safest bet.”

“Agreed.” He nods.

“Says the man who has had more hush-hush closed-door meetings with my brother in the last month than ever before.” When he just looks at me doe-eyed, I continue. “Yes. I’ve noticed. Early in the morning. Late at night. Even thirty minutes ago here. You two looked like stress cases talking about whatever it is you were talking about.”

“We’re just under a lot of pressure.” His smile isn’t believable. “Holden has us doing some things and we want to get them right.”

“Oh.” I give a startled jostle to my head. “I didn’t…”

“You don’t think you’re the only one he gave special projects to, do you? You have property searches, and we have … other things.”

“Okay.” I draw the word out.

“Look. We’ll see what my cousin has to say. Maybe there’s something there. Maybe there isn’t. ’Kay?”

“Okay.”

It’s then, when Chad glances down to answer a text on his phone, that I look up and jolt, seeing Holden across the opposite side of the patio. He’s wearing a pair of sunglasses, but despite the dark tint of the lenses, I know he’s looking straight at me. I can feel it as clear as I can see the muscle pulsing in his jaw and the taut tendons of his neck.

I take him in. Him in his normal Holden-dark attire, while everyone else is dressed in white or bright spring colors—or boring khaki for the men. He’s surrounded by a group of men, all clearly vying for his attention while anyone who knows anything about him can tell he couldn’t care less.

And it’s clear that they don’t hold his interest.

I do.

But the smile I offer him isn’t returned.

In fact, there isn’t any reaction I can get out of him at all.

“Okay?” Chad asks with raised brows. Clearly, I didn’t hear whatever he said.

“Sure. Okay.”

“I need to talk to Porter. He’s over there.” He chuckles when I look at him with a furrowed brow. “I just told you that. You didn’t hear me.”

My smile is quick, apologetic. “You’re right, I didn’t. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I know how you get when you’re thinking too much. Have another glass of wine. Relax. Stop thinking about work,” he says and leans in to press a kiss to my cheek as a goodbye.

The minute he moves out of my line of sight, I’m met with Holden’s implacable stare once again. He offers the men surrounding him a comment, but his focus is back on me.

“He is something to look at. I’ll give you that,” my mom says, following my gaze as she steps up beside me.

I pull my attention to her immediately and cough over a response. If she only knew how my insides were reacting to him right now. “Looking nice and being nice are two different things,” I murmur.

But isn’t that part of what I find attractive about him—besides the fact that he’s incredible at sex? That I can’t quite figure him out? That there is an edge beneath that pretty exterior? An edge that is so fine, I’m not always certain which side I’m on or if I want to be cut by it.

It’s thrilling.

It’s unpredictable.

It makes me feel alive and desired while at the same time challenged and on my toes.