13. Rowan
ROWAN
Erik puts coffee beside my elbow before I ask for it, which is how I know living with him has become a problem.
We're at the kitchen island with Aaron's notes between us, three university access reports on Erik's side, and the remains of breakfast pushed far enough away that neither of us can spill anything on evidence.
He's been awake longer than I have, judging from the second cup near his laptop and the dark suit he wears when he plans to spend the day making administrators regret answering their phones.
I take the coffee and taste it. "You're doing that wrong."
Erik looks up from the access report. "Drinking coffee?"
"Mine has milk." I set the cup down and point at it as if the evidence needs emphasis.
"You put milk in it every morning." He returns to the report, apparently satisfied with his defense.
"That isn't the point. You shouldn't know that."
Erik turns a page. "We've been eating breakfast together for three weeks."
I take another drink because arguing would be stronger if the coffee weren't exactly right. "That sounds worse when you say it."
"You also know I take mine black." Erik reaches for his cup without looking away from the numbers.
"That's because you drink coffee like punishment."
He finally looks at me again. "I like coffee."
"You tolerate coffee." I push my cup toward him an inch. "Mine has flavor."
Erik glances at the pale coffee before returning to his black version. "You put enough milk in yours to change the definition."
I almost smile and hide it behind the cup.
Three weeks ago, I drove to his estate with spray paint in my bag and enough anger to make vandalism temporarily reasonable.
Now I know which cabinet in his penthouse contains the good coffee, where Makari leaves threat reports when he doesn't want to interrupt us, and which of Erik's silences mean he's thinking rather than furious.
I've also learned not to ask him a question while he's reading numbers unless I want to repeat it because he missed the first attempt.
None of this resembles the arrangement I expected when I agreed to work with him.
Harper calls it dating with a security budget. I call Harper unhelpful, usually while avoiding any discussion of why I know what Erik drinks with breakfast.
My phone vibrates beside the ledger, and her name appears on the screen. I answer before the second vibration. "You have terrible timing."
"Makari increased my evening escort again." Harper skips the greeting and gets directly to the complaint.
I glance toward the far end of the penthouse. Makari left half an hour ago, which means he arranged this before he went downstairs. "How many?"
"Two." Harper pauses long enough to let the number accuse him for her.
"That seems reasonable."
"You're infected." Her disgust comes through clearly enough without seeing her.
Erik looks up from the report. I turn slightly away from him, although pretending he can't hear me from four feet away is pointless. "Nobody is infected."
Harper lowers her voice, probably because she's in Fenwick. "You just called two armed men following me to coffee reasonable. Three weeks ago, you threatened legal action when one security operator stood across the street."
"Three weeks ago, Rahil hadn't walked into a storage facility with armed men." I catch Erik starting to smile and point at him before he can contribute. "You stay out of this."
Harper hears me. "He's there, isn't he?"
"He lives here."
"That wasn't my question." She sounds far too pleased with herself.
I hate both of them for different reasons.
Harper changes subjects before I can defend myself. "Liya texted me. She's taking you to Manhattan at eleven for the gala."
"I know." I pull Aaron's legal pad closer and try to continue reading while she talks.
"You're letting the Bratva dress you."
"I'm letting Liya prevent me from embarrassing myself at an event where half the room can buy my law school."
Erik closes the report and looks at me. "Probably more than half."
I give him the look the interruption deserves. "That wasn't helpful."
"It was accurate." He reaches for his coffee and leaves me to Harper.
She laughs into my ear. "Dating with a security budget."
"We're not dating." The answer comes automatically.
Erik doesn't react, though he also doesn't reopen the report.
Harper lets the silence stretch before she starts listing evidence against me. "You share breakfast every morning."
"We share evidence." I pull one of Aaron's pages toward me.
"You sleep there."
"For security."
"You know how he takes his coffee."
I look at the black cup near Erik's laptop.
Erik watches me notice it.
"That proves nothing." I aim the answer at Harper, though Erik can obviously hear it too.
"It proves enough for me." Harper sounds entirely satisfied with her case.
I disconnect before she can add another exhibit.
Erik waits until I put the phone down, then folds his arms on the island. "You're not dating me."
"That's what I said." I return to Aaron's notes instead of looking at him.
"I heard you."
His tone gives me nothing useful. The silence afterward is different from the ones I already know, and I dislike having a new category to identify. I point at the access report before the conversation becomes one I'm not prepared to have. "Did Makari get anything better from the corridor footage?"
Erik lets me change the subject. "No identification. The woman's credential is real, but the camera angle doesn't show enough of it to read the name. Richard's staff is producing the full event credential list."
"What about Peter?" I ask, and that changes Erik more effectively than my dating denial did.
Peter still hasn't returned the shipping folder. He walked out of Erik's office after refusing to produce it, and Makari has spent the days since rebuilding the records from source files.
Erik slides a page toward me. "Makari has reconstructed about sixty percent of the folder independently."
"That wasn't what I asked." I leave the reconstruction report where he put it.
"No. Peter hasn't returned it." Erik sits back and gives me the direct answer this time.
"You think he will?"
He looks toward the report instead of pretending certainty he doesn't have. "I think he believes he was right to take it."
"That still wasn't what I asked."
Erik looks at me across the island. "I don't know."
Peter is family, old enough to have helped shape Erik's understanding of loyalty, and stubborn enough to consider secrecy a form of service. Erik doesn't need me explaining any of that to him. I turn back to Aaron's notes instead. "Then we keep rebuilding it."
"That was my plan." Erik opens his laptop again and brings up the source-file index.
"Good. We've finally reached a point where your plans occasionally survive contact with other people."
His expression turns dry. He checks the time in the corner of the screen. "Liya will be here in twenty minutes. You should get dressed."
I look down at my jeans and sweater. "I am dressed."
Erik takes in my clothes before returning to me.
"I'm going to a salon, not negotiating a treaty."
"With Liya, the distinction is smaller than you think." He opens the next record as if the matter is settled.
He has enough experience with his sister that I believe him. I take my coffee and leave before he gets the satisfaction of hearing that.
Liya's Manhattan salon has no sign on the door, which is the first warning.
The second is the woman who greets Liya by name, looks me over once, then somehow knows my measurements without asking.
She leads us into a private fitting room larger than my bedroom at home.
Racks of dresses line two walls, shoes sit beneath them, and jewelry cases fill a long cabinet near the mirrors.
I stop several feet inside. "This is excessive."
Liya settles into a velvet chair and crosses one leg over the other. "You haven't tried anything on yet."
"That doesn't make the room smaller."
"It's Manhattan. Nobody here is interested in smaller." She takes out her phone while the stylist disappears through another door.
The woman returns carrying three black dresses, two dark blue ones, and something silver that looks as if sitting down would require legal advice.
I point toward the silver dress. "No."
The stylist pauses with the hanger raised.
Liya studies the dress for two seconds. "Agreed."
The woman removes it without argument, and I turn toward Liya. "That was alarmingly easy."
"You assume I brought you here to humiliate you." Liya gestures toward the remaining dresses. "I brought you here because Saturday isn't a university reception."
"I gathered that from the private salon with no name."
"The people at the gala will know what you paid for your shoes and whether the stones around your neck are borrowed." Liya sets her phone aside. "They'll also watch whether the man beside you expects you to remain there when Orell enters the room."
I stare at her. "That sounds healthy."
"It isn't." She gives the stylist a brief glance when the woman raises a dark blue gown. "It's still the room you're walking into."
I accept the dress because refusing to try anything will only extend this process. Liya waits until I disappear behind the fitting screen before she continues.
"Orell reads weakness through appearances. He'll watch Erik, Makari, and me. Mostly, he'll watch you because you're the new variable."
I pull the dress over my hips. "I'm a law student."
"You're Jeremy Bennett's daughter, Erik's partner in the investigation, and the person Rahil failed to intimidate at the storage unit." Liya doesn't need to raise her voice through the screen.
"I'm not Erik's partner in every sense of the word."
Her silence is offensive enough to have an opinion.
I step out and catch her looking at me. "You can keep whatever comment you decided not to make."
Liya rises from the chair and examines the dress instead. "This one is wrong."