Page 31 of Act Like You Don't Care
“So, names,” I said when the server had left. “Where did yours come from?”
“A book series, about a guy named Miles Vorkosigan,” he said with a smile I couldn’t quite figure out. “Miles in the book was a genius, but crippled. And yet he somehow still managed to get all the girls. I haven’t quite figured out how to replicate his success myself.”
I tucked that tidbit away in the back of my mind. Maybe I’d look into that series if I ever had time to read a book again. Not that I read much, but you never knew when you could get in on the ground floor of a good project. “And your brothers?”
“Rick is actually Richard Deckard Astra, from Blade Runner. The original.”
I nodded. “I saw the movie.” It had been creepy and weird and I was still jealous of Harrison Ford for getting to play that part. Completely irrational—I hadn’t even been born when the movie came out. But what a part that would have been to play.
His eyes danced, though I didn’t get the humor in it. “Then my next oldest brother is James William, after James T. Kirk and William Shatner. I think Dad might have been jealous of Shatner for a while.”
I laughed dutifully and questioned Miles’s mother’s taste in men. Though if her boys were anything like her husband, she likely had married better than she ogled. Besides, didn’t we all like a bit of rough sometimes? “And?”
“I have a sister named Patricia Anne, for Patricia Hobbs and Anne McCaffrey. They’re writers. And then there’s my last brother, whose name is Benjamin Luke.” He sounded pained when he said that.
I knew where that had come from. “What’s wrong with Star Wars?” I asked, laughing at his expression.
“She couldn’t have picked the cool guy? Why did she name him after the brat?” He grinned at me as I laughed some more. “Should have named him Han.”
“Maybe she was expecting another chance,” I told him.
“I dunno, she had me, Miles Aral, after that. I don’t know what she was thinking.” He took a sip of his drink, then asked, “What about yours?”
I shook my head. “Not nearly as interesting. I’m named for my grandfather on my father’s side. It’s really the only thing he’s ever given me. Either of them. As soon as I could, I changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name and dropped the whole Thomas thing. Even got it changed on my birth certificate. You probably knew all that stuff already.” I picked my slice of lemon off the side of the glass and squeezed it into the water, avoiding Miles’s eyes.
“Maybe I wanted to hear your side of it,” he said, his tone light.
I grimaced and took a sip of water. The story was old news, except for maybe the reasoning behind it—I didn’t think I’d told anyone that before, though my cousins back in Oceanport knew the whole story. I guess I felt I owed him something, no matter how unimportant, in exchange for this peek into the life of a normal family.
My phone buzzed—Will.When do you want me to leak the news?
Give me time to eat. We just ordered.
“Who was that?” Miles asked, all casual like he hadn’t just stuck his nose in my business. But that was his job, wasn’t it? It was what the studio had hired him for.
“Will. He’s ready to push the button on the leak, whenever we’re ready. I told him to give us time to eat. I’m hungry.”
“Thank you.” He said it with real feeling. “I was afraid you could hear my stomach from across the table.”
“Not over mine.”
It almost felt like a real date, with the slight awkwardness and moments where we relaxed and forgot ourselves. The slow, cautious reveals of deeper and deeper secrets. It had been years since I’d gone out with an alpha with the intention of seeing if we were compatible enough for long term. This was both eerily familiar and entirely new territory for me.
Then Miles had to go and ruin it.
“Once we’ve eaten, we’ll need to move into establishing our relationship. I don’t want to push you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, so I’m going to lay out some parameters and you can fill in what you’re willing to do that will fit them.”
Great. “I think you know my reputation.” Now I was grumpy and hungry. “Where’s our food?” I twisted in my chair and scanned the room in hopes of seeing our server.
Miles went still and that exact stillness dragged my gaze back to him.
“That was uncalled for,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Sorry.” I glanced away, then back again. Had I actually upset him by bringing up my reputation? “I guess the more important question is, what are you comfortable with?”
He shrugged. “We want to give the impression that you’re planning to settle down with me. This guy is obsessed with turning you into a quiet, home omega, and likely because he wants you for himself. So we’ll tease him with the possibility, and then make sure he knows that someone else is going to win the prize.”
I made a face. “The prize being me.”
