She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 166

(Gloria)

I’ve been watching Nathanial across the desk for forty minutes.

He hasn't noticed.

He’s chewing on a capped ballpoint while he reads the document in his hand, a small furrow between his brows.

He’s done that since he was twenty-five and it’s going to give him a stroke one day if he’s not careful.

He’s scribbling in the margins.

That cramped, left-handed scrawl I haven’t had to decipher in years, and somehow still can.

They say messy handwriting is a sign of intelligence.

There’s no denying how book smart the man is.

His sleeves are rolled to the elbow just to test me.

I’ve been staring at his forearms like a love-struck teenager for two weeks now.

At the espresso machine.

In the elevator.

Last Tuesday in the conference room, when he reached across the mahogany for a folder and the tendon shifted under his skin.

That was the moment I stopped pretending it was professional observation.

I’m thirty-five years old. It’s pathetic.

He’s sexy and I want him.

"You’re staring."

I look up.

He hasn’t lifted his head.

The pen is still in his teeth as he flips a page.

"I am not."

"You are. Three minutes, at least. I can feel it."

"It’s a forty-page memo. I’m waiting for you to finish so you can give me a summary."

"You’re waiting for me to summarize it?"

"Yes."

"Gloria. You wrote it."

Shit. I’m even more distracted than I thought.

I set my mug down.

"I’d still like your take on it. Take the pen out of your mouth before you choke on it."

He pulls it out and looks up.

Gives me that infuriating, private little smirk he saves for when he’s caught me dead to rights and decides to let me off the hook.

I look straight into his blue-gray eyes and tell my heart to stop acting like a fool.

Three weeks he’s been sitting there.

He hasn’t pushed.

Hasn’t flirted.

Hasn't crossed a single line I’d have to slap him back over.

He’s just been relentlessly, infuriatingly useful.

Beating me to the office three days out of five.

Dropping takeout on my desk without making a production out of it.

Even more importantly, he hasn’t taken a page from Piper’s playbook and tried to turn me against her once.

I’m starting to suspect I’ve been completely outmaneuvered by a man doing absolutely nothing.

Which is the most Nathanial move ever.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I’m deciding something."

"Should I be worried?"

"You should be quiet."

He shuts up.

The smirk shrinks into something much more careful, but it doesn't leave his face.

Piper stood in my kitchen last week with her hands jammed in her coat pockets, telling me not to walk into the same wall twice.

In her own airless, rigid way, she was probably trying to protect me.

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