I would give this thing two drinks max before I was outie.
Nodding and saying the right things, I shook hands with the colleagues who’d known my father and accepted condolences from others. I made a mental note of the people who’d made the effort to mention his name to me, and I would write their names down with the event and date as soon as I got home.
I’d worked my way through the room, as I had been taught by my dad—by the best to ever work a roomful of potential deals—when I decided I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do tonight. It was time for me to go. After setting my glass down on an empty table, I started for the door . . . until I saw her.
Just like that. She appeared in my line of sight and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
The beautiful girl from this morning at the Starbucks on Hereford Street.
I knew it was her because how could anyone forget those sexy boots? Her blonde hair wasn’t down like it had been this morning, though. She’d pulled it back into a sleek ponytail . . . but she was serving at this event? I’d seen her go into that design studio next to Starbucks. She probably had two jobs. Industrious . . . beautiful . . . sexy.
I quickly returned for my half-empty glass and snatched it up from the table. I suddenly felt like an appetizer or two.
She saw me approaching and moved closer with her tray. “What are these called?” I asked without sparing her tray a second glance. Bad move on my part, but I was too busy taking in her golden eyes and hair, and everything else I could now see up close. Perfect skin, dark lashes that framed spectacular eyes, and a scar along the hairline of the right side of her face. Something had hurt her at some point in the past, and I found it utterly insane that I was disturbed by it.
She rolled her pink lips together as if she was trying to suppress laughter. “Well, they’ve told me it’s something called a . . . meatball. Very unusual gourmet creation. You should try one. They’re said to be quite delicious.”
That voice of hers was . . . fucking beautiful.
“Okay.” I picked up a meatball and popped it in my mouth. Didn’t taste a thing. I could have been chewing slaughterhouse by-products and I wouldn’t have known. My brain had shut off everything except her beautiful voice.
“You are either messing with me or that blow to your head must have been devastating. I would wager you’ve had a meatball before.”
“I am.”
She lost her smile. “You are messing with me?”
“No, I am devastating—I mean devastated—by the blow to my head.” What in the mother fuck was I even saying to this girl? I sounded like Rain Man minus the IQ. I needed to stop talking.
“I’m sorry to hear that. It looks painful.”
“It doesn’t hurt me now.” I thought I smiled and shook my head but couldn’t be sure. Just call me the village idiot because I knew I was acting like one. I did love the sound of her voice, though.
“Another rare and precious meatball?” She offered her tray and studied me this time. She had to be disgusted by my appearance and turned off by my behavior, but she didn’t show it if she was.
“Yes, please.” I took another meatball but I didn’t eat it. “You are British.”
“You are American,” she said with a fast wink, before turning away to serve other guests.
I watched her walk away from me and felt the pounding of my heart vibrating throughout my entire body.
Something had just happened to me.
I wasn’t completely sure what exactly, but I was crystal clear on the reason.
Her.
I did not leave as I had planned to do.
I stayed in that ridiculous meet and greet so I could stalk a girl I did not know.
I, Caleb Blackstone, became a stalker in that moment and was not apologetic about it in the least, either.
Oh, for the next hour or so I put on a good show and kept schmoozing with people I hardly paid attention to, so I could watch her walk around the room, serving meatballs in her tight skirt and fuck-me boots. I even managed to paint an image of her wearing nothing but those boots in my head. My thoughts were downright filthy, to the point my cock wanted in on the action.
Badly.
This wasn’t happening to me in a roomful of business associates. My dick was not getting hard from watching a pretty girl offer up food.
Yes, it was.
I also figured out I wasn’t the only one looking at her, and those boots weren’t exactly helping her fade into the background at an event like this one, made up of mostly men thinking about sex once every fifty-two seconds. Seeing her, it was impossible to think about much of anything else.