The door squeaked as it opened. Emma.
Emma lingered, holding the door open for someone. Gah. Karen.
Voices sounded from outside the room, growing louder as they came in. Victoria and John.
And then, there he was.
"Showtime," Pippa muttered next to me.
I saw the top of Niall Stella"s head as he stepped in just behind Anthony, and it was as if the air had been sucked from the room. People and chatter blurred around the edges and then it was just him, expression neutral as he seemed to instinctively take in who was there and who was missing, his shoulders wrapped in a dark suit, one hand tucked casually into the pocket of his dress pants.
The urgent, fiery feeling in my chest grew.
Niall Stella was the man you noticed the moment he walked into the room. Not because he was boisterous or loud, but because he wasn"t. There was a quiet confidence about him, a way he carried himself that demanded attention and respect, and a feeling that while he wasn"t talking, he was watching everything, noticing everyone.
Everyone except me.
Having come from a family of therapists that discussed everything, I"d never been the silent type. So the fact that I of all people couldn"t manage a single articulate thing when he was in touching proximity made absolutely zero sense. What I felt for him was a distracting kind of infatuation.
He didn"t even have to attend Thursday meetings; he just did, because he wanted to make sure there was "cross departmental consensus" and so his planning division "could at least have a working engineering vocabulary" since it was Niall Stella"s responsibility to coordinate engineering with public policy and his own planning division.
Not that I"d memorized everything he"d ever said at this meeting.
Today he wore a light blue shirt beneath a dark charcoal suit. His tie was a mesmerizing swirl of yellow and blue, and my eyes moved from the double Windsor knot at his neck to the smooth skin just above, the heavy curve of his Adam"s apple, the sharp jaw. His normally impa.s.sive mouth was turned down in consternation and when I made it up to his eyes . . . I registered with horror that he was watching me eye-f.u.c.k him like it was my job.
Need more Niall? Of course you do. . .
BOOKS BY CHRISTINA LAUREN.
Wild Seasons.
Sweet Filthy Boy.
Dirty Rowdy Thing Dark Wild Night.
Wicked s.e.xy Liar The Beautiful Series.
Beautiful b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
Beautiful Stranger.
Beautiful b.i.t.c.h.
Beautiful Bombsh.e.l.l.
Beautiful Player Beautiful Beginning.
Beautiful Beloved Beautiful Secret.
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners/besties/soulmates and brain-twins Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 international bestselling authors of the Beautiful b.a.s.t.a.r.d and Wild Seasons series and Sublime. You can find them online at christinalaurenbooks.com, Facebook.com/ChristinaLaurenBooks, or at @ChristinaLauren, @seeCwrite, and @lolashoes on Twitter.
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