"I don't know." She shifted, uncomfortable. "I guess Nadine, maybe Feeney'll probably be doing a family deal, but I'll run it by him."
"What about Louise and Charles?"
"Sure. Fine. Are we really doing this?"
"Too late to turn back." He kissed her again. "Keep in touch, will you? I'm caught up now." He strolled back into his office, shut the door.
"I love McNab."
Even as she turned toward Peabody, Eve could feel the muscle under her right eye vibrating toward a twitch. "Oh man. Do you have to do this?"
"Yeah. I love McNab," Peabody repeated. "It took me a while to resize it, or get there, however it works. But he's the one. If you were to drop down dead, and Roarke decided I could comfort him with wild
sex I probably wouldn't do it. Probably. But even if
I did, I'd still love McNab."
"At least I'm dead in your sexual fantasy."
"It's only fair. I wouldn't cheat on my partner. So I probably wouldn't have sex with Roarke, should the opportunity arise, unless both you and McNab were killed in a freak accident."
"Thanks, Peabody. I feel a lot better now."
''And we'd probably wait a decent interval. Like two weeks. If we could control ourselves."
"It just gets better and better," Eve remarked.
"In a way, we'd really be celebrating your lives, and our love for you both."
"Maybe you're the ones who die in a freak accident," Eve tossed back. "Then me and McNab... No, Jesus. No." She visibly shuddered. "I don't love you that much."
"Aw, that's not very nice. Too bad for you, because McNab's an airjack in the sack."
"Shut up now. Save yourself."
"Brookhollow Academy," Peabody said in dignified tones. "Established 2022."
"Just a couple years before Avril was born? Who's the founder? Put the data on-screen."
"On screen one."
"Private educational institution," Eve read, scanning. "For girls. Just girls. Founded by Jonah Delecourt Wilson-secondary run on him, Peabody."
"On that."
"Grades one through twelve, full boarding. Accredited by the International Association of Independent Schools. Ranked third in U.S., fifteenth worldwide. An eighty-acre campus. That's a lot of ground. Six-to-one student-to-instructor ratio."
"Serious individual attention."
"College preparatory, full housing for students and staff. An Intentional Community. Huh, some phrase. A challenging, yet supportive environment. Blah, blah. Foundation for Brookhollow College, an: blah about that. Tuition . .. Holy Mother of God."
"Wowzer!" Peabody's eyes widened. "That's a semester. That's a semester for a six-year-old."
"Get me a comparison to another top-level boarding school."
"Coming up. What are we chasing here, Dallas?"
"I don't know. But we're gaining. Double," she replied. "Brookhollow's priced double a comparative facility."