She quickly looked back at the man speaking to her."Minister Lan, please forgive me for interrupting. I wonder, wouldyou mind terribly taking a small...break so that I might be able toconfer with the Archduchess? I promise, it will only take a moment,"she said apologetically."Crap," thought Asta. "What did I do?" Of course, your Majesty, please, take all the time you need," he saida bit confused but pleasantly enough."You are very kind Minister, thank you," she said getting to her feet.The. "You're staying! Good. I've got a hot chicken stir fry with rice and veggies." I wasn't planning on staying the night tonight, but someone made it very hard to say no." She has that effect on me, too. Don't feel bad." I grinned at Jules."Don't blame me. I just asked nicely and he said yes." You stopped right in the middle of certain things and refused to move again until I agreed. It was blackmail, plain and simple." You say blackmail, I say po-tah-to. One more day away from school won't kill. "To me it's more than boyfriend-girlfriend." I know. It's more than that to me too," she said and studied my face. "But you're scared that if you do come onto her, she'll turn you down."I rolled my eyes. "That has nothing to do with it."Her eyes narrowed. "Yes, it does. You really don't believe she would accept you."I had a lot of things I could say about that, but I held my tongue. Jordan never understood my self-image problems, even though she knew I had them. For that matter, I didn't. ”“You know, I’m not sure I need my little sister’s help to get laid.”“You’re a dumb boy,” Stephanie smirked. “You need lots of help.”“So you keep telling me.”“That’s because you keep forgetting! I read your journal while you were swimming. You had sex all night with Becky and then broke up with her?”“No, you have that backwards. We broke up and then had sex all night.”“That makes no sense!” Stephanie protested.“Actually, it does,” I replied. “I wonder if you’re as smart as you think you.