Chapter 23
Saffron
The Hawthorne and Hawthorne offices did not feel as awful coming back to them as they did the last few times I had to come here.
The project was close to getting done, and it was time for an update with my client.
It definitely felt odd to see Tyler again, especially after our meeting last week.
It did not feel like it then, but it was the douse of cold water I needed.
I entered the meeting room to find I was the first person to arrive.
The boardroom differed from the one I had to give the pitch in.
This one was smaller and more intimate. Good, because I was going to ask for a budget extension, and I didn’t want to do it in front of many people just in case Tyler thought it a fun idea to embarrass me for laughs.
“Ah, Saffron!” The door burst open, and Richie entered beaming. Then he frowned when he glanced around and saw that I was alone. “Where’s everyone!” He checked his watch. “Isn’t the meeting supposed to start at eleven?”
I shrugged and went back to setting up my laptop to the projector. “You tell me. That’s the time I got.”
He strode over to me. “Let me help you with that.” He took over the job of setting up the equipment. “It’s ungentlemanly to let a woman do the work while I stand.”
“It’s fine, Richie. How’s life?”
“You know how it is working for Tyler.”
Tyler hadn’t been giving me much trouble ever since we came back from Italy.
He had pretty much let me do my job in peace and agreed to any ideas I sent to him.
I had noticed that previously it was he personally who would reply to me via email.
Now it was his assistant doing so in his stead and CCing Tyler.
The approvals were so quick that I was not sure if he actually read my suggestions.
He barely cared about my work anymore, and I was sure he was going to punt me to a junior architect or just let me work with the project manager, but he didn’t.
That was good, right? Working with him like this instead of him constantly questioning my judgment was better, right? It didn’t feel like it. I hate to admit it, but I missed his negging. Agh. How fucked up was I?
“All done!” Richie brushed his hands and pressed the space button on my laptop to start the presentation, then turned to the projector. It began playing. He scrolled through it with the clicker and then handed me the device, a big smile on his face as though he had just put me on the moon.
“Lovely, thanks.” I rewound the slide back to the start.
“What are you thanking him for?” Tyler strolled in with Quinn and Matt trailing him. He looked almost…mad? He was glaring at Richie. His gaze communicated a silent warning to Richie that I couldn’t parse, but Richie understood perfectly.
“Nothing! I was just helping her out with the…uh.” Richie turned red. He motioned to the projector, his previous confidence gone, then he skedaddled into a chair.
Tyler gave me a menacing smile. “Miss Channing.” Then he went to sit at the end of the oval table. The project manager and Matt chose chairs that were opposite Richie. “We were in another meeting before this one. I hope you can forgive our tardiness.”
“It’s perfectly fine,” I said. “I wasn’t here long.”
He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands. “But long enough to flirt with my people.”
There’s the asshole reappearing. “I wasn’t flirting; he was helping,” I said through gritted teeth. “Now, should I start the meeting, or do you have other accusations you want to fling at me?”
The room went so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Matt bowed his head, a clear sign of not wanting to be involved in a tiff. The other two were perplexed enough to frown at each other.
“The floor is yours, Miss Channing.”
I began the presentation, first by going over what we had achieved so far and the money spent. The new assistant Malaya hired had made a three-sixty view of one of the rooms, making it easy to explain.
“So you see,” I said at the end of my presentation, “that’s why I think we need a budget extension if you want the penthouse suites to be on the level you require.
” I scanned my gaze around the room. Richie was nodding and typing on his laptop.
Quinn was taking notes, and Matt had his pen in his hand, attentively reading the last slide.
The only person who was looking at me was Tyler.
He was rubbing his chin, his steely glare lighting me up.
My mouth widened with my best business smile. “What do you think?”
Richie raised his head. “I think we can work with it. It does not seem like an insane proposition. Right, Ty?” When he turned to Tyler, he stopped talking.
“Can you all leave me with Miss Channing, please?” Tyler’s command did not need repeating. They all filed out, leaving their laptops, pens, and notebooks.
“Anything wrong with what I said?”
“Not what you’ve said, but what you’ve done.”
I glanced back at the slide, trying to work out what he might be referring to. Everything about this project has so far been above board. If I didn’t let Tyler know of any hiccups, his second-in-command would be the next person I spoke to. “I don’t follow.”
“You were flirting with a married man again.”
“Oh my god, not this.” I crossed my arms.
He got up and stalked over to me. I stood my ground. He was not going to scare me, and that’s what he wanted to do. “It’s not right.”
“And you are a married man cheating on his wife. You ceded the moral ground a long time ago.”
He smirked. I don’t know what it was with him today, but he looked more handsome than before.
The double-breasted pinstriped suit paired with a waistcoat and a maroon tie would have looked comically old-fashioned on anyone his age, but he wore it like a classic eighties Master of the Universe. “Are you jealous?”
“No more jealous than you are.”
His smirk widened as though I had admitted to something he had been assuming all along. “Is that why you ran away at the marathon last week?” He took a step forward. I remained standing.
“I had work to do, that’s it. And besides, I didn’t want to cockblock my cheating husband.”
“Right. Because you care so much for Lauren. Why didn’t you tell her then, if my cheating, as you call it, is so immoral?”
“I feel sorry for the woman, pure and simple. She has to date someone fickle like you.”
“Why? I plan on marrying her.”
My balance wobbled, and I had to reach for the table to maintain it. He planned on getting married? So he was serious about looking for a wife. They did not seem serious the last time I met them. However, he had declared to everyone that she was his girlfriend. He was probably serious about her.
I cocked an eyebrow. “Does she know?”
“That I want to marry her? No, but she fits the bill.”
“The bill?” Then I remembered his little list. He didn’t love her. He was only dating her because she fit the bill. “Now I really feel sorry for her.”
He tilted his head to the side. “You act as though you were married to me for real.”
“I have enough experience in our marriage to know that her life is going to be hell,” I scoffed. “She’s dating a cheater.”
“Is that so? And here I was thinking you and I were getting divorced. Isn’t the period we’re in called separation? People date other people during separation.”
“We’ve been separated since you and I got married.”
“That’s why I don’t understand why you care so much. Unless, of course,” he stepped closer, “you still want me.”
I wanted to push him away. I should have, but his intoxicating scent drove me to say something I never would have had the confidence to say if this were five years ago. “Why did you never kiss me?”
The question caught him off guard. “What?”
“Why? Do you have a little quirk? Are you afraid of women’s lips? Why?”
I stepped closer until my lips were brushing his neck.
He did not push me away. Instead, he bent his head and brushed his lips against my neck, licking and biting like a vampire about to devour its prey.
Then I twisted my neck and placed my lips on his, giving him the kiss I had always wanted to give him.
Taking his lips into mine, I kissed him like I had imagined so many times when I was a kid.
I thought he would resist. He didn’t. At first. The shift in power dynamics knocked him over so that all he could do was let me explore his lips, his mouth. My hands went to his waist and brushed against his jacket as they slid inside, pressing my body against his.
That’s when he pushed back. “What was that?” he said, wiping his mouth.
“A kiss. I’ve always wondered what you taste like. Now that I know, I can leave you comfortably.”
He blanched and marched out of the room. Tyler left in such a storm that his underlings peeped into the room after he stormed out, casting surreptitious glances at me.
“What happened?” Richard asked.
I shrugged. I couldn’t exactly tell them about the kiss.
“He said he would email me his decision.” That seemed to mollify them, but I didn’t stay too long for second questions.
I quickly packed my stuff and headed out.
The taste of the kiss was still on my lips.
I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe it was knowing he was finally moving on, that he would no longer be mine for good—that made me want to know the thing he had denied me all these years.
As grown as I was, I didn’t expect to be rocked off my axis by it.
My lips were still tingling when I reached the lobby and was almost at the door when a man called out my name, stopping me dead in my tracks.
“Mr. Hawthorne would like to see you,” he said. His black suit, white shirt, and earpiece made me assume he was part of security.
“I have another meeting to get to,” I said with a bright plastic smile. “Tell him I’ll call?”