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To that, he shot me a smirk.

“The Greeks did everything nude: exercise, philosophy, occasionally politics. I’ve had a serious conversation about irrigation while a man scrubbed his ass with a sponge on a stick. Half a dozen naked witches hardly factor.”

“You are an enigma, Silas Ashford.”

“It’s hard not to be when you’ve been around as long as I have. What do you have there?”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry, I’m still recovering from all the unexpected nether regions.” That got a small snicker out of the vampire. “These are samples for your merch line. I wanted to get your approval before I give them the go-ahead to do a full run.”

After our meeting with Mr. Lane, I’d been up for hours trying to get a good-looking landing page set up announcing the merch drop in three days. To get the pre-orders up, I needed to have some high-quality pictures taken of all the merch. To do that, I needed Silas to sign off on them.

“Baseball caps?” Silas asked, plucking one off the pile. “Think an umbrella might be more appropriate.”

“Our demographics show that you have followers in all the states, including the sunny ones,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “And Mr. Lane wants everything on as many items as possible. From hoodies and bags to stickers and bookmarks.”

Okay.

Fine.

The bookmarks were totally my addition. But it made sense since Silas and ‘Madison’ argued about romance novels. I figured they might appeal to the other romance-reading listeners out there.

Silas sifted through the items, making noncommittal noises that had my anxiety ratcheting up. If he didn’t like this rollout, I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to produce more designs by the deadline.

“I think this one needs the design to be larger,” he said, holding out the hoodie to me. “Other than that, I think they’re all good. For something as shallow and wasteful as radio show merchandise anyway.”

I was going to let that last part slide.

“Really? You’re okay with the bookmarks?” I asked, brows scrunching.

They had a really lovely design of a couple embracing on the front (full-on bodice-ripper perfection) and on the back, it proclaimed: You deserve the love you read about.

“It is obviously not a delusion I believe in. But if there are those out there who do, why shouldn’t I profit from their naiveté?”

“Do you practice that cynicism, or is it all off the cuff?”

“Oh, Maggie, don’t tell me you are a victim of those… instruction manuals for disappointment.”

“Oh, these?” I asked. I plucked the book Grum had given me the day before out from a pile of paperwork. It had a particularly suggestive cover, with the heroine with her arms wrapped around the hero’s bulging thigh, her head turned up and level with the man’s crotch.

“Maggie…” Silas sighed hard. “I wouldn’t have thought you so gullible.”

I was getting so used to arguing with him on the topic of love that my knee-jerk reaction was to snap back. It took actual effort to tamp it down. But I couldn’t give him any reason to think that I and Madison were the same person.

“A little fantasy never hurt anyone.” I shrugged.

“So long as you see it as a fantasy, I guess I can’t fault your logic. Well, I’m on in five minutes,” he said, putting the shirt back down on the pile. “Thanks for your work on this. I know you had too much on your plate already.”

It felt good to be acknowledged like that. Maybe especially so from him. Because, sure, others like Steve were always saying I did too much while piling on. Silas never really cost me anything.

Well, not that he knew about anyway.

I grabbed my tablet, radio, and phone, then rushed off to the storage closet before anyone could see me.

I listened as I got some work done on my tablet while keeping an eye on the comments.

Is it just me or is it getting kind of boring?

I wish #SilMad would stop being so philosophical and talk more personally.