Page 33 of Sweet Nothings

Olivia’s hand wraps around the long, silver handle of the conference room door, tugging it open. She holds it out for me, and I step in.

“Mrs. Harding is here to see you, Mr. Harding,” she tells Lennon.

I snap my head in her direction and shoot her a glare—one that tells her she was supposed to call me by my first name. The satisfaction on Lennon’s face can already be felt in the room.

He grins, not breaking his darkening gaze away from me. “Thank you, Olivia.”

Olivia mouths a quick, “I’m sorry,”before she shuffles out of the room in a hurry.

Her loyalty must know no bounds.

I take a seat at the opposite end of the large table. It stretches from one end of the room to the other. There are at least ten chairs on either side between Lennon and me.

I don’t know why I choose the opposite end from him. I think part of me is forcing myself to keep a respectable distance from him to keep myself in check. I figure I won’t be able to smell him with twenty feet of distance between us. Our past few encounters have pulled reactions out of me that became stronger than the last, which is probably part of the reason why I asked Olivia to stop calling me by Lennon’s last name. I’m no stranger to the pull he has on me. I experienced it the night we met.

He's like a light switch. One flicker of the gaze in his eyes, one touch, or one shift in the tone of his voice has me melting into a puddle.

I press my legs together and lean to the side, pulling my notepad and pen out of my black leather bag. I’ve already made a list of several important aspects of a wedding I figured we would need to go over. I straighten my notepad and weave my fingers together, placing my hands over my notepad.

“Good morning,Mr. Harding.” I smile, hoping he can sense the cynicism dripping from my tongue.

“Likewise.” He taps his pen on the table.

“I hear you’re already having your assistant call me by your last name.” I nod my head to the side, indicating the hallway Olivia ran off to before she got more of my cold stare.

“Olivia’s a great assistant. She’s very efficient when it comes to executing the tasks I’ve given her.”

My stomach coils. I don’t know how deep his statement goes or how far Lennon has taken his relationship with her outside of the work environment. She’s possibly the woman I saw kneeling in front of him, happily giving him a blow job the day of the funeral.

I nervously swipe my tongue across my lips and adjust myself in my seat as Lennon stands. His tall frame commands the room, as he always does.

He grabs his folder and pen, carrying it to my end of the table, where he drops in the vacant spot beside me. His scent immediately surrounds me. Dammit. He smells the same as yesterday and the day he was in my office.

“Enough small talk.” He sighs, leaning back in his chair. He rests his head on the back of his seat and points with his pen in my direction. “Tell me your ideas and we’ll make them happen.”

“Okay.” I flip to the first page in my notebook. “I have all the basics down: dress, flowers, cake, venue, rings?—”

“What do you want?”

“What do you mean?” I ask him, confused.

“You wrote all the basic elements to a wedding, but is that the kind of wedding you envision?” He stretches out his legs, crossing them at the ankle under the table. He angles his body in my direction, his leather shoe touching the bottom of my heel. Him going out of his way to touch me has my stomach igniting with flames again. My legs twitch, and all I can concentrate on is the bottom of my foot.

I clear my throat. “Considering our circumstances for marrying, I doubt it matters what type of wedding I want.”

“No.” He frowns, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair. His dark blue eyes study me. “I won’t have a wedding you aren’t going to be happy with.”

“You’re marrying me out of obligation. It’s in your father’swill.”

The light in his eyes disappears. “I’m aware.”

“Does it really matter then?” I ask, inhaling an unsteady breath. “We’re only going to be married for a year. Why waste the time and money when it won’t last?”

The conditions James put on Lennon’s marriage to me is a tough pill to swallow. The idea of putting effort into a marriage, especially in the ways he outlined last night in his conditions, has me worried. I’m worried I’m setting myself up for heartbreak without realizing it.

Because I already know how easy it is to fall for Lennon.

I want to take his signs of willingness to compromise with me on wedding details and his teasing over the past week as signs I’ve somehow managed to thaw his frozen heart. They’re hard to ignore. But with Lennon, I take everything he says and does with a grain of salt. The fact he’s marrying me to gain control over his family’s company always pulls me back down to earth. It’s a fact I simply won’t ignore just because he’s given me a small glimpse into another side of himself.

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