Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
At one point, as Mick was talking, Keegan met my eye and instead of looking away, he just held my gaze. I left it too long to look away, expecting him to. We were stuck, just looking at one another intensely while everyone else continued talking. I was the first to look away, pretending to write something down. When I looked back up, he was still looking at me, just a hint of a smile on his face. I tried to look disapprovingly at him, and the smile grew. He was silently laughing at me, and I felt an odd mixture of annoyance and happiness. I decided to ignore it.
Ignoring Keegan was easier said than done, and his furtive glances and long hard stares continued throughout the morning meetings. I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Just before the meeting with his parents, we were alone for a short time standing outside the lobby, glad of the fresh air after an afternoon of sitting in a stifling conference room.
“Probably best to get a rest before dinner with my parents,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I am suffering a little for last night.”
“I think you can do without me for this one. You have some family time, and I am going to check out the local shops,” I said firmly.
“I told you, it will be business. It’s always business with them. Anyway, you have to eat,” he shrugged, leaning against the wall of the hotel and stretching his back. I tried not to notice how his shirt pulled up and untucked from his pants.
“If I’m not there, it will be less business-like,” I added, avoiding his eye by looking at my phone.
“Put that away,” he said quietly, so that I wasn’t sure if I had heard him correctly.
“Excuse me?” I asked, my eyebrows rising.
“The phone, please put it away,” he repeated, then once I had slipped the phone into my bag, he turned to me and added sincerely, “Please, I would prefer this meeting with my parents to be just business. If you are there, I can avoid any questions… about my actual life.”
“I don’t want…” I paused. How could I say that I didn’t want to be mixed up in his family life when my family was the whole reason I was even there, working for him under false pretenses?
“Please,” he said, and took my hand in a tender gesture that he quickly decided to back out of, dropping to one knee in a dramatic sweeping motion and loudly proclaiming, “I will make it up to you, anything you want, just protect me from them!”
I had to laugh as I pulled him up off the ground. We had earned ourselves some very disapproving looks from the concierge. “Okay, okay, I will do it. But you owe me.”
“Honestly, whatever you want. We have all day tomorrow free. I will take you anywhere you want to go,” he looked relieved.
My solo plans of exploring the city the following day evaporated and were replaced by a romantic comedy showreel of cheesy touristy shit like Before Sunrise. I banished it from my head and made a mental note not to let myself get carried away. But then he was hugging me, and saying thank you, and he seemed strangely vulnerable, and I was hugging him back and closing my eyes and breathing in the smell of him. It lasted a little too long for just a thank you.
Chapter 30
KEEGAN
DINNER WITH MY parents was the one thing I had dreaded about the trip, and yet I was strangely excited to see them. Apart from the office opening, I hadn’t seen them in months. I was glad that Effie was there, but I was aware that I was totally using her as a buffer to ensure that things stayed friendly and business-like. Ma smiled apologetically to Effie as she embraced me and reached up to smooth my hair.
“He has always had a great big fluff of hair right on the top of his head!” she laughed. “That’s why we had to work so hard for the business, we had to keep him in jars of gel and wax!”
“Ma!” I self-consciously ruffled my hair a bit where she had flattened it while Effie laughed.
We sat down at the table and ate together, and the whole thing was a bizarre mixture of business and personal, Dad asking me about upcoming projects and staffing numbers, and Ma commenting that I looked a little thin, and was I taking a multivitamin? She mentioned that Sean seemed to be at the gym a lot, and I tried not to be drawn into any conversation that might feature my brother. They were nice enough to Effie, asking her politely about her job at the company, how she found working there on a daily basis and if she was happy with the contract, et cetera. Dad seemed genuinely interested in her experience and I was glad, although I couldn’t remember him ever asking me how I found working there.