Page 23 of Stolen Fate

Ignoring him, I got to the front desk and waited in line for my turn to speak.

It was all a blur of greetings after that.

I was directed to a huge boardroom with glass walls and a large shiny black table. I took a seat in the third chair from the head of the table and declined a bottle of water from the woman who brought me here.

I was too nervous to drink anything. I was sure I would puke if I drank anything, even water.

I leaned back against the chair and tried to adopt a calm posture, even if I was feeling anything but.

Then I waited…

And waited…

My fingers tapped rhythmically across the shiny table, making a tap, tap, tap noise in the otherwise quiet room.

I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes since I had arrived and still not a single person had shown up.

I was getting a lot of strange looks from the employees who walked past the room and saw me sitting here. I ignored them and directed my gaze out to the window, to Boston’s beautiful scenery.

I had always loved Boston. I loved everything about it, from the food and the culture to the landscape and even the people. And had I not felt so disconnected from everything around me, I would have enjoyed the fact that I was living here. I missed home, that was for sure, but the benefits of being in Boston should have helped balance it out.

A cough startled me out of my thoughts, and I looked over to the noise.

What I saw had my brain freezing and my breath caught between panic and surrealism.

I went to move back, only to realize I was sitting down and had nowhere to go, so I clumsily took in the most attractive man I had ever seen in my life.

But his level of attractiveness was not the reason for my surprise. It was when I took in the cold glare of those familiar blue eyes that I knew I was totally and completely fucking screwed.

It was Jace Reed.

Of all the fucking men I had to go home with that day, why did it have to be him? He was supposed to be a one-night thing, something to help me get through an otherwise rough day but never see again.

Fate must be laughing herself silly now.

He was just how I remembered him, too. And I had thought about him often in the days since our night together.

As tall and as imposing as he had been in that bar filled with people he didn’t fit in with, he seemed even more so now at the corporate office I had no business being in. I had never felt so out of my element. And what was even more unnerving was the thought that I didn’t think Jace had ever felt out of his element anywhere, not even at the bar that night.

I took him in, trying to appear casual, yet I was sure I failed, and he was able to see right through me. With broad shoulders and muscular build, he was as intimidating as he was beautiful. And I knew it wasn’t the suit that made him appear bigger. Jace was a big man. I knew that—after all, I had familiarized myself with his body during our night together. I had reverenced it with quiet admiration and not-so-quiet praise, especially when he had laid said body on top of me and moved against me, moved inside me. I squirmed just from the memory of it.

Jace was beautiful, with the kind of body most women and men fantasize about when they were lying alone in bed at night.

And I wasn’t the exception to that. I had been doing exactly that every night since, reliving every dirty detail.

And now I fucking wished I had let Ethan drive me home and not had gone back to that bar.

I looked up and met his hard blue eyes, and they narrowed into a hard glare. The spell was completely broken.

I stood, thankful my shaky legs could still hold me up, and looked at him.

“You must be Evelyn Adler,” the man said, coming toward me. I resisted the urge to step back when he was close enough.

He gave off such an imposing presence—something I didn’t really notice that night, but I was definitely noticing it now—and I wanted nothing more than to run away from the room. But he was blocking my way, and I was here for a job. I couldn’t screw this interview up.

I nodded. “Yes, I’m Evelyn Adler. I’m here about the nanny position for a five-year-old toddler?”

He nodded. “My name is Jace Reed. I will be personally conducting the interview for today, and if it goes well, then I’ll have you meet my son.”

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