Page 27 of Deception & Desire

She looks up at me then, biting at her bottom lip. “Are you Irish?”

I blink at her. “Is it the hair?”

“Rufin…” she trails off as two milkshakes are placed before us. There’s a beat of silence while we both take a sip.

Just two young women enjoying a midnight treat, nothing to see here.

“Do I need to be Irish?” I ask carefully.

She shakes her head. “You’d just need to pose as my friend. Undercover, that is.”

“You’re worried about your father’s society friends?”

“I trust my father’s…friends to stay in line,” she says. “I just know if anything were to go wrong, they would answer to him and not me. I want someone there who I can rely on to put me first.”

Slowly, I begin to put the pieces together. “Hiring a beefed-up bodyguard to follow you around all night would be suspicious. Your Irish friend from college, however…”

“Exactly.”

It’s a smart enough move, one I would certainly consider should I ever find myself in her position. Nothing about the job seems too suspicious, and the woman seems too nervous to pull off some kind of setup.

I take another sip of my milkshake before getting down to business.

“Is it just your debut, then? Or will you need me for other events?” I ask.

“There might be a few in the future,” she admits. “If this works and we can pull it off convincingly, that is.”

“Where did we go to college?”

“Princeton.”

My eyebrows raise at that. “Impressive. Studying what?”

“Bioengineering.” She flushes modestly.

I let out a low whistle. “I was a lowly business major at Columbia.”

Her eyes light up at this, and I instantly realize my mistake. “Really?”

Maybe I’m a bit rusty after all, sharing personal information like that. Fuck. She could find me now if she wanted to.

“It was a few years ago now.” I try to cover up my fumble by redirecting the conversation. “Sorority sisters?”

She makes a face. “Roommates.”

I almost laugh at her obvious disdain. “No ‘Delta, Delta, Delta’ for you in Princeton?”

“Those girls terrified me,” she admits.

“Says the woman hiring a mercenary.”

She weighs this up. “When you grow up with this stuff, it’s strange how easy it is to forget it’s not normal.”

Her words strike a very particular chord, and I find myself swallowing down something hard lodged in my throat. Suddenly, I feel sorry for both of us. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll do it.”

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