Page 15 of Enticing the Elf
“Yes.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eoin
It’s notuntil Ari and Niamh stop talking aboutI’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here—a show which, to the best of my understanding, rarely features an actual celebrity—that I start to pay attention. In fact, my whole team is oddly silent.
I look up.
Four frighteningly manic grins beam back at me. It’s so disconcerting that it takes me a second to recognize them, and then I wonder what they’re doing here. Caolan and Hagen might have a valid reason, but Alistair Smythe and Andrew Turner work for CSG, and I can’t remember if either of them has even been in my office before.
Definitely none of them have a reason for pointing those horrible smiles at me.
“Are you lost?”
“Dude! Finally. Hagen said we couldn’t interrupt because you get cranky when people interrupt you.” Alistair bounds forward like an overgrown puppy—hellhound, I remind myself—and plants his ass on the edge of my desk. What is it with uninvited distractions sitting on my desk?
“There’s a chair right there,” I say, pointing, only to have Andrew slide into it.
“Thank you. This may take some time. We should all be comfortable.”
That worries me more than the creepy smiles did. I glance around at my team, in case this is some sort of prank they’ve cooked up, but they all seem to be as confused as I am.
Which just leaves…
I narrow my eyes at Hagen. “You’ve known me long enough to know it’s not just interruptions that make me cranky.”
He holds up his hands, palms out. “I haven’t done anything! I swear. Not yet, anyway.”
My patience is wearing thin. Very, very thin. “Then maybe someone could tell me why you’re all here?”
“It’s like this,” Alistair begins excitedly, way too much in my personal space. I roll my chair backward a little. “Noah came back from lunch and said he had a job for Team Bro, and dude, you have no idea how big of a miracle that is. NoahhatesTeam Bro. He’s like, the anti-Bro. Which is sad, because Bros are epic, and Noah’s epic too, just in a different way.”
“It’s true,” Andrew murmurs.
“It’s okay, though,” Caolan assures me earnestly. “Noah might not want to be part of Team Bro?—”
“Or want it to exist,” Andrew interjects, smirking.
“—but he believes in utilizing resources properly, and he knows what our strengths are. We could totally do this.”
“But then Hagen pointed out that you’rehisbro from way back, and of course that claim of bro-hood takes precedence. We won’t do it without your okay,” Alistair assures me.
They all look at me expectantly.
What the fuck?
“Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not having a great day—or week, to be honest—and there’s some stuff going on in my personal life that?—”
“Yeah, we know,” Hagen interrupts. “Your situationship. That’s why we’re here.”
I’m highly enough placed in the DEA to (maybe) get away with killing Hagen and Caolan, but it would cause an inter-government incident if I killed Alistair and Andrew… unless I made it look like an accident? Or… Alistair annoys a lot of people. Maybe the people at CSG would be so relieved, they’d let it slide?
Before I can decide whether my letter-opener or paperweight would make a better weapon, Ari steps in. Literally steps in, taking Alistair’s arm and pulling him off my desk, then standing between the two of us like a hellhound-saving barrier.
“Let’s start again,” he suggests. “Hagen, you explain. As much detail in as few sentences as possible.” He raises his brows meaningfully. Hagen shoots a glance my way, then nods.
“Noah Cage had lunch today with Dáithí and Consort Jared,” he begins, immediately getting my full attention. Dáithí has lunch with Jared fairly regularly, but I didn’t think he knew Noah Cage more than to say hello in passing. Plus, he never mentioned having lunch plans. Sure, we were distracted last night, but?—
