The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback (Astra and Zayne) novel Chapter 227

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

55 vouchers

I dragged a hand over my jaw. The entire idea was fucking insane. Isla was taller than Astra had been, curvier, and different enough that I’d stood directly in front of her twice without seeing the girl I remembered.

Ten years could explain some of that, but this was Astra. I had known every expression on her face, every shift in her voice and little habit she probably hadn’t realized I noticed. If she were standing in front of me again, I should have known without having to question it, which made the fact that I was questioning it at all fucking irritating.

A knock against the open door pulled me from my thoughts, and I found Claire waiting outside with her tablet.

“Your two-thirty is waiting.”

“I’ll be there.”

She started to leave, but I called her back. “Claire, I want everything we can legally obtain on Isla Smith.”

The request earned the slightest pause. “For competitive intelligence?”

“Yes.”

Not entirely a lie.

“What specifically?”

“Her professional history in New Zealand. Education, previous positions, publications, corporate affiliations. Anything publicly available.”

“How far back?”

“As far as it goes.”

Claire entered the request into her tablet and left, while I remained beside the conference table wondering when curiosity about a woman I’d met twice had turned into ordering a fucking background search on her.

I didn’t have an answer I liked.

Work occupied most of the afternoon without doing much to keep Isla out of my head, especially when the memory of her backed against the glass kept finding its way into whatever I was supposed to be concentrating

She hadn’t been afraid of me. I’d felt the nerves in the way her breathing changed, but there had been desire beneath them too, unmistakable enough that remembering it made me want to know what would have happened if Rebecca had arrived a few minutes later.

I’d been close enough to kiss her.

Close enough to find out whether that smart fucking mouth felt as good against mine as I’d spent half the meeting imagining it would.

From there, my thoughts went straight to places they had no business going while I was sitting in a meeting.

3/7

9:46 Fri, Aug 28

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

》༦

95

55 vouchers

I wanted that tight fucking skirt pushed higher up her thighs, my hands locked around those curvy hips. Wanted to know whether all that clever confidence survived once I had her pinned beneath me instead of sitting across a conference table, whether she’d still try to argue when I was buried between her legs or simply open for me the way her mouth had started to when I leaned in.

My cock hardened painfully against my zipper, forcing me to shift in my chair and drag my concentration back to the restructuring projections being discussed ten feet away.

For fuck’s sake.

By the time Claire returned to my office after six, I’d managed to get through the rest of the afternoon without mentally stripping Isla Smith again, although the thin folder she placed beside my hand immediately brought her back to the center of my thoughts.

“That was fast.”

“Her professional history was straightforward.”

I opened the folder while Claire summarized what they’d found. Isla had attended university in Auckland before building a steady career in business intelligence and analytics, moving through several positions and promotions before Sinclair recruited her.

Nothing in the records looked manufactured, and there was nothing connecting the woman in them to Astra Hawthorne.

I went through the dates again anyway.

The file gave me nothing to justify the reaction I’d had to her from the moment we touched, or explain why being around Isla Smith sometimes felt like standing inches from an answer I should already fucking know.

“Anything unusual?”

“Nothing that stood out.”

I closed the folder but kept my hand on it. “Keep looking. Public records only. Anything connected to her life in New Zealand before Sinclair.”

Claire hesitated. “How far back?”

“All of it.”

She nodded and left me staring at Isla’s name across the tab, still unsure what the fuck I expected Claire to find. Competitive intelligence justified knowing who Sinclair had placed across the table from us, but it didn’t explain why I wanted to dig through years of one analyst’s life until I found whatever my brain seemed convinced was hiding there.

My phone vibrated beside the folder before I could follow that thought any further.

LUNA: Can I ask you something weird?

ME: That depends on your definition of weird.

4/7

9:46 Fri, Aug 28

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

LUNA: Have you ever had someone from your past suddenly come back into your life?

95

65 vouchers

My thumb hovered over the screen. Of all the questions she could have asked tonight, she’d landed on the one subject already taking up too much space in my head.

ME: Possibly.

LUNA: Did it make things better or worse?

Astra came to mind, with Isla following close enough behind to irritate me.

ME: Worse.

LUNA: That’s unfortunate.

ME: Why?

Her answer took longer.

LUNA: Because I was hoping you’d tell me it gets less complicated.

ME: Who did you see?

LUNA: Someone from a very long time ago.

ME: Someone you wanted to see?

Nearly a minute passed before her answer appeared.

LUNA: That’s the problem. I don’t know.

ME: Did they recognize you?

LUNA: No.

That answer held me longer than it should have. Luna had told me almost nothing about her life, and there were a thousand reasons someone from her past might not recognize her, none of which had anything to do with me. I still found myself asking:

ME: Does that bother you?

LUNA: More than it should.

A quiet laugh escaped me at the realization that I wasn’t the only one dealing with an irrational problem tonight.

ME: Then maybe you wanted them to recognize you.

She didn’t answer, and after two minutes of watching the conversation remain unchanged, another notification appeared across the top of the screen.

5/7

6/7

9:46 Fri, Aug 28

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

MOM: I went back to the boutique today.

The smile Luna had pulled from me disappeared as I sat forward.

ME: What happened?

MOM: I asked Camille to let me see the security footage from last Saturday.

ME: And?

MOM: I wasn’t imagining her.

My hand tightened around the phone.

ME: Send it to me.

MOM: I already asked Camille for a copy. She’s having security pull the full recording.

ME: You’re sure it was her?

Mom took longer to answer.

MOM: I don’t know. The camera doesn’t show her face clearly enough.

Another message followed before I could respond.

MOM: But I saw something I didn’t notice that day.

ME: What?

AG

55 vouchers

MOM: She saw me. She was looking toward the boutique, and the moment I came outside, she turned around and rushed off.

I read the message again, and for the first time, the connection I’d spent days trying to dismiss didn’t seem so fucking irrational. Maybe my instincts had been trying to tell me something after all.

9:46 Fri, Aug 28

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

If Only He Knew

ISLA

I had been staring at the same message for nearly three minutes.

DADDY NORTH: Then maybe you wanted them to recognize you.

95

55 vouchers

The anonymous man on my phone had somehow put his finger on the one thing I’d been refusing to fully admit to myself, but I had a much more immediate problem occupying my thoughts.

I’d spent the ride home, dinner and half my evening remembering Zane’s body almost touching mine, one hand braced beside my head while he stood close enough to send my heart completely out of control. The clean scent of his skin had stayed with me almost as stubbornly as the memory of his eyes dropping to my mouth, and every time the scene replayed, the ache between my thighs became harder to ignore.

My phone vibrated against my stomach before I could lose myself in it again, and I reached for it much too quickly.

DADDY NORTH: You disappeared.

There was something deeply unfair about having Zane occupy my thoughts while another man waited for me to finish talking about him.

LUNA: Thinking.

His answer came almost immediately.

DADDY NORTH: Dangerous.

I snorted.

LUNA: You’re hilarious.

DADDY NORTH: I know.

LUNA: That wasn’t a compliment.

DADDY NORTH: Still counts.

A smile tugged at my mouth despite myself.

Daddy North belonged to one of the few parts of my life that had never demanded anything real from me. He didn’t know my name, where I worked or who I’d been before New Zealand, while I knew equally little about him.

That had always been the point.

Somewhere along the way, we’d started talking when there was no audience watching, and somehow that had become almost as addictive as everything else we did.

1/4

9:46 Fri, Aug 28

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

His earlier message still sat above our conversation.

DADDY NORTH: Then maybe you wanted them to recognize you.

I hesitated before finally giving him the truth he’d somehow managed to drag out of me.

LUNA: Maybe a small part of me did.

DADDY NORTH: Why?

ន

95

55 vouchers

Lying seemed pointless now.

LUNA: Because I recognized him immediately.

His response took longer this time.

DADDY NORTH: Him.

Shit. I hadn’t told him that, and of course he’d caught it.

LUNA: Congratulations. You have discovered men exist.

DADDY NORTH: Don’t deflect.

LUNA: I’m very good at deflecting.

DADDY NORTH: I’ve noticed.

The wording tugged strangely at something in my memory, but before I could place why, another message appeared.

DADDY NORTH: What happened between you?

At least that was easier to answer.