Page 22 of Single Dad Christmas

CHAPTER SIX

HE’D TOLD HER THAT having sex wouldn’t change anything at work, but that had clearly been a fool’s hope. Because sitting at the boardroom table as Louisa went through her team’s vision—a team she’d assembled incredibly quickly, and well—he couldn’t help but find it difficult to focus.

He was grateful Rose was sitting to his left. Ostensibly, she was there to take minutes, but she’d been with him a long time and was both relied upon and confident enough to pick up his evident slack.

“When can you get this moving?” she asked. It was something he obviously should have wanted to know. He looked at Louisa and her brow quirked in silent enquiry, whilst her boss fielded the question. He felt Louisa’s teasing, and his temperature rose. So did his anticipation.

It was only lunchtime, though. There was a full afternoon to get through, plus his time with Taylor. She had netball training, and he made a point of going to watch, even though, at fifteen, she told him that was embarrassing. Only he’d had the benefit of parents who’d been involved in his life; he wasn’t going to drop the ball with her.

Except, he had dropped the ball. When they were in LA, he’d done his best, but he’d presumed, for a long time, that Amy was on top of this stuff. He’d focused on his work, partly to escape his unhappy marriage. And in the process, he’d escaped his daughter and let her down.

Well, never again.

But after netball, and Taylor’s dinner, he would go straight back to Louisa’s, and he almost couldn’t wait.

“Noah?” Stuart Conroy asked, so he cursed inwardly.

“Yeah?”

“Sound good?”

He looked at Louisa who gave a very subtle nod. “Sure. Sounds cool,” he said, unable to resist seeing the effect it had on her.

She rolled her eyes almost imperceivably, then took her seat to Stuart’s left.

“Great. The digital assets are already being prepared by our in-house team, and we’ve booked the New Year’s filming for later this week?—,”

“No felons, this time around?” he couldn’t resist asking.

“I’m personally overseeing casting,” Louisa interjected. “Though we are getting a couple of influencers on board, however, they’ve been thoroughly vetted.”

Her confidence, and thoroughness, were incredibly hot.

He leaned back in his chair as the meeting continued, aware that Rose would take such detailed notes he could review them later. Because his mind was focused on something else.

On imagining Louisa as Queen of Moricosia.

She’d dated the King for years, and it sounded as though an engagement had been in the offing. He couldn’t say why that hadn’t happened, but he could easily imagine Louisa in that role. She was so dignified and classy, so beautiful and kind. She was exactly the kind of woman any man would be proud to be with.But a King? That was a whole other level, and Noah imagined that Ares had known he would need a Queen with all the traits Louisa possessed in abundance.

Was that why they’d started dating? Had it been more about her suitability to take her place at his side, rather than her as a person? She’d said they loved one another as friends, but she’d also said she might have married him, had it not been for the whole fishbowl experience of being with someone so famous.

Either way, it was easy to imagine her married to King Ares, easy to imagine that side of her, and he acknowledged, with a small hint of concern, that he didn’t like it.

Because he’d seen another side of her.

While she was all those things—contained, confident, carefully spoken, polite—she was also funny and silly, and he loved those parts of her. He liked the way she teased him, the way she challenged him, the way she spoke to him so directly. He imagined how much of her life she would have had to re-shape if she had married the King, and it left him with an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

He was glad she’d escaped that.

Glad she’d run away to Australia.

And gladder still that she’d run right into his arms. It was easy and casual, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t throw themselves fully into the business of pleasing, and being pleasured by, one another.

“Do you have a moment?”Noah asked, as the others filed from the room, the question directed at Louisa.

Louisa’s eyes met his and her cheeks flushed pink. Her discomfort was adorable.

“I—,”

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