Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Madison
E verybody in the tearoom wanted to talk to him. I completely understood. He was the talk of the conference - his expertise, his success, his youth, his scarcity. He never went anywhere, but this time around, he was here, and everyone wanted a piece of him.
I stayed just close enough, and at first, he didn’t notice me. But I noticed soon that his eyes kept wandering, and I pulled out my phone to send him a message. But when I recalled what I had written earlier, I lost my confidence. I was clinically insane. At this point, it was official, and I wasn’t exactly keen on reminding him of this fact. So, I simply tried to stay within his line of sight until eventually, our eyes met. His gaze lingered on mine, and I couldn’t help but notice that even though everyone was trying to talk to him, there were a few seconds where his complete and total focus was on me. It made my heart flutter, even though I was sure he was just staring at me because of what I had written. Sure, I had deleted it, but the notification had come to his phone, so I was a hundred percent sure that he had read it.
But I had already worked up a couple of ways to salvage this, and I knew just how to use it the second we found a moment alone together. My only question now was if he would actually believe it. That was indeed the question.
But now, as I overheard the entire exchange, I knew that I was dead. I had only told one person. It had been a complete in-the-moment lie, and now the entire conference was celebrating him for being engaged. And he hadn’t refuted it. I wanted to run away. At this point, I couldn’t even feel fear again. All I could do was feel amusement. At least I knew it would be a funny story to tell after I had gotten royally fired.
He had said that he wasn’t going to move, but now I had no doubt about it. I was messing up his perfectly ordered life, and there was no need for him to bear it. I wondered what to do now. I couldn’t leave him in the middle of the event and just head back to the hotel unless he explicitly asked me to, so I stayed put and tried to avoid his eyes. If he needed something from me, he could text me as he usually did.
But then, we would have to be alone soon because we had to head over to the lunch venue. It was three stories down, and I wondered if it would be weird for me not to take the elevator with him. What was sure, though, was that we wouldn’t be alone, so I was counting on quite the number of people between us to buffer his wrath and my embarrassment.
Shaking my head, I followed behind as we left the hall, with people trying to keep up and talking to him while he did his best to answer. Soon, the elevator arrived, and I watched him from behind. However, just as everyone went in, he didn’t. He stopped and was searching for me. I couldn’t run away then. I hadn’t expected it, and it was too late for me to take cover. Our eyes met, and then he gestured. Tears rushed to my eyes.
"What are you doing? Come over."
I did as he asked, and then the elevator filled up.
"I’ll take the next one," he said, but about five people immediately got off. "No need, no need. You’ll have to wait. You’re the guest of honor, Mr. Swift."
I hoped to God that he would listen to them and go and leave me to my misery, but he didn’t. Instead, he headed in, and when he turned around to see that I hadn’t followed along, one sharp, angry gaze from him, and I knew I was on the verge of being yelled at. He had never done so before, but I knew that look in his eyes. He was rapidly losing his patience.
And so, I headed in, and he quickly introduced me, most probably to dispel that I was the alleged fiancé.
“This is my secretary, Miss Parish - Madison Parish.”
"It's incredibly nice to meet you, Miss Parish," I had greetings from all over. I turned to accept some hands while others it was simply impossible to. As the elevator began to head down, soon enough, we arrived at the lunch networking venue. It seemed there were even more people here than those who had actually attended the conference, which was quite amusing to me, but it was to be expected. Free food always drew a crowd like nothing else in the entire world.
We soon found our seats, and once again, I wasn’t seated at his table. However, the way we were positioned, I was directly in his line of sight at the next table. He watched me while I turned away, unable to bear it. Soon, the event started with some gorgeous musical performance, and I focused my attention solely on the food and the entertainment.