“This is me being nice.” Her hand on my thigh captures my attention and all thoughts of Sasha disappear. “Harp”—she giggles—“don’t start something you can’t finish. They have a men’s room here too.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh, I don’t need a dare to f**k you in a public restroom, darling.” She tries to withdraw her hand but I capture it before she can, and then I slide it tight up over the top of my thick hard-on. “You do this to me, you pay the price.” I place her hand on the table and lean in to her ear. “If you do it again, I’ll take you right here on the table. Don’t test me.”
“Oh my God,” Sasha says. “La-la-la. I can’t hear you.” She closes her eyes, covers her ears, and shakes her head. “La-la-la…”
“So, Sasha. What’s your job in the Company?” Harper asks, changing the subject and managing to make me more uncomfortable than I just made the Smurf.
“Nah,” I say, waving a hand at Sasha. “We’re not talking shop tonight. This is down time.”
“I disagree, James,” Harper says. “I saved her life this morning and I hardly know anything about her. We’re living in the same house and we’re traveling together. So I want—”
“No,” I interrupt. “Not—”
“Hunter,” Sasha says, ignoring me and cutting me off at the same time.
“You’re a girl. You’re not a hunter,” Harper says with a laugh.
“I am a hunter. My dad raised me to be a hunter and he was in charge of training all the hunters before this current group. So I’m even legitimate.”
Fuck.
“You’re not the first Six, James,” Sasha sneers at me.
“Conversation. Over. Let’s move on to something else.”
She redirects her attention to Harper. “I’ve been trained to hunt. I’ve been around the hunters my whole life. Not you,” she says to me. “They kept you away. But some of those guys you killed this past year? They were my friends.”
“Friends? Please. How many times could they have been passing through Wyoming? Or picking up guns from a western gun show? A handful at the most.”
“If you say so,” she says sweetly.
I might not know her all that well, but I know her well enough to understand what that means. “You’ve got another secret you’d like to share?”
“I have lots of secrets.”“Um,” Harper interjects. “You’re right, James, let’s talk about something else.”
“No,” Sasha says. “Let’s talk about secrets. I’ll tell you one of mine if you tell me one of yours, James.”
“James,” Harper says, turning to me and placing her hand on my thigh. It’s a diversion this time. “I don’t want to hear secrets, OK? Secrets are darkness. Secrets keep the darkness alive. I hate secrets and I don’t want to know them.”
I remove her hand from my thigh and place it back on the table, never losing eye contact with Sasha. “Sorry, baby. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up. You first, Cocky Smurf.”
Sasha smiles broadly and then turns her head and shoots me a sideways glare that makes her look every bit the hunter she claims she is. “OK. My secret is…” She smiles over at Harper now. “I met someone special last summer.”
“Who, a boy?” Harper asks, eagerness in her voice. Apparently this is a secret even Harper can get in on.
Sasha has to bite her lip to stop her smile. “Yes.” She slowly pulls her gaze from Harper and redirects it to me. “Nicholas Tate.”
The entire restaurant goes silent. Or maybe not. Probably not. I think it’s just that I stop hearing everything because the only thing I do hear is an echo of those two words.
“Pardon me?” Harper says. “My brother went to see you?”
Sasha is still looking at me. Her mouth moves and if I was a little bit closer to her, I’d slap my hand over it to stop her secret from spilling out. But I’m not. So it does. “He’s come to see me a bunch of times.”
“You’re lying,” Harper says. “How would he find his way to Wyoming?”
“Does it matter how?” Sasha asks. “I mean, really, that’s not even in the top million most important things to ask about what I just told you.”
“What should we ask then?” I finally come back to reality to deal with what she’s saying.
“Oh no. Not until you tell me your secret, James. Then if you want to keep playing, we can. But now you owe me.”
You owe me. She said the same thing on the plane when she told me Harper was not at home.
“Make it a good one, Tet. Because mine was a bombshell.”
I take a deep breath and look over at Harper. She’s gone white. Her perfectly tanned face is sheet white. “Have you seen him lately?”
Sasha shakes her head, like she’s saying no. But that’s not what she’s saying. “No more questions until I get a secret from James. And don’t lie, James. I’ll know.”
I have so many questions. And I want them all answered. But I have very few secrets, at least none that can be revealed at this table right now. I roll them around in my head and make a decision. “You want to know why Merc isn’t around? The details? Not what I told you earlier.”