“Well,” Sebastian hums with a smirk. “You’re going to be seeing her a lot, so get used to it.”
I cannot believe the audacity of Sebastian to be able to pull something off like this and get away with it with our superiors.
“It’s just a week,” he comments with mirth. “A week with Tori in a romantic hotel room. Oh, the possibilities!”
“It’s a damn conference, and I thought you saw her as your older sister,” I snappily hiss at him.
“I do,” he admits. “But she is a really gorgeous woman too. I can appreciate and not cross the line of pseudo-incest.”
I narrow my eyes at him, getting ready to break his shin when he puts his hand out. “Not trying to poach on your territory, but I’m just saying.”
A small part of me wants to know whether I’m angry about the fact that he’s talking as if Victoria is an animal or that I’m even upset at the thought that I just had. I don’t care. I don’t care about her, and I have stopped caring about her a long time ago.
This means nothing. It’s a job just like any other, and I just need to focus on making sure she’s not dead or kidnapped during the convention. When it’s over, I wouldn’t have to see her again.
“How’d you pull this off?” I grunt, accepting that there is no way I can get out of this assignment since the head bodyguard had approved of this contract.
“You can never underestimate the power of persuasion and a good conversation,” he says, puffing up his chest.
I merely stare at the idiocy radiating from his body.
“Okay,” he sighs in defeat. “I didn’t want pretty-boy Hendrick to be anywhere near Tori.”
My brows knot, a silent storm brushes past me in the back of my neck. The hair stands as I recall the man being a charmer, oozing in confidence that borderlines narcissistic disorder.
He’s even worse than Sebastian, and I thought he was bad until I met Hendrick. Shame is not in that man’s dictionary.
“You could have done it,” I point out the obvious fact.
“Can’t,” he shrugs his shoulders. “I have knight duty with our princess.”
It seems that the client from last week still wants to sink her claws into Sebastian. She has money to waste, and Sebastian has a lot of flirtatious pickup lines to use, so it’s a match made in heaven.
I can avoid the hell out of those two, but I can’t avoid Victoria.
“Alright,” Sebastian claps his hand and steals the crust of my sandwich off my tray. “Chop chop, you need to meet her at her home.”
The tray is looking more and more pleasing to smack over his head as of now, and the self-control has been a long journey that I conquered—which will be the end when I have him withering in pain.
It’s good to let my anger out because bottling it up would lead to a catastrophic explosion that will level this building if I’m livid enough.
“When does it start?” I ask, frowning and letting him know that this is no way going to be a pleasant experience.
“The flight is tomorrow, but you should start today. You know, for proficiency and good ratings.” Sebastian crackles, slurping his smoothie.
His boiled chicken, grapefruit, chia seeds, kale, and the souls of a vile human being death juice. The first ingredient alone should be banned from being near a straw, and Sebastian should go get his head checked by the residential doctor that’s given through employee benefits.
“Did she agree to this, or is this another one of your stunts?” I ask, and I had to because he has a track record of being a nosy moron.
He’s the middle man between Victoria and me, and that’s a huge responsibility that he’s terrible at.
Over the years, he had been trying to trick me into seeing her again, and I could dodge it with more effort than I like to exert. Last week was inevitable. We had no choice but to get her involved. Or rather, Sebastian had to put his nose in places where it doesn’t belong, and now I have a body and a heart that side with Victoria.
Every part of me is a traitor, all except my brain. That section is the powerhouse, and I need to ignore the irrational desire to touch her, and it is harder than anything when I saw her last week.
She was so beautiful, so bright among those gossiping women and I could see the way men looked at her.
The way their eyes would wander from her thick, brown hair and shining brown eyes, a dress that showed too much and too little, and the same Victoria is still there despite the years of being apart.