"Really," he insisted. "I thought you had me there for a second. The warm up might have done it. Although if we started the other end I'd have managed a decent turn. Six of one..." he said and shrugged. He was competitive, sure, but it wasn't really that big of a deal.
Dean laughed too and nodded. "Oh yes, the benign meddling is a constant," he said and then paused to consider. "Well, it's mostly benign," he allowed. "Pretty sure the thing with how well she reads people will always be alarming though," he said. The fact that Susan always worked within his triggers meant that Dean was a lot more forgiving of her behaviour than he might have been with someone who didn't.
"As a tip: she rarely responds badly to bribery by food. I mean, mostly it's Seamus I end up feeding, but he can't always handle his spices so well, so Susan is the one who gets things when I get over enthusiastic with chilli or something," he said. He had a feeling his talking about Seamus had sort of sounded a bit overly fond and was hoping to yank the conversation back away from him by bringing the tale back to Susan.