Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 14211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Ford startles, as if coming out of a dream, and finally steps into the room fully. The door falls closed behind him with a final thud that reverberates through my whole body.
I can’t let him get the first word in, so I start talking before he even sits down across from me.
“Thank you for meeting me, Ford,” I begin, shuffling the papers in front of me again. “I asked you here because I have to say that this budget is just not going to work. Why anybody ever agreed to this, honestly ridiculously low number, is beyond me. I cannot be expected to get the results I need with such a limited scope. Frankly, it’s impossible for me to run the campaigns we all know we need with these numbers. Honestly, Ford, I have to wonder whether this is personal. You’re obstructing my work, and this is unreasonable. I’d expect better from someone who’s supposed to be as knowledgeable as you are as the head of Finance.”
The whole time I’m ranting, furious, and full of indignation, Ford just sits there across from me, sipping on a coffee and looking at me with an utterly unfazed expression on his stupidly handsome face. There’s a tasteful smatter of stubble on his cut jaw, a flop of hair over his forehead that only highlights his cut-from-stone perfection even more. Those dark forest-green eyes of his are locked onto me, and I can’t look away.
I can’t break his stare.
I can’t back down.
I keep going, doubling down and hammering my point in, ensuring he knows exactly how I feel. By the time I’m done, there’s a smirk tilting up the right corner of his lips and a heat to his green eyes that sends my heart racing. He waits a beat before answering me, stretching out the tension to the point I feel like I might break before it does.
“Well?” I say, unable to take it anymore. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
That smirk stretches again. Ford leans forward, elbows on the table. “All you had to do was ask, Faith,” he says, his voice velvety and low.
I gape at him, too stunned to come up with a witty retort. Did he really just say that?
I can’t have him seeing through me right now, and from the weight of his stare, I know he’s studying the cracks in my armor. I look away, pulling out my phone like it can shield me under the guise of checking the time. I keep my phone angled beneath the table, tapping out a quick message to my best friend, Natalie.
Me: I can’t decide if I want to fight this man or fuck him.
I hit send under the table without looking, my gaze trapped by Ford’s, and set my phone back down. I take a deep breath, trying to center myself and find the words to continue the conversation.
“You’re hardly the most approachable man in the office,” I say, “and I strive for professionalism, which is why I called the meeting—”
At that moment, Ford’s phone beeps in his pocket, interrupting me. I sigh heavily as he pulls it out of his pocket and checks it, despite the fact I did the same thing seconds ago. Winding him up is just too tempting, even though it never works. Or, at least, it never normally does.
But Ford’s eyes lift from the screen to me, dark and swirling like the heart of a storm. His jaw tenses, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows thickly. Awareness prickles through me like a physical touch.
With that one look, I realize just how much Ford has been holding back, hiding beneath the calm facade.
“Striving for professionalism, are you?” Ford repeats my own words back to me, one dark eyebrow raised at me.
I raise my chin, not backing down. “Yes.”
Ford laughs. He actually laughs. The sound is a low rumble, like a roll of thunder over my skin, and just as dangerous as a storm. I freeze, feeling a rush of adrenaline begin to seep into my bloodstream. My body sways closer to him across the table without my permission.
His eyes dip from mine back to his phone screen, his lips turning up in that lopsided smirk that sets my heart racing so hard my ribs ache. I nearly stop breathing as he reads the words off his phone.
The words I just typed out.
“I can’t decide if I want to fight this man,” Ford says slowly and calmly. I brace myself, gripping the edge of the table like it’ll save me from the words I know are about to leave his mouth. “Or fuck him.”
The air between us goes still and taut as a drawn bowstring. I don’t dare to move even an inch.
How the fuck did I manage to send that text to him and not Natalie?! I guess that’s what I get for sending a text without looking at the screen properly. Shit.