Page 22 of Deliverance

I walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and the door opened behind me.

“Hey,” Adrian said softly. “Evelyn get in okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “We had a drink, and then she started yawning, so she went to bed.”

“Good,” Adrian said. He studied me. “Everything okay?” His sharp eyes didn’t miss anything.

“Yep, just getting some water before I hit the sack as well.” I raised my water glass.

“Good. Just let me know if you need anything,” Adrian said. “I’m going to sleep over at Evelyn’s tonight.”

“Sounds good. Goodnight.”

Adrian had been nothing but good to me, and I hated lying to him, but how did I tell him that I was starting to fall for his girlfriend?

CHAPTER 10

ADRIAN

Once the door closed behind Dominic and Evelyn, I turned to the others. “We need to talk about something.”

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Sebastian said. “I take it, it’s about the budding attraction between our Evie and a certain, possibly former-FIA agent?”

“What?” Marcus swung his head to his brother.

Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Come on. You have eyes. Nothing’s happened yet, obviously, but anyone with eyes can see they’re on that path.”

I took control of the conversation before Sebastian could derail it further. “I don’t know if they are on that path. He’s a good guy, and we all know Evelyn is amazing. So I did want to talk about it and get your thoughts.”

“Talking about it is a good idea,” Alexander said. He grabbed another round of beers for everyone and passed them out before retaking his seat at the table. “Adrian, you brought it up, so you start us off.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Look, I know we don’t know Dominic well, but he seems like a good guy. Trust is obviously earned over time, though.” I looked at Marcus, who pointedlyignored me. “I don’t even know if Evelyn is interested in him like that, but I think we should be open to it if she is.”

Alexander nodded. “Whatever happens, it’s Evelyn’s decision. I agree we don’t know him very well, but over the last week or so, he’s definitely pitched in and helped any way he could. But I’ll reiterate, it’s Evelyn’s decision. Sebastian?”

Sebastian shrugged. “I like him, but whatever makes Evie happy makes me happy. If he hurts her, though, I’ll gut him.”

I rubbed my forehead. Sometimes I forgot about Sebastian’s psychotic tendencies when it came to Evelyn. “Noted. Marcus?”

Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know him well enough yet, but I’m the last one who gets a say here.”

“You’re wrong.” I frowned at him.

He thought he was last place in this relationship despite me telling him that there were no rankings here.

He just shrugged, and I moved on to the next thing I wanted to bring up. “Okay, so we agree to let it happen on Evelyn’s timeline.” They all nodded, and I continued. “We also need to talk about how we’re going to prevent Evelyn from burning herself out chasing Kingfisher. I’m worried this is going to take longer than we think, and I want to make sure we’re thinking about taking care of her mental health and lightening her load.”

“Agreed,” Alexander said. “I’m meeting with the VPs tomorrow to delegate some more responsibility to them and review the candidates they’ve recommended for internal promotions. That should take some pressure off us.”

“Older brother is going to let go of some control?” Sebastian said dramatically. “The sky must be falling.”

Alexander ignored him. “That takes care of some of the SDS work. Plus, we can hire another executive assistant for Evelyn’s team to take some of the load off her plate there. We should have done it years ago, but I had no idea how much she truly managed until recently.”

Marcus nodded. “I can work with HR tomorrow to get a job description written. What else?”

“Orgasms are a great stress reliever,” Sebastian said. “I can totally take care of that.”

Marcus tossed a balled-up napkin at him. “Get your mind out of the gutter!”