The intrusion of a voice, no matter how pleasant or masculine, was not something she’d anticipated. Her brief respite in the Nexus had proven to be so wonderfully mundane that she’d yet to be noticed by anyone, and that was just fine with Jamie. She liked attention of a certain sort, but only when she was seeking it and only from a select few. Mostly, she lived her life in the shadows and appeared to those she happened across to be a creature entirely unlike herself, unless they inspired her to something further.

To date there had only been one man who had managed that and lived, and he was not the man standing before her.

She was curious as to his motivation for asking whether or not she planned to linger, though just how curious she was could be up for debate. She sensed a sort of tension about him, but that was more common than many people would be inclined to believe so she didn’t chase that line of thought just yet. “Well,” she said in the rounded accent that managed to sound American without placing her upbringing in any solid geographical location, “I’d thought I might take this somewhere by the window to read.” She held the book up to him, then smiled a bit. “Why? Afraid I might stink up the place?”