GAGE
Today, it grated.
“How long are you gonna glare at that page like it personally offended you?” Nate said.
“You love hearing yourself talk, don’t you?”
“Not as much as I enjoy watching you like this.” Nate smirked.
Gage leaned back in his chair. “Like what?”
“Like you’re circling a deal you haven’t priced yet, and someone just made an offer on it.”
Gage didn’t answer.
Nate leaned forward. “So. Bea.”
“Bey-ah. Her father’s Spanish,” Gage corrected.
“You know the nationality of her father.” Nate’s mouth twitched.
Gage said nothing. Nate had known him too long to be fooled.
“Anyway, Bey-ah and…Rafael? They talk?” Nate guessed, watching him closely.
Gage hadn’t planned on saying it. But it was already there.
“She looked at him.” Like someone considering what she might already want.
“And?”
He could have left it alone. But lying to himself had never worked.
Gage turned the pen in his fingers once. “She was interested.”
Nate paused. When it came to women, Gage never had to account for competition. There usually wasn’t any.
“You think she’s playing you both?”
“No.” Gage’s voice was absolute. “Unless I’m dead wrong about her, she’s not playing games.” Which meant whatever he saw was real. And that somewhere along the line, he’d already miscalculated.
Nate shook his head with a quiet chuckle. “Rafael does like a challenge.”
Of course he did. Bea wasn’t like the other women. She was interested, but already talking herself out of it. Rafael lived for that kind of resistance.
“So she’s interested in Griffin. Maybe,” Nate mused. “Who cares? You’re Gage King. If you want her, she’s yours.”
Silence dwelt. The tension in Gage’s jaw eased by a fraction.
“Never seen you this thrown over anyone, King.”
Never have been.
He’d been circling too long. It was time to move—or walk.