Page 4 of His Perfect Woman

“It has,” I agreed, somewhat accusingly. “What are we doing? Come here.” I lunged forward to hug him, which I had resisted doing until I couldn’t stand it anymore. He tensed under the embrace, reminding me why I had stopped myself in the first place. We were obviously not friends like that anymore.

“Lucas, I’m gonna take off.” A familiar guy appeared over his shoulder. His dark eyes widened at the sight of me. “Victoria? Victoria Sloan!?”

I hesitated for a moment before I could place him. “Jack Landson! Wow. All of us together under one roof again. How crazy.”

“I was just going over some things with Lucas,” he explained as the smile faded from his face. Whatever they were going over hadn’t been good from what I could tell. “But I’m late to my next meeting. Sorry to rush off. Hey, Victoria...let’s get together and catch up some time.”

“Yes, absolutely.” I glared at Lucas as we waved goodbye. Jack and I had never been close and even we could consider a coffee or lunch without getting weird about it.

“I should get going, too,” Lucas said with a worried look.

I raised my brows at him. I could just let him off the hook, but I could tell something was wrong. The kind of thing you’d probably feel better after talking to your former best friend about...if he’d just give up and let that happen.

“Lucas...wait. I’ve got to wait here to show Trent out after his meeting with Camille, but...could we grab lunch today? Just a quick salad or something. I noticed your cafeteria downstairs looks pretty impressive.”

His lips parted as if he was going to try and give me the brush off...yet again. But then he stopped and let out a big exhale. “Yeah, actually. That’d be great. Meet me down there in a half hour?”

“Sounds great. See you then.”

I watched him walk off and couldn’t help but marvel a little at just how damn good he looked. All of his family’s troubles had done something for him, and it was a good change. Like he was less entitled and sure of everything. It somehow added to his handsomeness, which was already prominent enough before—always had been since he was a kid. He and all of his siblings were better looking than people had any right to be.

“Good,” I whispered to myself. “Maybe now I can get down to the bottom of why the hell he suddenly started avoiding me.”

2

Lucas

I was furiously tapping the tip of my pen against the mostly blank legal pad in front of me. I had scribbled one heading across the top—Ideas for Finding an Insta-marriage to Fix PR Fiasco. And, so far, had added nothing below it.

Not because I didn’t have any ideas, but because I was too preoccupied with thoughts of Victoria. I couldn’t believe I’d walked out and found her standing there like that—as if I had manifested her into the office. The moment I decided it was time to really let her go—there she was. It had to be one of the cruelest ironies the universe had dumped on me in my lifetime, second to our family’s financial ruin years before.

I heard a tapping at my door and looked up to see Camille showing herself in. “I want to hire Trent.”

“Yeah, so? You took it upon yourself to schedule the interview without asking. Why not hire him without my input, too?”

She shut the door behind her and sat across from me. “I interview people all the time without your permission. What the hell is your problem?”

“I’d just like some warning if you’re going to have old friends of ours dropping by is all.”

She wrinkled her face, shaking her head in confusion. “Why? Old friends have popped by plenty of times before, too. What’s going on with you?”

“I just haven’t seen Victoria in a while and it would have been nice to know she was coming. And you can hire Trent if you want, but I think he looks like a smug asshole.”

She leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. “He has a right to be smug, with his experience and accomplishments, which is why I want to hire him. All I care about is how he increases our profits. I don’t really care what he looks like while he’s doing it.”

“Fine. As I’ve said twice already—hire him. Just give me a heads up next time you go meeting with one of my friends behind my back,” I snapped back.

“She’s a family friend, Lucas,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “Any one of us has a right to meet up with her...especially if she’s providing a contact who could prove useful to the company.”

Without waiting for a reply, she stood and stormed towards the door—stopping with her hand on the knob. “And anyway, you should be far more concerned with your current social media scandal than about whatever meetings I’m conducting.”

The door slammed shut after she walked out. I looked back at my empty pad of paper, then to my watch. It was time to go meet Victoria downstairs, which was a ridiculously stupid thing for me to agree to, given the current state of things at Heartstring. But I could tell she was hurt by how distant I had been lately, and as much as I knew I needed to move on...seeing her hurt, by me no less, was not something I could endure.

I straightened my tie and jacket, and combed back my hair in my office mirror before strolling out of my office and into the lobby. I took long, slow, steady breaths to calm and prepare myself for our second run-in of the day. She was easier to take in when I knew it was coming.

Or so I thought until I walked into the cafeteria and saw her waiting there at one of the tables. Her long, graceful fingers were wrapped around a cup of coffee as she stared out the window. Her straight dark hair was pulled back into a tight, high ponytail and her hazel eyes were shielded by the black cat-eye glasses she wore while she was working—which was most of the time.

When she turned and noticed me standing there, I could almost see a flashback to a younger version of her staring back at me, smiling wide. She was cute then, but fuck was she hot now in her pinstriped black suit, tailored perfectly to her tall, fit body. Like a lingerie supermodel dressed up as a businesswoman for a photo shoot.

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