Kissed My Rival, Hear His Mind novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Co-Leads

Godfrey saw the kiss, finds it funny, and chains the rivals together as co-leads of the Fairmount Library bid; Eli finds the edges of the voice and hears Declan fear the letter.

"My office, Monday, nine o'clock," Godfrey said, pleasantly, to both of them.

He patted Declan's shoulder and Eli's.

Then he went back to his champagne, and the roof started talking again.

Declan walked to the stairwell door at a perfectly even pace.

"Walk. Don't run. He kissed me. Eli Donnelly kissed me. Walk."

Eli stayed by the heater and put his hand over his mouth.

By the time he got downstairs, Declan had already left the party.

Eli took the stairs all the way to the street, and the voice in his head shut off somewhere around the fourth floor.

He stood on the landing and listened to nothing at all.

Monday morning, Godfrey's glass office smelled like cedar and old money.

Godfrey sat behind his desk in a lavender bow tie, with his hands folded over his stomach.

Declan stood at the window with his back to the room.

Eli sat in the leather chair on purpose, because he had decided he wasn't going to apologize.

"Boys," Godfrey said. "I'll be brief, because I'm thrilled."

"Thrilled isn't the word I'd choose," Declan said, to the glass.

"Don't look at him. If I look at him I'll say something. If I say something I'll say all of it."

Eli looked at the back of Declan's neck.

The collar of his white shirt sat exactly where it always did, clean and sharp against his skin.

Eli had never noticed the small pale scar under his left ear.

"Craig was filming," Godfrey said. "I asked him to send it to me, for the archives."

Declan's shoulders went stiff.

"Godfrey," Eli said, "it was a party."

"It was theatre, Eli. And it taught me something. Neither of you has ever let the other win anything." He smiled. "So Fairmount is yours, jointly."

That brought Declan around.

"Co-leads," Declan said.

"One team, one drawing set, one war room on the ninth floor. The board picks in seven weeks." Godfrey turned a pen over once on his blotter. "The winner gets the seat. The loser gets a reference from me that is, let us say, cool."

"You can't make us share a drawing set," Eli said.

"I just did."

His voice was the same warm baritone it always was.

Eli had worked for the man for six years, and he couldn't remember ever hearing it sound so entirely like a hand closing.

"Now," Godfrey said, and his eyes slid to Declan, only for a second. "I trust this will be no problem for you. Given everything."

Something moved behind Declan's face.

"Given everything," Declan repeated, level and cold. "Of course."

The voice in Eli's head had gone very quiet.

Then it said, "Please. Please, not in front of him."

Eli looked at Declan, who was looking at nobody.

"Not the letter. Don't say the word letter. He's going to say the word."

Godfrey said nothing.

He only smiled.

"That's all," he said.

They went out together into the open studio, with forty people suddenly very busy at their monitors.

Declan walked three paces ahead of Eli, his back as straight as a ruler.

By the plot table he stopped.

"You'll want the east corner," he said without turning around. "The light is better."

"I don't want anything from you."

"Noted."

"Nobody has ever been so rude to me. I want to put my hands in his hair."

Eli swallowed a laugh so hard it hurt.

Declan finally turned, one eyebrow up.

"Something amusing, Donnelly?"

"Just my coffee."

Eli walked toward the break room, and the voice trailed after him, unhappy and fond.

"He's laughing. He's laughing, and his dimple is out."

Eli counted his steps without meaning to.

At about the nineteenth, the voice cut off.

He stood there in the hallway with his heart going.

Twenty feet, then.

Whatever this was, it had edges.

And the first thing he'd ever heard in it, other than the wanting, was a man afraid of a letter Eli had never seen.

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