Page 34 of Furever Loyal
“No,” she said. “But stop it.”
“Answer my question.”
She looked away. “If I tell you, will you stop touching my hand?”
Kincaid shrugged. “Sure.”
“Fine.” She tugged her hand back, trying not to admit to herself that it had felt good. That his touch was…nice.
“I wanted to go into politics. A lot. But,” she fell silent, trying to get the words out, but they weren’t coming. “But life didn’t work out that way, and that’s all there is to tell about that,” she finished abruptly, closing off, pushing the memory away, her agreement with Kincaid to tell him to be damned. She didn’t want to talk about it.
To his credit, Kincaid didn’t push. She’d thought he would call her out, or take her hand again, but he just nodded, his eyes filled with something she couldn’t recall seeing from him before. Compassion—directed at her.
“May I ask why you decided upon an accountant then? It doesn’t seem overly related, is all.”
“It’s not,” she agreed. “I like it because it has rules. It follows rules. More specifically, numbers have rules. They are either right, or they’re wrong. There’s no ambiguity, no gray area. It…helps.”
“I see.” Kincaid didn’t sound overly convinced. “Someone who professes to like numbers like that has always struck me as being a little…”
“If you saydifferent, I’m going to hit you,” she warned.
“Interesting,” he finished awkwardly, clearly not using the word he’d originally intended.
“Better.” She felt her stomach rumble. “I was always just naturally decent with them. Even as a kid, it just…made sense.”
“Right.” As if to answer hers, his stomach made a loud noise, audible to her across the table. “Shall we eat? Maybe we can be a little nicer to one another with food in our stomachs.”
Haley shook her head. “I doubt it.”
17
“This place looks exactly like a restaurant,” he remarked, breaking the silence as he finished the last of his burger.
Haley glanced at him side-eye. “My word, Watson, you’ve done it again. Your observational skills are off the page.” She bit into her own sandwich, some sort of chicken and barbecue sauce mixture.
He scrunched up his face. “So much for you being hangry. Turns out you’re actually just a bitch.”
Her mouth dropped open for a split second in shock, his comment just enough to make her forget she was still chewing a mouthful of food. Then she snapped it closed, her face going bright red at having shown him her half-chewed lunch.
Kincaid, for his part, was doing his best not to break into great gusts of laughter that would have the entire restaurant looking at them. Haley would never forgive him if he did that, so he kept a hand over his mouth and shook silently, trying to get himself under control.
“Rude,” she said after not only swallowing but taking a drink of water to wash it down with.
“I agree. Eating with your mouth open like that is just poor table manners.”
Glaring fiercely, she took another bite, not rising to his bait any further than that.
“It’s a bust,” he said, dropping his voice. “I’ve been watching the place this entire time, and not a single thing has stuck out. It’s a restaurant. Maybe it’s a front as well, but it’s certainly a normal, functioning restaurant as well. I haven’t seen a single suspicious character anywhere.
“A restaurant masquerading as a restaurant,” Haley said slowly. “Now there’s a new one.”
“You’d be surprised how unlikely it is,” he muttered, unhappy that his suspicion hadn’t panned out. They’d uncovered precisely nothing, except that the food was acceptable, though not anything to brag about.
“Well, what should we do now? Dessert?”
Kincaid lifted an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m made of money?”
“According to your bank statement, you’ve got a wholebunchof extra money just lying around,” Haley said sweetly.
