The woman switched her smile over to Gemma, who was standing by Callum’s side. “Nice meeting you, Ms. Westmoreland,” the woman said, offering Gemma her hand.
“Same here, Ms. Guyton.” Gemma couldn’t help but be pleased with the way Callum had introduced her. Saying she was a business associate sounded a lot better than saying she was merely the woman decorating one of his homes.
She glanced around, taking mental note of the layout of this particular floor of the Le’Claire Building. When they had pulled into the parking garage, she had definitely been impressed with the thirty-floor skyscraper. So far, the only thing she thought she would change with respect to the interior design, if given the chance, was the selection of paintings on the various walls.
“You can announce us to the team, Lorna,” Callum said, and placing his hand on Gemma’s arm, he led her toward the huge conference room.
Gemma had caught the word us the moment Callum touched her arm and wasn’t sure which had her head suddenly spinning more—him including her in his business meeting or the way her body reacted to his touch.
She had assumed that since he would be talking business he would want her to wait in the reception area near Lorna’s desk. But the fact that he had included her sent a degree of pleasure up her spine and filled her with an unreasonable degree of importance.
Now if she could just stop the flutters from going off in her stomach with the feel of his hand on her arm. But then she’d been getting all kinds of sensations—more so than ever—since they had kissed. When he’d walked into the kitchen this morning looking like he should be on the cover of GQ magazine, a rush of blood had shot to her head and it was probably still there. She’d had to sit beside him in the car and draw in his scent with every breath she took. And it had been hard sitting in that seat knowing what had happened last night while she’d been sitting there. On the drive over, her body had gone through some sort of battle, as if it was craving again what it once had.
“Good morning, everyone.”
Gemma’s thoughts were interrupted when Callum swept her into the large conference room where several people sat waiting expectantly. The men stood and the women smiled and gave her curious glances.
Callum greeted everyone by name and introduced Gemma the same way he had in speaking to Lorna. When he moved toward the chair at the head of the table, she stepped aside to take a chair in the back of the room. However, he gently tightened his grip on her arm and kept her moving toward the front with him.
He then pulled out the empty chair next to his for her to sit in. Once she had taken her seat, he took his and smiled over at her before calling the meeting to order in a deep, authoritative voice.
She couldn’t help but admire how efficient he was and had to remind herself several times during the course of the business meeting that this was the same Callum who’d managed her brother’s sheep farm. The same Callum who would turn feminine heads around town when he wore tight-fitting jeans over taut hips and an ultrafine tush, and sported a Western shirt over broad shoulders.
And this was the same Callum who had made her scream with pleasure last night…in his car of all places. She glanced over at his hand, the same one whose fingers were now holding an ink pen, and remembered just where that hand had been last night and what he’d been doing with those fingers.
Suddenly, she felt very hot and figured that as long as she kept looking at his hands she would get even hotter. Over the course of the hour-long meeting, she tried to focus her attention on other things in the room like the paintings on the wall, the style of window treatments and carpeting. Given the chance, she would spruce things up in here. Unlike the other part of the office, for some reason this particular room seemed a little drab. In addition to the boring pictures hanging on the walls, the carpeting lacked any depth. She wondered what that was all about. Evidently, no one told the prior interior designer that the coloring of carpet in a business often set the mood of the employees.
“I see everyone continues to do a fantastic job for me in my absence and I appreciate that. This meeting is now adjourned,” Callum said.