This is on the back cover of Evan's Castle, so it must be true....

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~ Excerpt #1 from Evan’s Castle, by Tracy Fabre, ©2008 ~

        “You know what,” I said. “I think it’s time you told me something about yourself.”
        Evan raised one eyebrow. “Oh, yes?”
        “You have somehow wormed a lot of my secrets out of me, and you’ve come to my rescue with both legal and illegal skills. I feel like an open book.”  Okay, that was a bit of  a lie, but he did know a lot more about me than I ever expected he would.  “Yet you, on the other hand, remain a closed book.”
        He leaned back in his chair, smiling speculatively.  “What don’t you know? Read an article.”
        “Such modesty,” I tsked. “I know the basics, yes.  You learned Latin in the womb, you built a hydrogen car from scratch on your first birthday—before your nap—and by the time you were five you'd translated the complete works of Shakespeare into Finnish, and constructed an equation for time-travel that allowed you to go back and prove that dinosaurs became extinct because of second-hand smoke.” 
        Evan was laughing. “I was a wonder, wasn’t I?”
        “But tell me something I don’t know. Tell me something you wouldn’t tell an interviewer.”
        “Ah,” he said, still amused. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for.”
        “Something to explain… you.”

              ~ Excerpt #2 from Evan’s Castle, by Tracy Fabre, ©2008 ~  

        “So why did you take this job?”
        I blinked. “What do you mean?”
        He grinned. “What do you mean, what do I mean? You know what I mean. I looked at your resume and cover letter. You ran an entire section. Your supervisors called you a gem in your evaluations. Your whole career has been one of increasing responsibility.”
        “Well, I…” I stopped short, and stared at him intently. “My evaluations were not part of my application materials.” Nor would they have been released by any of my previous employers.
        Evan had the grace to look a little embarrassed for a moment, but he rallied. “This is the age of the Internet, Miss Kane.”
        I laughed. “So you hacked into their computer system and read my evaluations? That is so… I don’t know what that’s so. Wrong? Illegal?”
        He said simply, “I wanted to know what you were like, professionally. You were going to be here in my lab every day, and I wanted to know who I’d be dealing with. If there had been something bad to know, you weren’t going to tell me—and neither were your employers. But that’s not the point. The point is, now I want to know why you wanted this job.”
        I leaned back in my chair and surveyed him. What had I just learned about him, this scientific marvel of a man? That he was not above sheer nosiness? That he was not above unethical behavior? Fascinating. “It surprises me that you would do that kind of thing, given your reputation.”
        “Why?” His face was guileless, his gaze more curious than anything else. “Is it so unfathomable? I didn’t read your email, or look up your financial records. I didn’t eavesdrop on your last date or follow you around to see where you go at night. I just looked at what your supervisors had to say about you. In truth, I wasn’t even expecting to read anything negative. I just wasn’t expecting to read anything so glowing.”
        “Why?” I echoed him. “Is that so unfathomable? You barely know me. I could be utterly fabulous.”
        “That’s most certainly true,” he agreed, smiling. “I wasn’t suggesting that you might not be exactly that. It’s just not typical for an apparently excellent manager to give it up to become a solitary worker in a warehouse.” He looked around the lab, shaking his head. “And I could flatter myself that my professional reputation was the lure, but you applied for a position that you thought was just one of many research librarians in the Center itself. No glory there. And the pay wouldn’t have been better than you were making back home.”
        “I thought you said you didn’t look at my financial records?” I inquired.
        “I didn’t,” he said firmly. “But I know what we were offering for the job you applied for, and I know you had to be making more than that where you were.”
        We gazed at each other for a moment, and then I finally said, “Look. Some people don’t understand why you would choose to put yourself away from society, and some people think you have exactly the right idea. Some people love to be in charge, to rise up through the ranks, and some people tire of responsibility and need a break, and when an opportunity comes along, they take it. I had the opportunity. I took it. Frankly, despite my initial reservations about working so closely with you in what amounts to a windowless box, I’d started to think this was the best possible turn of events for me.”
        Evan was still just looking at me, as if I were speaking some other language simultaneously and he was trying to translate that one into English as well. Finally he asked, “Do you still think that?”
        “You mean since this conversation began?”
        He smiled. “Yes.”
        I considered it. “Well, like you said, and oddly enough I do believe you, it’s not like you pored through anything really personal. Of course, I might feel differently if there had been something negative in the evaluations.”
        “So might I.” He straightened up, and put his hands in his pockets. “But if there had been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because you wouldn’t be in my employ at all.”
        Of course not. “And did you hack into any of the other candidates’ personnel records?” I inquired archly.
        Evan gave me a slow smile. “Nope. None of them were worth the trouble.” He started down the steps.
        “Hang on, there, professor.” I went to the head of the stairs, and studied him. “Why was I worth the trouble, based on a four-minute meeting during which I referred to you as a blowfish?”
        He looked out across the lab for a moment, and then smiled back up at me. “Because in a four-minute meeting, during which I acted like a blowfish, you had enough gumption to call me on it.”
        My eyebrows went up. “You like being talked back to?”
        “No. I hate it. But you were right. And that made it okay.” He went down to the main level and headed for his work table, looking back only once to add, “And when I say ‘okay’ I don’t mean you should make a habit of it.”
        But he had smiled, so I called down, “Then don’t make a habit of being wrong!”