Chapter Nineteen
MAXIMO TURNED UP AT Theseus's door without calling, which Theseus would later cite as the first piece of evidence.
The second was that he took the drink.
Maximo didn't take drinks. He held them, occasionally, as props in negotiations. He didn't stand in a friend's study at an indecent hour and drink one down like a man trying to put out a fire with a teaspoon.
"So," Theseus observed, refilling it without being asked. "You've either killed someone or fallen in love. And you don't have the coloring for murder."
"I came here to not talk."
"You came to the one man in this city who bills by the sentence. Poor planning." Theseus lowered himself into the chair across from him, the blue gaze already taking the case apart. "The actress."
"Leave it."
"Jassy, isn't it? She still thinks I'll be your best man. I've decided I'd like to be. I already have remarks."
"Shut up."
"Why not just admit the truth? You love her—"
"Don't be foolish."
The denial came out fast. It came out the exact wrong speed, and they both heard it, the way a jury hears a witness answer before the question is finished.
Theseus's brows rose, and he set his glass down with the small satisfied click of a man laying down a card.
He had never once believed in love. He'd built a whole cynical fortune on the certainty it didn't exist. But he recognized it on sight anyway because it had just walked into his study and dismantled the most controlled man he knew.
"Maximo..." "Don't."
"You kissed the girl who has your sister's heart."
"I said don't."
Theseus studied his friend unsmilingly. He knew exactly what a man like Maximo did with a want he had branded forbidden, and it was never to reach for it.
He would wall it off and call the walls mercy, and the girl carrying his sister's heart would be the one left to pay the interest on his restraint.