Page 28 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

The girl, who looked younger than me, tapped the keypad as if in distress. “The Wi-Fi… It’s connecting in here, for some reason.”

Hopefully the Wi-Fi is good so you get a clear view of him, Sumner had said yesterday. He jinxed it. My eyes flicked up. “What kind of business doesn’t have Wi-Fi in a conference room?”

My father, who sat across from me at the table,frowned, the array of his wrinkles reflecting his irritation. “Everyone’s internet flickers from time to time. It’s not something I can control.”

“Interesting that it’s flickeringnowwhen it was working perfectly fine five minutes ago.”

My father had no response to that.

Could he really be messing with the internet connection? I wouldn’t put it past him. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Four minutes left until the top of the hour. Four minutes until Aaron Astor popped up on the other side of the screen, and I’d finally be able to put a face to the dreaded name. Both of my feet were planted on the ground, because I knew that if I crossed my legs, I’d no doubt bounce them.

With a pit in my stomach, I wished Sumner was here. Which was a ridiculous thought. I absolutely did not know him well enough to have him present for such an important moment. No, he was far better off working in whatever department my mother put him in, or sitting in his hotel room, or whatever he was doing this morning. I didn’t check in with him.

But he would’ve said something that lightened the weight on my shoulders. I didn’t need to know him well to know that.

Three minutes. Now that I was sitting down, the suit I’d had tailored the day before was far too constricting. It was as if I’d bloated overnight, the material stretching over me in a way that felt two sizes too small. I shouldn’t have let Jordan take the vest in. I should’ve kept it the way it was.

My finger tapping against the chair’s arm, besides therapid clicking of the keyboard, was the only sound in the room. Two minutes left. Against my will, my leg began bouncing.

I shouldn’t care if Aaron thought me to be unpunctual. In fact, didn’t this work toward my benefit? Maybe he would be unimpressed with my tardiness, and that could’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back for him.

The beat in which my finger tapped to sped up.

“Ah!” the staff member exclaimed as the webpage loaded. “It’s working now!”

Right as the clock on the wall struck noon, my father’s ringtone pierced the air of the small conference room. It caused the poor girl in front of the computer to let out a yelp in surprise, but even with as on edge as I was, I didn’t even blink.

My thought was immediate: he hadn’t turned his ringer off, despite us stepping into a meeting with someone as important as Aaron Astor.

My father drew his phone from his breast pocket and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” His eyes rested on me as whoever on the other end of the call answered. I could hear the faint murmuring of a male voice, but it wasn’t loud enough to make out specific words. “Ah, yes, thank you for calling. Just on time. We completely understand.”

I didn’t miss the “we.” It was most likely intentional, from the way he stared at me.

The phone call ended as abruptly as it came, and my father repocketed the cell. “You can pack up,” he told the girl who’d been fiddling with the laptop. “We won’t bevideo chatting today after all.”

I didn’t move. “And why’s that?”

“A schedule conflict with Aaron,” he said, rising from his chair with a creak from his knees. “We sprang this on them quite last minute.”

“Then why didn’t you reschedule?” My father ignored me as he walked around the boardroom table, and when he came close enough, I shoved my rolling chair out and into his path. It was inches away from rolling over his toes. “Why did you not reschedule?”

“Aaron isn’t interested in a video call.”

“Isn’t interested in a video call,” I echoed. Again, it was another curious thing that hadn’t come up earlier. “We’ll schedule a phone call, then.”

“He said he’d much rather meet in person, where there are no internet goofs or awkward silences.”

“He said that on the phone?”

“His secretary did.”

So, Aaron couldn’t even be bothered to call and cancel himself, resorting to letting his staff take care of it. It wasn’t outrageous—my parents would’ve done the same had something come up on our end, though they surely wouldn’t have had Sumner make the call. Truth be told, I couldn’t even explain why it rubbed me the wrong way—probably because I’d become very accustomed to thinking anything done by Aaron Astor was equivalent to heresy. Everything he did it just irked me.

Aaron isn’t interested in a video call. He wasn’t interested in hearing my voice at least once. “Smitten” with me, was he? No, he’d much rather remain faceless and wait until we were in person, and put off meeting as long aspossible.

He really must’ve been hideous.

My father pushed the back of my chair to move me out of his path, nearly knocking me into the girl who’d begun packing up the computer. He walked out of the conference room without another word.

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