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He took his tea ar), had an enormous office on the third floor--far from mine--clearly never had tih and through And although he was raised in Leeds, he went to school at Cae, then Oxford, and now resided in London So the way Niall Stella had developed quite the posh accent

Also: recently divorced My heart could barely take it

Moving on

Nu Thursday Meetings? Twelve Number of Conversations We’d Had? Four Nuht Actually Re with my Niall Stella crush for six months, and I was pretty sure he still didn’t know that I was an eirl

Surprisingly, because he was almost always one of the first to the office, the man in question wasn’t here yet I’d checked--a few tih the h the conference roo roo out onto the fairly busy street below Mywalk to work had been relatively dry, but as it did un to drizzle from a sky heavy with clouds It was the kind of rain that looked like a harmless haze, but I’d learned not to be fooled: three rown up somewhere rainier than Southern California, I could never have been prepared for the way the London air, between October and April, felt almost saturated ater, heavy and damp Like a rain cloud had wrapped itself aroundhad just begun in London, but the little courtyard across Southwark Street was still dismal and bare I’d been told that in su to a restaurant near the back Right noas all concrete and mostly naked tree branches, daround

Around me, people continued to voice their displeasure with the weather as they opened up their laptops and finished their tea, and I blinked away frolers rush in Everyone wanted to be seated before Anthony S--made his way down from the sixth floor

Anthony waswell, okay, he was a bit of a jackass He ogled the interns, loved to hear hi that sounded sincere Every Thursdayan exa with a saccharine smile on their outfit or their hair so everyone in the room would have to watch in leaden silence as they found the last empty seat and sat down in shaered, holding the door open for sorowing louder as they came in Victoria and John

And then, there he was

"Showtime," Pippa muttered next to me

I saw the top of Niall Stella’s head as he stepped in just behind Anthony, and it was as if the air had been sucked froes and then it was just him, expression neutral as he see, his shoulders wrapped in a dark suit, one hand tucked casually into the pocket of his dress pants

The urgent, fiery feeling inabout Niall Stella that made you want to watch him Not because he was boisterous or loud, but because he wasn’t There was a quiet confidence about him, a way he carried hi that while he wasn’t talking, he atching everything, noticing everyone

Everyone exceptco, I’d never been the silent type My brother, and even Lola probably, would start callingSo the fact that I of all people couldn’twhen Niall Stella ithin touching proximity made absolutely zero sense What I felt for hi kind of infatuation

He didn’t even have to attend Thursday s; he just did, because he wanted to make sure there was "cross-depart division "could at least have a working engineering vocabulary" since it was Niall Stella’s responsibility to coordinate engineering with public policy and his own planning division

Not that I’d

Today he wore a light blue shirt beneath a dark charcoal suit His tie was aswirl of yellow and blue, and my eyes moved from the double Windsor knot at his neck to the smooth skin just above, the heavy curve of his Adam’s apple, the sharp jaw His normally impassive mouth was turned down in consternation, and when I istered with horror that he atching me eye-fuck hiaze toout with the intensity of my stare The flurry of telephones and printers fro to reach a crescendo of chaos, and then so And as if the room had been vacuum sealed, all noise ca

I clicked onas I strained to hear his reply One breath in, one breath out Another I typed in my password I willed my heart to slon