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“I asked about the collection.”

“You asked whether I slept with Blaire.”

“I did not ask you that.”

“Ok…you just made me clarify that I didn’t.”

I look at my brother across the desk.

“Are you finished now?”

Sebastian smiles. “For the moment.”

I return my attention to lunch, making it clear that I’m done discussing Blaire Wilson.

The problem is that Sebastian knows me well enough to recognize when I’m interested in something, and apparently not nearly well enough to know when he should leave it alone.

The collection report reaches my desk shortly after three-fifteen. Margaret has flagged a discrepancy between an older valuation and the most recent appraisal of a nineteenth-century silver presentation box. It’s minor and well within the collection team’s authority to resolve. I could return the report with a question in the margin, send Margaret an email, or do nothing and wait for the revised documentation. Instead, I read it twice, close the file, and take it with me. There’s no point pretending I don’t know why.

When I enter the library, Blaire is standing at one of the central tables with several photographs spread in front of her. Her dark hair is loose today, falling in soft waves over the shoulders of a fitted blue dress, and a pencil rests between her fingers as she makes a note in the margin of a report.

She looks up.

Something changes in her face before she catches it. It’s slight—a brief pause, the smallest lift of her brows—but I see it.

“Mr. Kensington,” Blaire says, setting down her pencil.

The formality is deliberate. I hear it immediately.

“Ross was fine before.”

Her mouth curves slightly.

“I wasn’t sure if library hours changed the rules.”

“They don’t.”

“Good to know.”

I approach the table and place the report beside her photographs.

“Margaret flagged a difference between two valuations on the Wetherby box.”

Blaire lowers her eyes to the page.

“She sent this to you?”

“She copied me.”

“And you brought it downstairs yourself?”

I meet her gaze. “I was coming this way.”

There’s a pause before Blaire nods, although the faint amusement in her eyes tells me she remembers hearing that explanation before.

“I see,” she says.

I suspect she sees considerably more than I’d prefer. Blaire draws the report closer and reads for several seconds before pointing to one line.