Not in Love
About this book
Rue Siebert has a stable laboratory job at Kline, a food-science startup founded by the friend who gave her security when she had very little. She values the work, the routine, and relationships with rules that end before they become dependence.
Eli Killgore belongs to the private-equity group attempting to acquire Kline. Their attraction is immediate and inconvenient; an affair can be hidden only if both pretend the takeover and the laboratory exist outside it.
As Eli's reasons for pursuing the company emerge, Rue has to reconsider the loyalty she treats as settled fact. The romance is less about making business harmless than about deciding what each person owes when work, friendship, and power are unevenly distributed.
Not in Love is a more explicitly erotic contemporary romance from Ali Hazelwood. Its characters are adults who prefer clear physical terms, then discover that transparency in bed does not automatically resolve secrecy everywhere else.
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From the opening
1
Simple enough
Rue
“Ladies, this is a genuine, nonrhetorical question: How do the two of you survive in the real world?”
I stared at Nyota’s contemptuous expression, reflecting on the unique brand of humiliation that came with having one’s best friend’s little sister (who’d been repeatedly rebuffed when attempting to enter the backyard tree house; who’d publicly feasted on a booger at Christmas 2009; who’d been caught French-kissing a clementine in the linen closet a few short months later) question one’s ability to carry out a productive existence.
Then again, back in the day, Tisha and I had been three whole years older than her, and we’d harbored a clearly misplaced superiority complex. We knew better now that little Nyota was twenty-four, a law school prodigy, and a newly minted bankruptcy lawyer whose billable hours were worth more than my tragically high car insurance premium. To add insult to injury, I followed her on Instagram, which was how I knew she could bench-press more than her weight, looked incredible in a monokini, and regularly baked onion rosemary focaccia from scratch.
In a powerful flex whose brilliance kept me awake at night, Nyota had never followed me back.
“You know us,” I said, choosing honesty over pride. Tisha and I were holed up inside my closet-sized office at Kline, FaceTiming someone who’d probably never even saved our phone numbers. Dignity was the least of our worries. “We are barely hanging on.”
“Can you just answer the question?” Tisha bristled. As humbling as this was for me, it had to be much worse for her. Nyota was her sister, after all.
“Really? You call me in the middle of the workday to ask what a loan assignment is? You couldn’t google it?”
“We did,” I said, omitting that we’d added for dummies to the search. And yet. “We got the gist of it, we think.”
“Great, then you’re golden. I’m hanging up, see you both at Thanksgiving—”
“However,” I interrupted. It was late May. “The reactions of other Kline employees seem to suggest that we might not be fully grasping the implications of this loan assignment.” My threshold for odd was high, and I’d been able to brush off the HR rep brazenly browsing monster.com at his standing desk, the chemists who’d bumped into me face-first and run away with nary an oops, the vacant stare of my usually dictatorial boss, Matt, when I’d informed him that the report he was waiting on would take at least three more hours. Then, while I was emptying my water bottle into a potted plant that had lived in the break room longer than I’d been in the workforce, a technician had burst into tears and suggested, You should take Christofern home, Dr. Siebert. It shouldn’t die just because of what’s about to happen to Kline.
I had no clue what was going on. All I knew was that I loved my current job at Kline, the most important project of my life was at a pivotal point, and I was too socially challenged to easily transition to another workplace. Today’s event did not bode well. “There’s going to be an assembly in fifteen minutes,” I explained, “and we’d love to walk in with a better idea of what—”
“Ny, stop bitching and just regurgitate it for us like we’re five,” Tisha ordered.
“You guys are doctors,” Nyota pointed out—not as a compliment.
“Okay, listen carefully, Ny, ’cause this will blow your mind and we might have to report it to the UN and have a trial at The Hague: the topic of private equity firms and loan assignments did not come up in any class during our chemical engineering PhDs. A shocking oversight, I know, and I’m sure NATO will want to take military action—”
“Zip it, Tish. You don’t get to snark when you need something from me. Rue, how did you find out about the loan assignment?”
“Florence sent out a company-wide email,” I said. “This morning.”
“Florence is Kline’s CEO?”
“Yes.” It seemed reductive, so I added, “And founder.” Still not exhaustive, but there was a time and place for fangirling, and this wasn’t it.
“Did it say anything about which private equity bought your loan?”
I skimmed the body of the email. “The Harkness Group.”
“Hmm. Rings a bell.” Nyota typed away in silence, the New York City skyline gleaming behind her. Her office was in a high-rise—thousands of miles and an entire universe from North Austin. Like Tisha and me, she’d been eager to get out of Texas. Unlike us, she’d never moved back. “Ah, yeah. Those guys,” she said eventually, squinting at her computer screen.
“Do you know them?” Tisha asked. “Are they, like, famous?”
“It’s a private equity firm, not a K-pop band. But they are well known in tech circles.” She bit her lip. Suddenly her expression was the opposite of reassuring, and I felt Tisha tense beside me.
“This is not the first time something like this has happened,” I said, refusing to give in to panic. I had graduated from UT Austin a year earlier, but I’d been working for Florence Kline since before finishing my PhD. None of this felt new. “There are management shake-ups and investor issues all the time. It always settles down.”
“Not sure about this time, Rue.” Nyota’s brow creased into a scowl. “Listen, Harkness is a private equity firm.”
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“Still don’t know what that means,” Tisha bristled.
“As I was going to explain, private equities are…groups of people with lots and lots of money and spare time. And instead of frolicking in their hard-earned cash Scrooge McDuck–style, or leaving it in savings accounts like the two of you—”
“Bold of you to assume I have savings,” Tisha muttered.
“—they use it to buy other companies.”
“And they bought Kline?” I asked.
“Nope. Kline hasn’t gone public—you can’t buy Kline’s stocks. But back when it was founded, it needed money to develop…ravioli? Is that what you guys do?”
“Food nanotechnology.”
“Sure. Let’s pretend that means something. Anyway, when Florence founded Kline, she got a big loan. But now, whoever gave her the money decided to sell that loan to Harkness.”
“Which means that now Kline owes the money to Harkness?”
“Correct. See, Rue, I knew you weren’t totally useless. My sister, on the other hand, never ceases to…” Nyota’s voice drifted as she frowned at her computer.
“What?” Tisha asked, alarmed. Nyota wasn’t the type to stop mid-insult. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I’m just reading up on Harkness. They’re well respected. Focused on midsize tech startups. I think they have a couple of science guys on the inside? They acquire promising companies, provide capital and support to grow them, sell them for a profit. Buying a loan seems a little out of their MO.”
Tisha’s fingers closed around my thigh, and I covered her hand with my palm. Physical comfort was rarely in my repertoire, but making exceptions for Tisha was no trouble. “So all Florence needs to do is pay back the loan to Harkness, and Harkness will be out of the picture?” I asked. Seemed simple enough. No need to involve monster.com.
“Uh…in the rainbow world you live in, maybe. Have fun frolicking with the unicorns, Rue. There’s no way Florence has the money.”
Tisha’s grip tightened. “Ny, what does it mean, in practice? Does it mean that they take control of the company?”
“Maybe. It’ll depend on the loan contract.”
I shook my head. “Florence would never let them do that.”
“Florence might not have a choice.” Nyota’s voice softened abruptly, and that—out of everything, that made the first tinges of fear hook into my stomach. “Depending on the terms of the agreement, Harkness might have the right to install a new CTO and seriously interfere in day-to-day operations.”
Asking what a CTO was wasn’t going to get me any closer to an Instagram follow, so I just said, “Okay. What’s the bottom line?”
“Harkness might end up being a nonissue. Or it might be the reason you need to find new jobs. Right now, it’s impossible to tell.”
Tisha’s “fuck” was a soft muttering. Florence, I thought, and my mouth felt dry. Where is Florence right now? How is Florence right now? “Thank you, Nyota,” I said. “This was very helpful.”
“Call me after today’s assembly—we’ll have a better idea by then.” It was nice of her, that we. “But it wouldn’t hurt to start sprucing up your CV, just in case. Austin is a great place for tech startups. Look around online, ask your nerd friends if they have leads. Do you guys have any friends, aside from each other?”
“I have Bruce.”
“Bruce is a cat, Tish.”
“And your point?”
They started bickering, and I tuned them out, trying to calculate the likelihood of Tisha and me finding another job together. One that would pay well and afford us the scientific freedom we currently had. Florence had even allowed me to—
A horrifying thought stabbed at me. “What about our personal projects? Employees’ patents?”
“Mm?” Nyota cocked her head. “Employees’ patents? For what?”
“In my case, a bio-nanocomposite that—”
“Uh-huh, hold the TED Talk.”
“It’s something that makes produce stay fresher. Longer.”
“Ah. I see.” She nodded in understanding, her eyes suddenly warmer, and I wondered what she knew. Tisha would never mention my history, but Nyota was observant and could very well have noticed on her own. After all, for years I’d spent every spare moment at their house, just to avoid returning to my own. “This is your project? Your patent? And you have an agreement that guarantees you ownership of this tech?”
“Yes. But if Kline changes hands—”
“As long as the agreement is in writing, you’re good.”
I remembered an email from Florence. Long words, small fonts, electronic signatures. Relief punched through me. Thank you, Florence.
“Guys, try not to sweat this too much, okay? Go to the assembly you’re probably already late for. Find out all you can and report back. And for the love of Justice Brown Jackson, update your damn CVs. You haven’t been a pet groomer since undergrad, Tish.”
“Get off my LinkedIn,” Tisha muttered, but she was flipping off an already blank screen. So she leaned back in her chair and settled for another subdued “fuck.”
I stared ahead and nodded. “Indeed.”
“Neither of us has the emotional constitution for job insecurity.”
“Nope.”
“I mean, we’ll be all right. We’re in tech. It’s just…”
I nodded once more. We were happy at Kline. Together. With Florence.
Florence. “Last night, Florence texted me,” I told Tisha. “Asked if I wanted to go over to her place.”
She turned. “Did she say why?”
I shook my head, feeling half-embarrassed, half-guilty. Way to show up for your friends, Rue. “I told her I had plans.”
“What were you—oh, right. Your quarterly sex-up. Rue After Dark. Oh my god, how have we not talked about the guy.”
“What guy?”
“Really? You send me a picture of some dude’s driver’s license and then ask what guy? Nice try.”
“It was a valiant attempt.” I stood, trying to avoid remembering deep-set blue eyes. That Grecian urn profile that had forced me to stare. The short brown curls, just this side of too messy. He’d kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove me home, as if adamant not to look in my direction.
“Have you heard from him? Assuming you did the unthinkable and”—she gasped, clutching her sternum—“gave him your number.”
“I haven’t checked my phone.” It now lived at the very bottom of my backpack, pressed under an extra hoodie, and my water bottle, and a stack of books that were due back at the library in two days. It was going to stay there, at least as long as I caught myself wondering every ten minutes whether he had texted.
I liked to force myself to keep a certain detachment when it came to hes.
“I should have gone to Florence’s,” I said, remorse prickling at the bottom of my stomach.
“Nah. Having to choose between you getting laid and having a heads-up on this here clusterfuck, I’d probably choose orgasms for you. I’m a generous soul like that.” Tisha lowered her voice as we walked side by side, treading down Kline’s sea-blue, ultramodern hallways that teemed with employees, all heading toward the open space on the first floor. They all smiled at Tisha—and nodded at me, polite but much more somber.
Kline had started out as a small tech startup, then quickly ballooned to several hundred employees, and I’d stopped keeping track of new hires. Plus, the solitary nature of my project made me a bit of an unknown quantity. The tall, serious, distant girl—who always hung out with the other tall girl, the funny and delightful one everybody loved. At Kline, Tisha’s and my popularity levels were as mismatched as they’d been since elementary school. Luckily, I’d learned not to mind.
“Sadly,” I murmured, “no orgasms were had.”
“What? He did not look like he’d be bad at sex!”
“I wouldn’t know.”
She scowled. “Isn’t that what you met him for?”
“Originally.”
“And?”
“Vincent showed up.”
“Oh, fuck Vincent. How did he—I don’t even wanna know. Next time, then?”
Since you never do repeats, he’d said, and my body had heated at the wistfulness in his tone.
“I don’t know,” I whispered truthfully, feeling some of that wistfulness myself as Tisha and I took a seat on a couch at the back of the room. “I think that—”
“Never a dull fucking moment,” said a musical voice, and the cushion dipped on my left side. Jay was our favorite lab technician. Or, more accurately, Tisha’s favorite, whom she’d swiftly befriended. By virtue of always being around her, I’d been folded into that relationship. It was the unabridged story of my social life. “I swear to god,” he said, “if they fire all of us and my visa falls through and I have to go back to Portugal and Sana breaks up with me—”
“Love the optimism, babe.” From the other side of me, Tisha leaned forward with a grin. “We researched this whole mess, by the way. We can tell you what a loan assignment is.”
Jay’s eyebrow arched, and the piercings speared through it flickered. “You didn’t know before?”
Tisha shrank back, disappearing behind me. “There, there.” I patted her leg comfortingly. “At least we’ve never pretended to be anything but what we are.”
“Dumbasses?”
“Apparently.”
A waterfall of red curls appeared in the crowd, and the knot of panic in my chest instantly loosened. Florence. Brilliant, resourceful Florence. She was Kline. She’d fought tooth and nail for it, and wasn’t going to allow anyone to take it from her. Certainly not some—
“Who are those four?” Tisha whispered in the sudden hush of the room. Her gaze had drifted past Florence, to the figures standing beside her.
“Someone from Harkness?” Jay guessed.
I had expected slicked-back hair, and suits, and that uniquely off-putting finance bro flair. The Harkness people, however, looked like they might have belonged at Kline in a different timeline. Maybe dressing down was just a power move on their part, but they seemed…normal. Approachable. The long-haired woman was at ease in her jeans and seemed pleased with the turnout, and so did the broad-shouldered man who stood just a little too close to her. The tall figure in the well-groomed beard surveyed the room a touch haughtily, but who was I to judge? I’d been told several times I didn’t exactly inspire fuzzy warmth. And the fourth man, the one who joined the group last, gait unhurried and smile confident, he seemed…
The blood congealed in my veins.
“I already hate them,” Jay mumbled, making Tisha laugh.
“You hate everybody.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Doesn’t he, Rue?”
I nodded absently, eyes stuck on the fourth Harkness man like a bird caught in an oil spill. My head spun and the room ran out of air, because unlike the others’, his face was familiar.
Unlike the others, I knew exactly who he was.
2
Very willing to let her continue
Eli
The previous night
She looked even more beautiful than in her picture.
And she’d looked pretty fucking stunning in that, too, standing in front of a painfully familiar UT Austin sign. Not a selfie—a regular old-school photo, cropped to cut out her companion. All that was left was a slender, dark-skinned arm slung lazily around a shoulder. And, of course, her. Smiling, but only faintly. There, but remote.
Beautiful.
Not that it mattered much. Eli had hooked up with enough people to know that a person’s looks had a little less impact on the quality of casual sex than what that person was looking for. Still, when he arrived at the hotel lobby and spotted her at the bar, sitting straight on the tall stool, he stopped in his tracks. Hesitated, even though his meeting with Hark and the others had run behind, and dropping home to check on Tiny had put him a few minutes late.
She was drinking Sanpellegrino—a relief, since given their plans for the night, anything else would have given him pause. Her jeans and sweater were simple, and her posture was a thing of beauty. Relaxed, yet regal. Spine unbent, but not on edge. She didn’t look nervous, and had the easy air of someone who did this often enough to know exactly what to expect.
Eli remembered her pertinent questions and straight-to-the-point answers. She’d messaged him the day before, and when he’d asked, Where would you like to meet? her response had been,
Not my apartment.
My place doesn’t work either. I can book a hotel and cover the cost.
I’m okay with splitting.
No need.
Works for me, then. FYI, I’ll share my location with a friend who has my login info to the app.
Please do. Would you like my phone number?
We can keep messaging here.
Sounds good. Whatever made her feel safest. The dating app game could be dangerous. Then again, the app they were using wasn’t for dating, not by any correct meaning of the word.
Eli glanced at the woman one last time, and something resembling the anticipation he used to be capable of rose inside him. Good, he told himself. This is going to be good. He started walking again but stopped a few feet away.
When another man approached.
Some poor asshole hitting on her, Eli originally figured, but it quickly became apparent that she already knew him. Her eyes widened, then narrowed in a one-two punch. Her spine locked. She shifted back, seeking more distance.
An ex of some kind, Eli thought as the man spoke urgently. A hushed conversation began, and while the elevator music was too loud for Eli to pick up the words, the tension in her shoulder blades wasn’t a good sign. She shook her head, then ran a hand through her dark, glossy curls, and when they swept to the side, he caught the line of her nape: stiff. Stiffer as the man started talking faster. Inching closer. Gesticulating harder.
Then his hand closed around her upper arm, and Eli intervened.
He was at the bar in seconds, but the woman was already trying to pry herself free. He stopped behind her stool and ordered, “Let her go.”
The man glanced up, glassy-eyed. Drunk, maybe. “This is none of your business, bro.”
Eli stepped closer, bicep brushing against the woman’s back. “Let. Her. Go.”
The man looked, really looked. Had a brief moment of common sense, in which he estimated, correctly, that he had no chance against Eli. Reluctantly, slowly, he unhanded the woman and raised his arms in a peacekeeping gesture, knocking over her glass in the process. “There’s a misunderstanding—”
“Is there?” He glanced at the woman, who was rescuing her phone from a puddle of Sanpellegrino. Her silence was answer enough. “Nope. Get out,” he ordered, at once amiable and menacing. Eli’s entire professional life relied on his ability to find something that would motivate people to successfully do their jobs, and in his expert opinion, this shithead needed to be scared a little.
It worked: shithead glared, ground his jaw, glanced around as though searching for witnesses to join him in denouncing the injustice he was being subjected to. When no one stepped forward, he scuttled angrily toward the entrance of the hotel, and Eli turned toward the woman.
Electricity jolted through him. Her eyes were large and liquid, a dark blue he wasn’t sure he’d encountered before. Eli stared into them and briefly lost track of his question.
Ah. Right. It was something very complex, something along the lines of “Are you okay?”
Instead of replying, she asked, “Do you often engage in vigilante bullshit to compensate for whatever your issues are?” Her voice was tame, but her glare blazed. Eli noticed that her upper lip was slightly fuller than the lower. Both were dark pink. “Because maybe you could just buy an infantry tank.”
His eyebrow rose. “And maybe you could choose better men to spend your time with.”
“That’s for sure, since I came here to spend time with you.”
Ah. She’d recognized him, then. And she wasn’t a fan.
Eli didn’t blame her for thinking him a brash, hotheaded jerk, but the last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable. She clearly didn’t want him around, and that had him feeling a small tinge of disappointment. It swelled larger as he looked at her lips one last time, but he shrugged it off.
Too bad, but not that bad. He gave her one last nod, turned around, and—
A hand closed around his wrist.
He looked at her over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” She screwed her eyes shut tight. Then took a deep breath and smiled the faintest smile he’d ever seen, which sent a new, heated wave of interest vibrating through him.
Eli was no aesthete. He had no idea whether this woman was objectively, scientifically beautiful, or whether her face simply came together in a way that seemed to work perfectly for him. Either way, the result was the same.
A big fucking turn-on.
“Eli, right?” she asked.
He nodded. Fully turned to her.
“I’m sorry. I was still in fight-or-flight mode. I’m usually way less defensive about…” She gestured vaguely. Her nails were red. Her hands graceful, but trembling. “Being helped. Thank you for what you did.” Her hand dropped from his wrist to curl into her lap, and he followed every inch of that journey, mesmerized.
“You didn’t mention your name,” he said, instead of you’re welcome. On the app, she’d just used one initial: R.
“No, I didn’t.” She didn’t elaborate, and her uncompromising tone was a thrill all by itself.
Rachel? Rose. Ruby turned to watch the entrance, where the man still loitered, giving them resentful glances. When her throat bobbed, Eli offered casually, “I could go scare him off.” His brawling days were over—had been since high school, when his life had been hockey practices and detentions and lots of rage. Still, he knew how to deal with assholes.
“It’s okay.” She shook her head.
“Or call the police.”
Another shake. Then, after a moment of reluctance, she added, “But maybe you could…”
“I’ll stay,” he said, and her posture softened in relief. With the way the shithead was acting, Eli had planned to keep an eye on her anyway—which was probably a whole other degree of creepy, but here he was. Making this random girl whose name he didn’t even know his business. He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed on his chest. A large group approached the bar and took a seat next to them, forcing him to shift a little closer to her.
R.
Rebecca.
Rowan.
“I know we’re supposed to…” She gestured vaguely upward, and a million things flashed in his brain at the flick of her index finger.
The pragmatic tone of her first message to him: Are you still in the Austin area? Interested in meeting up?
The only casual—no relationships or repeat meetings in her bio.
Her answer to the Kinks? question on the open survey.
The list of what she was not willing to do. Of what she was.
At this point he doubted anything would happen between them tonight, but he was still going to mull over the latter. A lot.
“I don’t want to anymore,” she continued, voice steady. He liked that she didn’t say can’t, but don’t want. The lack of apology in her tone. Her serious, quiet expression.
“You mean, you don’t want to go upstairs and fuck a man you don’t know minutes after a man you do know assaulted you?” He gave her a look of mock surprise, and she nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s a good recap. I bet it’s too late to get a refund on the hotel room, so if you need to make plans with someone else for tonight, feel free.”
He felt the corner of his mouth quirk up. “I’ll survive,” he said dryly.
“As you prefer,” she told him, indifferent. She clearly couldn’t care less whether he took his phone out and booty-called half the city or swore his undying loyalty to her, and Eli bit back a smile. Her head cocked. “Do you do this a lot?” she asked.
“Do what? Fuck?”
“Save damsels in distress.”
“No.”
“Because you don’t encounter many, or because you leave them in distress?” Her voice was soft, and on anyone else’s lips the words would have sounded like flirting. Not hers, though. “Either way, I’m flattered,” she added.
“You should be.” He glanced at the man, who was still outside, glaring. “Do you live alone?”
Her eyebrows rose, and he noticed a faint scar bisecting the right. His index finger tapped once against the counter, itching to trace it. “Are you trying to find out if I’m single?”
“I’m trying to figure out what the chances are that the dipshit will be waiting for you where you live, who could help you if he is, or whether your pet could protect you.”
“Ah.” She didn’t look flustered to have misunderstood him. Fascinating. “I do live alone. And he shouldn’t know where.”
“Shouldn’t?”
“I’m not sure how he tracked me here. I can only imagine that he found out where I lived, wasn’t allowed inside by my doorman, and followed my Uber when it picked me up.” She’d been shaken until a minute earlier, but now she sounded disarmingly utilitarian. Just like in her texts, Eli thought. She’d messaged him with no emojis. No LOL or LMAO. Correctly placed punctuation and proper capitalization. He’d guessed it was a localized quirk, but her demeanor seemed like the embodiment of her writing.
Serious. A little impenetrable. Complicated.
And Eli had never been a fan of easy.
“How are you getting home?” he asked.
“Uber. Or Lyft. Whatever’s quicker.” She picked up her phone, but when she tapped on it, it refused to light up. Eli remembered the spilled water. “Well, this is a new development.” She sighed. “I’ll hail a cab.”
No fucking way, he almost said, but stopped with his mouth half-open. This woman was not his friend, sister, colleague. She was someone with whom he’d been planning to have a sexual relationship that would last part of the night, then never see again. He had no right to tell her what to do.
Though he could try to convince her.
“He’s still out there,” Eli said evenly, pointing at the man with his chin. He paced outside the revolving door, skin glistening with sweat. “Waiting for you to step out of the bar.”
“Right.” She scratched her long neck. Eli stared far longer than he should have. “Could you walk outside with me?”
“I will. But what if he does know where you live, and waits for you there? What if he follows you?” He watched her ponder the situation. “Do you have a neighbor you trust? A friend? A brother?”
She laughed once, silently, in a wistful way that Eli didn’t understand. “Not quite.”
“Okay.” He nodded, experiencing the opposite of annoyance at the thought of what would have to happen. “I’ll drive you home, then.”
Her look was long and even. Eli wondered why her wide, limpid eyes felt like a punch to the stomach. “You’re suggesting I get in the car of a man I do not know to avoid being harassed by a man I do know?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much.”
She bit her lower lip. Suddenly, Eli was more physically aware of another human being than he remembered being in a long, long while. “Thank you, but I’ll have to pass. The potential for situational irony is a bit too high, even for me.”
“I don’t think this qualifies as situational irony.”
“It would if you turned out to be a serial killer.”
Smiling wasn’t going to win him any points, but he couldn’t help himself. “You were going to go upstairs to a hotel room booked under my name and spend hours alone with me.”
“Hours?”
The way he was feeling at the moment, more than that. “Hours,” he repeated. She held his gaze for every letter. “Seems late in the game to worry about whether I’ll murder you.”
“A friend knew where I’d be and how to check on me,” she countered. “A second location is a whole different beast.”
“Is it?” He had no business being this pleased by her self-preservation.
“Vincent’s a dick. But for all I know, you’re the Unabomber.”
Vincent. She knew the dickhead’s name—and Eli still didn’t know hers. Fucking irritating. “Unabomber’s dead.”
“That’s what the Unabomber would say to throw me off,” she deadpanned, unknowable. He couldn’t tell whether she was flirting, making fun of him, or dead serious.