Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 147128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 736(@200wpm)___ 589(@250wpm)___ 490(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 736(@200wpm)___ 589(@250wpm)___ 490(@300wpm)
He didn’t own a cat.
His frown got deeper, but he turned away.
I sighed.
‘Charlie, right? How about you?’ William asked and my heart skipped a beat. The desire to flee was real, but I stood still. I’d faced scarier things than William Carter, I was sure.
I cleared my throat and chanced a peek his way. When I saw that he was reaching for some papers on his desk, I quickly answered. ‘Working with three different teams and I have three clients on my own as well.’
‘Three? Any reason for that?’ he asked as he reached for a pen this time, still not glancing my way.
With my throat feeling so dry, I had to force out the words. ‘A reason for what?’
Then he met my gaze over Stan’s shoulder, and I didn’t know what to do. A slow heat flooded my chest and my heart went into a frantic beat. Also nausea… that was a problem as well, but I didn’t think I’d drop to a new level of low and puke in front of him. Yet, while I was feeling all kinds of crazy things all at once, I didn’t see even a hint of recognition in his eyes. I forced myself to relax a little.
‘Any reason why you’re handling so many clients on your own?’
His voice was so deep and I couldn’t quite be sure if it was that smooth all those years ago when we had spent hours talking about anything and everything. His voice had been one of the things that made him so irresistible for me back then. Deep and confident. And when he talked he always used to look into your eyes, catching you with more than just his words. Like he cared about you. And the way he talked, the way he just… talked.
Suddenly it was weird that I knew and remembered a lot of things about him, about his life. Uncomfortable even. I felt like a stranger spying into someone else’s world. Privy to their private thoughts.
Like his siblings, and his mom. I even knew about them. How one of his sisters had just gotten married back then and four months in they were already expecting. How their family had struggled when they lost their father to colon cancer when William was only fourteen. How his mom stayed awake some nights worrying about her other daughter who had gone through a rough breakup with an abusive boyfriend, so when William dropped by or stayed over, he always made her favourite hot cocoa and sat with her in silence into the night. How he knew she had sacrificed a lot of things just so her kids could have a chance at a good life and how hard he worked so he could make sure she was proud of him. How he worked as a delivery guy for a pizzeria during college so he could help out his mom in small ways even though she didn’t want his help. And how excited he was to become an uncle and was secretly hoping it was a girl. The life he had hoped to create for himself. I knew details about his world that it seemed like he had only shared with me. A stranger he had met one late night in a forgotten diner.
Me. A complete stranger who had the biggest crush after only a week of talking to him. And now he was here, right in front of me.
‘Yes?’ he asked, and I realized I’d been just staring at him and now everyone was looking at me.
My voice was a little scratchy when I finally spoke. ‘One of them insists on me being their only contact. She doesn’t like to let people in on her personal life. The other two… I don’t have a good answer, my dad, sorry Douglas… Mr Davis, I mean… wanted me to take them.’
He nodded and broke our brief eye contact to look at the papers in his hand again. ‘I need to take a look at all your assignments and determine if there should be changes made. If it’s not a crisis situation that requires our involvement, we’ll see if you can be spared or not.’
He looked up and met everyone’s curious gazes one by one. I took half a step to my left to stand slightly behind Stan again so he could only see a quarter of me. ‘After those assignments are done, you’ll only work on this team. And don’t worry, I’m planning on keeping us busy.’
He straightened up from his desk and walked to stand behind it.
‘We’ll be spending a lot of time together in the upcoming days, so we might as well get to know each other a little better. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to take you all out to lunch and go over a few things while we’re at it.’