Pride and Papercuts (The Austens #5) - Staci Hart Page 0,68
me, and I’ll be satisfied.”
Too moved to be serious, I quirked a smile. “Even if I don’t have babies?”
She made a dismissive sound and swatted my arm. “You don’t want to put me in an early grave, do you?” A little wink punctuated the question.
With a laugh, she changed the subject, bringing me up to speed on my siblings. I was so out of the loop, you’d think I’d moved to Tokyo, not the Upper West, and that knowledge made me impossibly sad.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I had been running away. I’d spent my young life forced into a box, and once I was freed, I swore I’d never get back in. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the box itself, but the size of the box that I hated.
That thought was a grain of sand in my oyster.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d turn it into a pearl.
21
Professional Courtesy
LIAM
Sunday was somehow forever long and nowhere near long enough.
I spent most of the day in a foggy half-sleep with Georgie on the couch. We didn’t talk about anything important, both of us too exhausted from the fight that morning to get into anything deeper than commentary on the string of movies she put on and what we’d order to eat. But even with the slow pace of the lazy Sunday, Monday morning came too soon.
Two things waited for me, and I didn’t want to deal with either of them.
I’d promised Georgie I’d appeal to Catherine on Jett’s behalf, which was a battle I was sure I’d lose. And I didn’t fight battles I couldn’t win. But for Georgie, I would try.
And then there was Laney Bennet to contend with.
Although I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, I had my suspicions. I was absolutely certain I’d have to answer for the fight I’d picked with her at the party. And I was sure her brother had told her about the words we’d exchanged. She would likely know that Georgie had spent the night with Jett, but from there, I wasn’t sure what she’d heard.
The office was quiet that morning, as it usually was on Mondays, and I retreated to my desk to dig into work for a while. We were a few days from an internal review of our campaigns, and were busy putting the finishing touches on our proposal. Namely, I’d been tweaking everything the team had come up with to make sure it was as close to perfect as possible.
I’d been in deep focus for about an hour when the first of my problems marched into my office without knocking.
Laney Bennet was a fire burning too hot to be colored in golds and reds—hers glowed a cool blue, a heat that needed no raging crackle to show its powers of destruction. The electric blue of her eyes, so blistering and angry, singed me from across the room.
Deliberately slow, I closed my laptop and sat back in my chair.
She came to a stop between the chairs in front of my desk, far enough away to throttle me with a lunge but close enough to feel the heat of her anger. I settled into a block of ice. And for a moment, neither of us spoke.
“I like to think I can take a lot of bullshit,” she started, her voice low. “You throwing a tantrum over Wyatt wasn’t surprising. Even you treating me like an idiot child was on-brand, as much as I hate you for it. And just when I think you can’t possibly get any worse, you find new ways to prove me wrong. I heard you nearly assaulted my brother, and it’s left me wondering why you can’t seem to stand letting anyone around you be happy. I get that you’re miserable—you don’t even try to pretend otherwise. But your determination to ensure everyone in your life is just as unhappy as you are is extraordinarily cruel.”
Any chance at being reasonable disappeared, eaten up by her fire.
“You seem to have me all figured out,” I said with cool indifference despite my roaring dissent. “Thank you for reducing me to such simple terms.”
“I wasn’t sure if you could swallow anything more complicated than that.”
For a beat, I stared at the siren across my desk, wondering how I could somehow both loathe and long for her. “Did you come here just to explain me to myself, or did you have some other objective?”