Page 3 of Accidental Vegas Vows

“Why wasn’t I picked?”

My stomach sank the moment I realized I’d said the words out loud.

Somehow, the silence became thicker, heavier, and I winced as another clang came from somewhere above the elevator box. His jaw tightened, the muscles below his ear sticking out just a hair further.

“I’m sorry—” I said.

“Which one was your proposal?”

The softness of the words caught me off guard.

I clutched my binder tighter, my heart pounding behind my ribs, and tried to focus. Why the fuck did I even bring it up? “Uh, mine’s the…” My words trailed off as one hand, rings glinting, reached for my binder.

“Let me see it,” he said, his voice like gravel.

His brows knitted as his fingers slipped over the top of the binder, the tips of them ghosting against the top buttons of my blouse and making both my breath and the black fabric catch.

I relinquished my binder before he could demand it and loosened my grip on the one thing I’d worked the hardest on since university, watching mindlessly as he pulled it from my chest and flipped it open.

“It’s the water purification one,” I breathed.

He glanced at me briefly with a smirk and then skimmed the first page. Why was he smirking?

“You say that as if I should already know,” he said, tucking one finger beneath the paper and using it to flip it over the rings of the binder effortlessly.

What the fuck does that mean? “Were you not in charge of choosing who got to present?”

The question hung in the air as he read over my proposal. I watched him like a hawk, taking stock of every shift of his features, every time his brows rose or his nostrils flared. He flipped the page and flipped again, shifting on his feet, studying the words I’d worked so fucking hard on.

I didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know if I was allowed to say anything at all. But when I’d finally worked up the courage to ask for my binder back after the fourth and fifth clang of the elevator from above us, he spoke before my words could breach my teeth.

“Is this true?”

I blinked. “Is what?—”

He flipped the binder in his hands and held it out toward me, one platinum ring glinting as he pointed his forefinger at a single sentence I’d written. The research team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Myongji University have created a membranous fabric capable of filtering water while simultaneously using the current to produce electricity.

I followed the length of his finger up, my eyes raking over the tanned skin of the back of his hand and the antique-looking wristwatch, up his suit jacket sleeve, and oh God, he was closer now, towering over me?—

“Is that true?” he asked again.

I nodded, but fuck, my head was spinning. “Yeah. The filter is dense enough to filter out everything from microplastics to heavy metal particles,” I explained, swallowing whatever saliva I could accumulate in my mouth to soothe my raw throat. “Purchasing that technology could be business-changing.”

“Yeah. It absolutely could,” he mumbled, pulling the binder back toward him. “Do you know if they’re offering up their rights to it?”

Blue eyes met mine again, softer almost, and from this close, I could see his age clearer.

The crows’ feet on either side of his eyes, the faint crease between his brows, the lines of his forehead. What I’d thought was completely black stubble showed hints of gray just like his hair, and the longer I looked, the more it seemed almost taboo to have thought the things that had gone through my head back in the presentation room.

He was almost twice my age.

Forty-five to my twenty-four.

But that didn’t stop those images from flashing through my mind again.

“Olivia.”

One word, one singular word, my name. The way he said it sounded as sweet as honey and just as viscous and thick. I imagined it slipping from his lips over and over as they trailed my bare skin, over my collarbones and further across the swell of my breast, another mumble seeping out as they latched on to my nipple?—

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