Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

“Only a little.” Bringing up Theo’s relationship with Connor will get him fired on the spot. Loren’s protectiveness towards me circles around like an eclipse. It’s always there, waiting to darken the skies.

Theo watches me carefully, cautious and knowing. I hold the string to his fate, sheers practically glinting in my grasp. His storm cloud eyes are benign, a tornado that never touches down but lingers uncertainly before vacuuming into the sky.

He’s the guppy.

I swivel back to Lo. “We knew each other through Model UN and Quiz Bowl.” I don’t cut Theo’s string. I angle towards him again. “You were their literature trump card.”

He nods, his shoulders falling. “And poetry.”

“Huh,” Lo says, almost bored by the knowledge. His cell rings, and he checks it, making his way to the door. “Theo can take care of whatever you need, Rose. I’ll be back in a half hour.” He puts the phone to his ear, exiting the office and disappearing down the hall for privacy.

The call is either from his father or Lily. Maybe Ryke.

Theo scratches his head again in thought. Then he gestures to me. “I can take care of any marketing needs. Anything else, you can call your assistant.” That was rather assertive. He pauses and rocks on his loafers. “I graduated summa cum laude from Yale.” He nods a couple times, scanning the office to avoid my gaze.

Yale. Ugh.

Why couldn’t he stay there and not enter my stratosphere?

And I graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, which is like running through quicksand with fifty-pound shackles. In comparison, Yale is like being thrown into a pool with a lifeguard. Connor’s college is easier than both, but he didn’t attend the University of Pennsylvania for academics. He went for the people. It had the Ivy League badge of pride, but most importantly housed large quantities of trust fund babies that he needed to meet. People like Patrick Nubell of Nubell Cookies. Or Loren Hale. And my sister.

After a long moment of silence, Theo points to the chair. “Should I?”

“By all means,” I wave him on with a saccharine smile.

He drags the chair closer to the desk. I stiffen some, not predicting this. I pluck a pen out of a Hale Co. mug, rolling it between my fingers. Connor used to tell me little things about Faust, only after we started dating. He said that all the boys talked about prep school girls from Dalton, Pavawich, and Vorwell. He said that rumors circulated about me since he often sought me out during academic conferences.

He said that some were false. Others were true. He only believed in the ones that I verified.

I just hoped that these rumors never extended to Yale after my adolescence. That would be disastrously sad.

After Theo sits, he runs his clammy palms on his pants.

How many rumors does he believe in? I bet he’s already shaped who I am from office and tabloid gossip, the reality show, and whatever remnants I left during childhood.

“Do I make you nervous?” I ask outright.

He laughs once. “Yeah.” He nods, more to himself. “Kind of. You’re…you.” I’m not one-hundred percent positive the context of his answer.

“I don’t know what that means.” I try to emulate Connor, keeping my voice even and unreadable, but I end up snapping the words.

He opens his mouth and then closes it slowly, rethinking. He still evades my eyes.

“Don’t hold back,” I tell him. “If I wanted you out of this office, I would’ve told Loren about your relationship with my husband.”

Theo strokes the armrests a couple times, contemplating. “Thank you for that. This job…it wasn’t easy to come by. Hale Co. runs on nepotism, and what I have in intelligence, I lack in connections.” He pauses, finally staring straight at me. The tornado’s funnel lowers beneath the cloud line. “Connor used to say it’s as bad as having a 1.0 GPA.”

“He insulted you.” No surprise there.

“He insults everyone, but you probably know that.” He clears his throat again.

“Stop doing that.” My skin crawls at the noise. “Unless you’re a cat.”

“Excuse me?” He frowns.

I roll my eyes. He is not my husband, not even marginally. “You sound like you’re coughing up a hairball, Theo.”

Color drains a little from his cheeks, and he shifts, setting his ankle on his knee. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t hold back,” I remind him. “Why do I make you nervous?”

“You…” He rakes my face, absorbing my fiery glare. “You were the talk of Faust for a while.” He pauses too long.

I wave him on.

He nods again. “We never considered Dalton a threat at Model UN, not until you appeared on their team. You almost beat us, and the guys couldn’t stop talking about this girl.” His gaze drifts as he pools his memories. “The heiress to the Fizzle empire had more knowledge than five of us combined. Back then everyone expected you to be dimwitted. You were a girl.” Fuck yes, I am a girl. “You dressed like it took you five hours to get ready.” I do love fashion. “And you were rich.” That too.

I shake my head. “It’s tragic that it took me for all of you to learn that girls can be feminine and smart.” Had I known this, I think I would’ve broken into Faust and taped portraits of women who’ve inspired me all over their hallways. Coco Chanel among them.

“I agree,” he says.

“So you’re nervous because I’m a confident woman.”

He hesitates as if there’s more. “There were rumors about you.” When he rubs his neck, his sleeve slides up, revealing a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, maybe the start of a larger design.

“Like what?”

“You stabbed a doll with scissors and wrote on its forehead.” He squints to recall the words. “Something like…I won’t take care of this unless…something.”

I remember. “I won’t care for an inanimate object unless the boys do it too,” I tell him.

“So it’s true?”

“That one is. I don’t know the other rumors you’ve all conjured about me.” I’m sure some are overdramatic, even for me.

He looks to the ceiling, as though it’ll help him think. “There was one that you were addicted to cocaine. You seemed a little…” He pauses briefly off my glower. “…high-strung.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I can’t simply be this way. I have to have a cocaine addiction?

He nods. “And then the rumor that your father set you up in an arranged marriage when you were little.”

“What?” I balk. Connor never told me that.

“You didn’t really date. At least that’s what we heard from Dalton guys, so it just kind of spread.”

I frown. “No one thought that I could’ve been a lesbian?” This seems like the less theatrical conclusion.

“You always wore high heels,

” he says.

I grit my teeth. There are just too many stereotypes to weed through. “I could’ve been a proud lesbian wearing high heels,” I retort. “For being so smart, all of you are annoyingly stupid.” So I was too feminine to be a lesbian in their eyes, another stereotype to chew on.

“I didn’t believe any of that,” he says. “I don’t think anyone who really used their brains did, but most rumors are usually unsubstantiated and cruel.”

He’s not awful.

“This was so long ago,” he says, sitting up in the chair. “It’s all just prep school stuff.”

“Yale—”

“Is different,” he cuts me off with a slight grimace. “The people that cared enough to know you by name saw you as a trust fund baby, being handed your father’s soda company. It was a…different atmosphere. Faust guys didn’t give a shit where you originated but where you ended up. If it took you one-step to reach the top or someone else five-hundred, it was all the same to us.”

I bounce back and forth between loathing Faust boys and loving them. I’m accustomed to this love-hate conundrum since I’m married to one.

He licks his dry lips, the silence winding more uncomfortable tension. “Are we going to talk about the brand?”

“In a second.” I’m not going to squander this time with him, even if my ribs constrict around my lungs the longer we share each other’s company. “What was Connor like at Faust?”

I’ve never had this information from an unbiased source. I’d love even a small childhood secret. Since Connor has no siblings, the guys he grew up with at Faust are as close to brothers that I’ll ever come by. Unfortunately, Theo is the first I’ve encountered outside of a college event, or else I’d chosen another before him.

Theo meets my inquisitive eyes. “I watched maybe one episode of Princesses of Philly, and Connor patronized almost every single person in the span of ten minutes. No one seemed to care.”

Connor was edited poorly, but not all of it was fake. That probably wasn’t.