Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard 4)

And okay, yeah, that was startlingly articulate considering how Niall Stella had turned his full attention to my face.

Pretty damn happy with myself, I typed up a quick reminder and propped my elbow on the table, tugging on a strand of hair as I scrolled through my calendar.

But something felt off. I sat in this chair for one hour every week, and I was almost certain that I’d never felt what I was feeling now. It was a pressure on the side of my face, the actual physical weight of someone’s attention.

I twisted the hair around my finger and casually glanced at Pippa. Nope, nothing.

With what I assumed to be a subtle lean forward, I craned my neck farther, glancing to my right, and immediately froze.

He was still looking at me. Niall Stella was looking at me. Really looking. Light brown eyes met mine and held what could never be called a glance, but a full-on look. His expression was curious, as if I were a new piece of furniture someone had just randomly placed in the room.

My heart took off, pulse pounding in my veins. Inside my chest, everything felt liquid and wild, and if someone had yelled Fire! I’d have gone down in flames, because there was absolutely no way I could control even a single thing happening to my body.

“Niall,” Anthony said.

Niall Stella blinked before looking away from my face. “Yes?”

“Do you mind giving us the status from Planning on the Diamond Square proposal? I want my team to get you some specs by the end of the week but we don’t know the dimension of their shared space . . .”

I zoned out as Anthony, predictably, phrased his question in a way that made it about seven times longer than it needed to be.

When his question drew to a close, Niall Stella shook his head. “The dimensions,” he said, and began shuffling through a stack of papers in front of him. “I’m not altogether sure I’ve got them—”

“The dimensions were set to be finalized this morning,” I answered for him, and explained that the permits would be delivered no later than tomorrow. “I asked Alexander to send a copy of the blueprints this afternoon.”

The room went so silent I worried for a minute I had simply lost the ability to hear.

Except everyone was staring at me. Oh my God, what had I done?

I’d interrupted without thinking.

I’d answered a question clearly not meant for me.

I’d answered a question he definitely knew the answer to.

I felt my brows pull together. But then, why hadn’t he answered?

I leaned forward and looked at him.

“Good,” he said. Quiet. Deep. Perfect. Shifting in his chair, he met my eyes and gave me a flicker of a grateful smile. “Forward it along?”

My heart had completely left my body. “Of course.”

He was still looking at me, clearly as confused as I was over what had just happened, but pleased in a mysteriously lingering way. I wasn’t even sure what prompted me to speak up. One minute Niall Stella was looking at me, and the next he was fumbling as he tried to recollect data and answer a question I was sure he could have answered in his sleep.

It was almost as if his mind was elsewhere. It was something I’d never seen happen before.

“Now for the big news,” Anthony said, glancing through a stack of papers before handing them off and getting to his feet. I looked up, jarred by the change in his tone. Anthony loved having the attention of the room, and from the sound of it, he was gearing up for something big.

“The New York subway system was built with the idea that one-hundred-year storms happen only every hundred years. Unfortunately, that is not reality. Disasters like Hurricane Sandy have proven that what was once planned for once every century, has happened every few years. The US is spending billions, with talk of raised entrances and floodgates, and given that we’ve worked extensively with the London Underground, they want our input, too. So I’ll be gone for one month to attend an International Summit on Emergency Preparedness for public transport, air travel, and urban infrastructure.”

“One month?” a senior engineer asked, echoing what we all had to be thinking. I wondered if anyone was also echoing my mental fist pump at the idea of an Anthony-free office for so long a stretch.

Anthony nodded in her direction. “There are three separate summits taking place. Not everyone who is invited is staying for the duration, but given that our firm specializes in both public transport and urban infrastructure, Richard decided that he’d like us there for the lot of it.”

“ ‘Us?’ ” asked one of the executives from Niall Stella’s department.

“Right,” Anthony said, tilting his head to the left. “Niall will be accompanying me.”