Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
His eyes narrow, and I can see in the depths of his stare that he too is thinking of that night. Voices lift behind him, laughter rattling about, bouncing about the small space, but everything fades but me and him. He is studying me, oh, so intensely, and I have this sense of him trying to read me, figure me out, understand me, and I don’t look away. I don’t know what he will find, but I pray it tells him I never meant to deceive him. I never meant for things to go so wildly wrong between us. The car halts, and abruptly, it empties. The crowd is gone, and the doors are shutting again, but we have not moved. I can smell him—spicy, woodsy, perfection—and I remember the morning after our night together—washing him off of me and doing so with so much regret.
“Ethan,” I whisper, not even sure what I plan to say, but suddenly, the car halts again, and the floor indicator dings.
“Your floor,” he says, and I watch the coldness seep into his eyes, and I do not understand why. “I’ll see you in the boardroom tomorrow, Sofia,” he adds, and then he steps away from me, leaving me no option but to throw myself at him or get off the car.
I get off.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My car is to arrive at exactly eight thirty in the morning.
By eight, I have too many cups of room service coffee down me for my own good, considering I’m bouncing off the walls nervous. I’m literally pacing from window to couch, window to couch—stand, sit, stand, sit. All the while, I’m practicing my pitch, repeating it over and over in my head and speaking it to the empty space around me. Getting out of the room might help me, but that’s a no go. I can’t risk getting even more worked up by running into Ethan before the meeting. Of course, the fear that I’m sharing a ride with him to the meeting is real, but it’s doubtful. I just don’t believe he’d do that to me right before the presentation.
But at this point, I can’t rule out anything.
I didn’t believe we were staying at the same hotel either, or that he was staying at a hotel at all. I’m reminded of what the whirlwind of running into him made me forget—he supposedly owns an apartment here in the city. If that’s true, he chose to be here with me, but I just find that hard to believe. I don’t believe for a minute he’d stay in a hotel just to be near me. He doesn’t strike me as a man who needs to chase a woman, not that I think he’s that into me anyway, or mock someone so low on the totem pole of life compared to him, as I am, for that matter. He’s not a man who plays games, or that wasn’t my impression of him in any of our encounters.
He must not really own an apartment in the city any longer, I reason. Maybe he never did. The truth is, I don’t know a lot about Ethan. Maybe he is all about games. There was certainly some game-playing in our sexual encounter, now that I think about it more open-mindedly. But does that even really translate to real life? More importantly, into business?
That doesn’t feel even a little right to me. No, I do not know him well, but that night in Hawaii, when we were talking, I sensed a real need for honesty in him, and that’s why my hidden identity was a betrayal that I believe he took like a sword to the gut. There was a sense of freedom between us that night, as if we were safe together, in ways we would not be with anyone else. And yes, it had a lot to do with the nature of the encounter I assumed to be one night, but what if…what if it was more than that?
I shake myself out of that headspace.
It was never more than one night between us, and for me to start creating that story in my head right before this meeting is just insanity at its finest.
The phone on the nightstand rings, and I rush and pick it up and hear, “Your car is ready, Ms. Cameron.”
I don’t give myself time to overthink what I’ve already overthought way too much. I grab my purse and portfolio, and head for the door. A few minutes later, I’m at the front door, being directed to a black sedan, and that’s when butterflies erupt in my belly. He could be in that car. He could be…he’s not. The driver opens the door for me, and I find the backseat spectacularly, miserably empty.
I’ll see him again, and he’ll be my judge and jury.