Page 38 of The Tiger in the Sack

“Okay,” I said and waved a finger at them. “No.”

Fox ate a piece of popcorn. Jules offered some to me. I took the whole ass bowl just so Fox couldn’t have anymore.

“Tell me about the woman,” Jules said.

She thought she was going to shock me, but I knew both of these two asshats better than they knew themselves. They couldn’t rattle me.

“Fox already told you.”

“He told me there’s a woman and she was in a tree and you rescued her, kept the helmet on and that she lives in the building. You two flirty text constantly.” Jules lifted her chin. “That’s the outline. I want the chapter.”

“There’s no chapter.”

She didn’t know yet that I was seeing the mystery woman tonight. But shit, Fox did. I mentally threatened to castrate him if he said a thing.

“Oh, and he had a date with her tonight.”

Fucker. Hope he wasn’t ever planning on having children. Or sex, ever again. “It’s not a date, it’s a ride. I’m taking someone for a ride on the bike tonight.”

“Someone,” Jules said, “you like, a lot. I can tell.”

“Someone who climbed a tree for her cat and didn’t make me feel like a Kingman for five minutes and I would like those five minutes to continue existing without commentary from my family, thanks.”

Jules ate a piece of popcorn. “She’s your neighbor?”

“She just moved here.”

“For work?”

I should have seen it coming. I’d known Jules my entire life. I knew exactly how she moved through a conversation. The questions that seemed like small talk and were actually load-bearing walls. I should have seen it coming.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Where does she work?”

“Not far from here.”

“Doing what?” She absolutely was not letting me off the hook. Brat. I expected no less, but it had been a while since I’d been under Jules’s scrutiny.

The pause before I answered was too long. I knew it was too long. Jules knew it was too long. Fox was watching the pause like it was a sporting event.

“Dance director.” I had no idea if that was a real title or something I pulled out of my ass. It was vague enough to be any sort of job.

“What’s her name?”

Dammit. This was a losing battle. I could either give in now or await her revenge. Nobody wanted a repeat of the great Cheerios incident of our youth.

“Clover,” I said.

Fox snorted and some half-eaten popcorn flew in my direction. He stared at me, with his mouth hanging open and that WTF look on his face. Jules glanced at Fox, then narrowed her eyes at me and the room went very quiet.

Not Fox-loud quiet. The other kind. Jules had gone still the way she did when she was connecting things, her brain doing the work behind her eyes at a speed that had always been unnerving to watch up close.

She set the popcorn bowl down on the coffee table. That was how I knew it was serious. Jules only put the snacks down when she was serious.

“Clover Freeman,” she said.

Not a question.