Semua Bab He Chose My Sister, So I Married His Enemy: Bab 251 - Bab 260

"The training pipeline's the bottleneck," I said, gesturing loosely with my glass toward the funder in front of me, a stocky man named Reyes who'd been peppering me with questions about regional timelines for the better part of ten minutes. "We can hire regional leads faster than we can properly train the staff underneath them."Across the room, Damien reached for his own glass, an unhurried, ordinary motion, and in doing so shifted his weight just enough that Victoria's hand slid off his sleeve without either of them seeming to notice it had happened at all. He turned slightly toward another man beside him, some new thread of conversation picking up, and Victoria's hand simply settled back at her side, nothing dramatic in it, no visible retreat on her part, just the plain, unremarkable fact of him no longer being within easy reach."So Grace is managing the first region alone right now," Reyes said, and I dragged my attention back properly, embarrassed at how quickly it had wandered.

I accepted her hand, matching her open expression with something more careful but not unfriendly. "That sounds ominous, depending on the reason.""Not remotely ominous. I've been following New Ground's expansion." She fell into step beside me as the crowd began drifting toward the main room, waiters weaving between guests collecting empty glasses, the whole evening shifting into its next movement. "Your privacy protections are genuinely unusual. Most programme leaders would have accepted identifiable stories the moment that much funding was placed in front of them. You didn't.""It nearly cost me the whole funding offer.""I heard something about that. Not the details, only that you held your ground." She said it plainly, no probing for the specifics I hadn't offered, and something in the restraint made it easier to relax slightly beside her. "It's rare. Most people fold the moment the money gets large enough.""I nearly did fold, for what it's worth.""But you didn't." She glanced si

"I don't know what you mean," I said, entirely unconvincingly, keeping my eyes fixed on the streetlights sliding past outside the window rather than looking at him directly."You don't." He didn't sound remotely convinced, the corner of his mouth already threatening to become a full smile. "That's interesting, because you've had a very specific expression since I crossed the room to you, well before Victoria's story even started.""I'm allowed to have expressions, Damien.""You are. This particular one seemed to appear directly after a woman put her hand on my arm." His thumb moved slowly against my fingers while his eyes remained properly on the road, his amusement obvious even without him looking at me. "I only mention it because you're normally significantly better at hiding things from me.""I wasn't hiding anything. There was nothing to hide."He made a low, unconvinced sound and let it sit there, entirely too pleased with himself, while my irritation sharpened at how thoroughly

"I know," I said, before he could continue, reaching for the second cufflink still caught between his fingers. "I never thought there was."He paused, clearly having braced for something else entirely, some reassurance he'd clearly rehearsed on the way home now sitting unused between us. I took the cufflink from him gently and set it on the nightstand beside its match, then let my hand rest against the arm Victoria had touched hours earlier, my fingers tracing lightly along his forearm."Then what was it," Damien asked, watching me with genuine curiosity now instead of amusement, his earlier teasing fully set aside."I looked at her hand on you and thought she should move it." I said it plainly, no elaboration attached, the whole shape of the feeling simple enough that dressing it up further would have only made it less true. "That was the entire problem.""You weren't worried.""No." I shook my head slightly, my hand still resting against his arm. "I wasn't afraid of anything. I was

Somewhere across the room, a phone buzzed insistently against the nightstand, and I surfaced slowly from sleep with the distinct sense that something important was being ignored. I reached blindly toward the sound and found nothing, the phone apparently having migrated during the night, and squinted at the clock instead, my brain taking several long seconds to register what it was actually telling me."Damien." I sat up properly, the tangled sheets falling away, and shook his shoulder with more urgency than the gentle wake-up I'd originally intended. "Damien, it's nearly eight."He groaned into the pillow, one arm still draped over my waist, apparently in no hurry to acknowledge the crisis unfolding around us. "That seems unlikely.""I have an early session at New Ground.""I have a meeting with the board." He finally lifted his head, blinking at the clock with the particular betrayed expression of a man who genuinely believed time had personally wronged him. "How did we sleep through