Pride and Papercuts (The Austens #5) - Staci Hart Page 0,69

Laney? Because as determined as you say I am to make everyone around me miserable, you seem doubly determined to find reasons to hate me.”

“Maybe because everything you do, every word that leaves your lips, is designed to intimidate. So if you’re asking me if I trust your answers, I suppose I don’t.”

What I wanted to do and what I chose to do were two very different things. What I wanted was to stand, round my desk, and take the stubborn, headstrong woman in my arms where I could tell her how wrong she was about me. I wanted to tell her the why of it, especially in relation to Wickham. What I wanted was a release from the burden. Of everything, and somehow, I knew she could be that for me. The flutter of knowledge that she could be my savior was the last ditch of a dying butterfly, caged too long without sunshine.

But rather than expose the truth of my heart, I postured, just as she expected me to. “If you don’t care what I have to say, then you came here just to berate me.”

Her nostrils flared.

“Storming into my office to call me names and sling accusations is unprofessional by anyone’s standards. I don’t know if Cooper would keep a member of his team who so openly defied my authority.”

Her cheeks flushed crimson. “I’m unprofessional?” she breathed the question. “You and me? We are not just colleagues. You are not my boss, even if you are my superior. And not even you can pretend like whatever this is could be described as a professional relationship. So don’t threaten me, Liam. Don’t act like you have it all figured out either, because you don’t. And if you think I’m going to sit by and watch you ruin my brother’s chance at happiness, you’re mistaken. Leave them alone. Because if you don’t, you’re going to lose Georgie forever.”

A trembling rage flickered up my spine, down my limbs, to my fingertips. Slowly, I stood with my eyes narrowed and my voice deadly calm.

“Again, you presume too much. You don’t know me, and you don’t know my sister. You don’t know what’s at stake. I know you think you do. But you seem to think you know everything, don’t you? Statistically, how true could that possibly be?”

I didn’t quite realize I’d rounded my desk until I was close enough to catch the crisp, floral scent of her.

With a hard glare, she stepped closer. Heat radiated into me in the shape of her body. “I’m just as certain as you are.”

I pinned her with my gaze, and she stilled beneath the weight of it. “Then that’s where your fault lies. If you think that what you see of me is the sum of who I am, you’re more arrogant than I thought.”

A dry laugh escaped her. I watched her mouth, noting its shape and texture with enough detail to make the nerve endings in my lips spark electric.

“Me, arrogant? You are the most infuriating, relentless—”

Again, my door opened without a knock, and the second of today’s problems blew into the room, shocking us apart with awareness.

Catherine was cold steel, her expression locking into disdain the second she laid eyes on Laney. Those cool eyes shifted from her to me, then back again as we all stood in silence.

“Liam,” she said with the shining edge of a switchblade, “tell me you haven’t stooped so low as your sister, or are the Bennets destined to sully our family from every possible direction?”

“Excuse me?” Laney challenged from behind me.

I didn’t realize when I’d put myself between her and Catherine, but there I was, square-shouldered and braced for a fight as I faced my furious aunt.

“What do you need, Catherine?”

“You know very well why I’m here. Your sister has humiliated us once again, and I cannot seem to understand why you’ve been unable to keep her in check. It’s indecent, her being pawed in a public place—and by a Bennet no less. And now you, nose to nose with another of their kind. Have you no shame?”

A fierce wave of defensive anger rose in me. Laney sucked in a breath at the insult, and I knew without question she was about to say something she couldn’t take back.

“That’s enough.”

Catherine’s mouth snapped shut at the authority in those two little words.

“Neither Laney nor Jett will be held to whatever standard you hold Rosemary Bennet to. You don’t know them, so reserve your judgment. They are intelligent and