Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 105850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
I handed it over and shifted in my seat until I was facing her. She’d done this very thing for me hundreds of times, but there was something unnerving about her doing it in the car.
Chloe’s face was extremely close, and I could see every little thing from the tiny mole at the corner of her right eye to the barest hint of smudged mascara on her eyelid. Her eyes seemed to change colour depending on the light—sometimes they were the cool colour of honey, but other times, like now with the morning rays washing over her beautiful face, they were the colour of sunlight hitting whiskey.
A deep, rich amber you could drown in.
God only knew Chloe St. James was the kind of woman you could get drunk on.
“There,” she said, securing the knot at the base of my throat. “At least you look like a Vice-President of a conglomerate now.”
I cleared my throat, quickly righting myself in my seat as if she could hear the heavy thumping of my heart inside my chest. “Thank you.”
“Let’s go.” She put the car back into gear and pulled away from the dilapidated sign, and I turned my head to look out of the window.
Was I really the only one of us bothered about being so close?
CHAPTER TWELVE – CHLOE
What Is This?!
Lake Buckley was a true vision of peace. The water was still, allowing birds to dive down out of trees and skirt across the top of the surface to drink. Reeds and other water plants billowed in the gentle breeze that swept through the trees surrounding the cottages, and I turned my head into it, tucking my head behind my ear.
If this was place was so peaceful, why did I feel so unsettled?
Ever since I’d pulled the car over half an hour ago to fix Theodore’s tie for him, it’d felt like I had an itch I couldn’t scratch—like when you get one on the awkward part of your back that you can’t reach no matter how you contort yourself.
All I’d done was fix his tie.
I’d done that tons of times and never felt a bloody thing, so why was I restless now? Sure, okay, our faces had been closer than usual because we were in the car, but I didn’t really like his face.
I regularly fantasised about smacking it with something solid, after all.
It wasn’t even as though his expression had been any different, either. His face had been as cool and calm as it always was during work hours, and there hadn’t been the slightest hint of acknowledgement of our closeness in his eyes.
Maybe that was it.
It was his eyes.
Those stupid grey-blue eyes that seemed to shimmer with silver when the light hit them exactly right. I didn’t make a habit of looking too closely into my boss’ eyes, so in that tight space with the early morning rays of sun creeping through the window to glint off his eyes, it’d shaken me a bit.
Yeah.
That had to be it.
I was a sucker for a pretty face, after all, and Theodore Black did have one of the prettiest faces around.
Even if it irritated the crap out of me when he opened his mouth.
It was just the moment and the cramped space in the front of the car. I refused to believe it was anything else, because I couldn’t take the idea that my heart could pitter-patter for that bastard.
Just because he was being nice to me now didn’t erase months of cold, demanding bullshit. It certainly didn’t erase the fact that he’d held me and my resignation hostage for the last month.
I’d seen different sides to him already in just one weekend. Living with someone would do that, especially when your roommate was someone you’d known for a long time. I was already quickly realising that while I knew Theodore Black, I didn’t actually know him.
I knew Vice-President of Black Ink Corporation and heir to the dukedom of Ruxleigh, Theodore Black.
I didn’t know just Theodore.
Was he having the same thoughts about me? He didn’t know me like that, either. He knew executive assistant Chloe St. James, not just Chloe. That’d been evident when he’d been surprised at my snack choices.
For a man who could recite the lunch orders of his entire secretarial team, I was surprised he hadn’t realised that I never ate anything overly sweet.
Of course, this all posed the issue of wanting to get to know him or not. Embarking on such a journey seemed like a dangerous thing to do—but did I even have a choice? It wasn’t as though I could hole up away from him for the next six weeks and not speak to him outside of work at all.
Maybe I should have asked to stay somewhere else. Sure, living together was more efficient, but if my heart was going to do a little jig every time this git asked me to do his tie for him, I wasn’t sure I could cope.