Page 111 of Control's Undoing

“You help people learn how to use the software your company makes.”

Gus reeled back in mock horror, his eyes so wide and horrified, Nikolett laughed.He relaxed and smiled, and the way the corners of his blue eyes crinkled reminded her, painfully, of Eric.

Through force of will, she kept a smile on her face.

“I actually design the user experience.Which means listening to people complain about what the current user experience looks like, and…” Gus trailed off, shaking his head.“And my job is very boring, except that I travel a lot because I speak a good few languages.”

“So you can listen to people complain in different languages?”

“Exactly.”

“Your accent… You’re Scottish?”

“Aye, I am,” he said, his accent purposefully thicker as he once more spoke English.“And you’re a bonnie lass.”

Nikolett laughed, but then her stomach grumbled again.

“Enough of this, if you won’t let me buy you something…” Gus looked at his lunch plate.There was half a cookie left.

Using a napkin, he carefully broke off the edge with bite marks, handing her the untouched part.

“Will you at least eat a cookie for me, lass?”The tender way his eyes and voice softened made something in her stomach tighten.“With a broken leg, you need to eat.”

Gus knew about her leg because he’d accidentally bumped it when joining her at the small table, which had been the only open seat in the coffeehouse.

Nikolett reached for the cookie on reflex, even as she prepared to say no thank you.

Before she could, Gus set the cookie down, his shoulders straightening, his gaze becoming hard and dangerous as he looked at something over her shoulder.

“There’s a man coming this way,” Gus said in a low voice.“I’ve been watching him stare at you, and I don’t like the look of him.”

Sensing the situation was about to get out of hand, Nikolett turned just enough to look over her shoulder and confirm it was, as expected, Grigoris.

Across from her, Gus started to rise, but Nikolett reached out, putting her hand on his.The skin-to-skin contact felt…good.Not electric and all-consuming the way it was when she touched Eric, but good.

“Gus, wait.”Nikolett looked over her shoulder, tipping her head toward Grigoris in an indication to join them.

Grigoris slowed his approach to something more casual, stopping by Nikolett’s shoulder.

“This is the head of my security team,” Nikolett said quietly.“He was probably coming over to tell me not to eat a cookie handed to me by a stranger.”

She felt Grigoris stiffen in surprise at how truthful she was being.Nikolett was surprised too.Maybe she shouldn’t have been—she’d been teetering on the edge of something since the Trinity Council meeting in Dublin.

Since Eric forced her to marry.

Spouses she couldn’t bear to bring herself to even email, let alone meet with.She wasn’t even sure Sarah Ritter—the German knight who was Nikolett’s wife—knew about the marriage.The admiral of Germany hadn’t been at the meeting.

Colum knew, but he hadn’t reached out to her either.

“Security?”Gus’s eyes widened, his attention sliding back to her.He leaned forward.“Are you a princess?”

Nikolett’s laugh was delayed by a half second of surprise.She shook her head, still chuckling.“No, not secret royalty, I’m afraid.I was a politician.Now, I’m a…political activist.There are people who object to who I am and what I do.”Everything she’d just said was true or close enough.

Gus nodded, before going still.With a quick movement that made Grigoris twitch, he bent, looking under the table at her broken leg.He straightened slowly.

“Is that what happened to your leg?Someone attacked you?”Gus looked at the cookie.“And you’re worried someone would poison you?”

The shock and horror in his voice oddly made Nikolett feel better.Sometimes, she forgot that the amount of stress and fear she dealt with on a daily basis wasn’t normal.Wasn’t how people were meant to live.It was nice to see that reflected back to her in Gus’s words and voice.

---