Page 73 of The Texan's Secrets

“He didn’t duck it,” Emilia corrected. “We tried to find the camera crew a couple of times.”

“Oh,” Misha responded. “Okay, sure. My mistake.”

Maggie spoke up again. “You might want to take things slow with him.”

“Who says I’m taking them fast?” Emilia asked. The conversation was getting very strange.

“Good,” Maggie said. “That’s good to hear. The thing with men is, they don’t always reveal themselves early on.”

Misha nodded her agreement. “They hold things back. Sometimes they have good reasons, but still...”

Both women were watching Emilia intently.

“Are you worried about something in particular?” Emilia wondered if she’d missed something about Nick that her friends could see.

“No, no.” They spoke quickly and overtop of each other.

“We like him,” Maggie added.

“He’s fundamentally a good guy,” Misha said.

“Fundamentally?” Emilia asked, wondering if she should do some online sleuthing into Nick. So far, she’d been purposefully respecting his privacy, not wanting to use her unique skills to take a deep dive. But now she realized she’d never even learned his last name, or the name of his company for that matter.

Misha must know both since he was a k!smet investor.

Emilia opened her mouth to ask, but then realized how embarrassing the question would be. Who slept with a man without knowing his last name?

Even worse, it was probably too late to ask Nick himself.

“What exactly are you doing with Emilia?” Misha asked as Nico opened his apartment door to greet her.

He didn’t understand the question. “In what way?”

Surely, she wasn’t asking about his sex life.

“In every way.” She breezed past him.

“None of your business.” He shut the door behind her.

“You know she’s a friend.”

“And? How does that mean you get to invade our privacy?”

“You’re stringing her along, and—”

“I am not stringing her along.” He took offense at the accusation and headed back into his home office to finish an urgent email. “Where are you getting your information?”

“From Emilia.”

Nico whirled around. “What did she say?”

“It sounds like you two have been joined at the hip.”

He thought back to the last time they were together. “Her house was flooding. She needed help. What was I supposed to do?”

Misha’s lips pursed, and she canted her head to one side. “You were with her in the flood?”

Nico realized his mistake. He silently cursed and sat down to type the email. “What is it you were asking about?”

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