Page 42 of Forged By Sacrifice

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Yes, he was,” Dani agreed with me.

Georgie looked between us, her cheeks flushing slightly. “Why would he do that? I’m a student.”

“Puh-lease. Guys in this city see a gorgeous woman, and they always hit on them. Sleep with them, too, if they find someone willing. Married or not. Welcome to D.C.,” Dani explained.

“But it’s against the code of conduct, I’m sure.”

“Girl, you and I need to have a whole conversation about D.C. men if you’re going to live here. I thought, with all the models and finance guys you dealt with in New York, you’d have a bit more of a ‘sleaze-o-meter,’” Dani told her.

I was just watching. Georgie was flustered but trying not to be. It grabbed at my heart and yanked it up to my throat and then back down to my balls. It made me want to go with her to the professor’s office so I could tell him to back the hell off. But I had no right to. I couldn’t afford to want to.

“I can sense a sleazy finance guy a mile away, and an egotistical, self-centered model—because that’s pretty much all of them. I guess I had hoped that was behind me in the academic world. I didn’t have this problem when I was at school before.”

“Probably because you were too young. Now, you’re gorgeous, all grown up, and this professor thinks you’ll be more up for it without the repercussions of a dramatic post-teen. It’s like the officials who won’t mess with the summer interns, but once you become permanent, you’re fair game,” Dani coached.

Georgie headed for the stairs to the loft. “You realize that, even if he was legitimately just wanting to help me out, I’ll never be able to see it that way now.”

Good, I thought to myself and took a swig of beer.

“You’ll be fine. Do you want Mac to go with you just so he sees you have some oversized behemoth ready to go to battle for you?”

I choked on the beer. “What?”

Dani was smirking at me.

“No. I’m fine. I know how to handle myself. Pepper spray and all.” Georgie continued up the stairs. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Dani said. When I said nothing, she smacked my chest.

“Goodnight, Georgie.” Her name on my lips was like acid dissolving in my stomach, eruptions of thoughts that I shouldn’t have tearing at the lining there and making me want to run into the loft after her and kiss her again.

I hit play on the movie, determined to put thoughts of Georgie sleeping in the bed upstairs out of my head.

After a few minutes, Dani whispered, “This is very interesting.”

“It’s the worst goddamn thing that could have happened,” I whispered back.

“Maybe it’s the universe telling you something?”

I already knew what the universe thought. I’d felt it in the kiss on my boat in Rockport. I’d felt it in every inch of my body every time I’d casually touched her. The problem was that the universe seemed to have forgotten she had a dad in jail, and a mom with a revoked visa, and that I planned on running for office.

“Whatever it’s trying to say, the universe is wrong.”

Dani laughed quietly. “I don’t think that’s the way it works.”

After a few more minutes of the movie—of which I saw none, not that it mattered because Dani and I had seen this movie a thousand times at least—Dani added on, “Are you going to go with her tomorrow?”

“No.”

“What if he’s a real asshole who grabs her and then threatens to have her kicked out before she’s even started? This is her second chance at law school. It would ruin it for her.”

“You heard her. She can take care of herself, and I believe her.”

“Did she pull a ninja move on you?”

“No. I never shove myself on anyone, you know that.”

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