The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas (novels for students .TXT) 📕

familiar with filled the room. Glancing at the blue-eyed man across the table, I found the irritated face that went with the sound.

“Of course, Kabir,” I said with a smile even though I agreed with the scowling man. “Please call away.”

Ocean eyes pinned me with an icy look.

Meeting his stare, I heard Kabir go through each of our names, obtaining confirmation from both Héctor and Gerald, an unnecessarily cheery present from me, and another grunt from Mr. Grumps.

“All right, thanks,” Kabir said. “Next point in the agenda is, project status updates. Who would like to start?”

He was met with silence.

InTech provided engineering services for any entity that did not have the ability or man power to design or engineer plans for their own projects. Sometimes, they outsourced a team of five or six people, and other times, only one person was needed. So, all five team leaders in our division were currently working and supervising several different projects for several different clients, and all projects never stopped moving forward. Eating away milestones and encountering all kinds of issues and drawbacks. We had conference calls with the clients and stakeholders on a daily basis. The status of each project changed so briskly and in such a complex manner that there was no way every other team leader could catch up in only a few minutes. That was why Kabir’s question had been met with silence. And why this meeting wasn’t completely necessary.

“Um …” Kabir shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Okay, I can start. Yeah, I’ll go first.” He shuffled through a folder he had brought with him. “This week, we are presenting to Telekoor the new budget we’ve been developing for them. As you know, it is a start-up that’s working on a cloud service to enhance mobile data on public transportation. Well, the resources available are rather limited and …”

I absently listened to my colleague while my gaze roamed around the meeting room. Héctor nodded his head, although I suspected he was paying as much attention as I was. Gerald, on the other hand, was openly checking his phone. Rude. So rude. But I didn’t expect anything else from him.

Then, there was him. Aaron Blackford, who I realized had been staring at me before my eyes met his.

His arm reached out in my direction, his gaze holding mine. I knew what he was about to do. I knew. The long fingers attached to that massive palm spread out as they met the object in front of me. The coffee pitcher. I narrowed my eyes, watching how his hand curled around the pitcher’s handle.

He dragged it all the way across the surface of the oak desk. Very slowly. Then, he nodded his head.

Infuriating blue-eyed grudge-holder.

I gave him a tight, closed-lip smile—because the other option was launching myself across the room and pouring all the contents of the goddamn pitcher on him. Again. But this time, intentionally.

Trying to distract myself from that thought, I averted my eyes and furiously scribbled a to-do list on my planner.

Ask Isa if the bouquet she ordered for Mamá was peonies or lilies.

Order either a peony or lily bouquet for Tía Carmen.

If we didn’t, she’d be giving me, Isa—my sister and bride—and Mamá the stink eye until the day she or any of us kicked the bucket.

Send Papá my flight details, so he knows when to pick me up from the airport.

Tell Isa to remind Papá that he has my flight details, so he picks me up from the airport.

I brought the pen to my lips, this awful feeling I was forgetting something important making me uneasy.

Chewing on my pen, I scrambled my mind for whatever it was I was missing. Then, a voice I was terribly—and unfortunately—doomed to never forget thundered in my head.

“You are delusional if you think you can find someone in such a short amount of time.”

My eyes bounced back to the man sitting across from me, meeting his gaze again. As if I had been caught doing something wrong—like thinking of him—I felt the heat in my cheeks and returned my attention to the list.

Find a boyfriend.

I scratched that.

Find a fake boyfriend. Doesn’t need to be a real one.

“… and that’s all I have to report.” Kabir’s words registered somewhere in the back of my head.

I continued working on my list.

Find a fake boyfriend. Doesn’t need to be a real one. And also, NOT HIM.

Surely, I had other options. Not the escort though. A quick Google search had confirmed that Aaron had been right. Again. Apparently, I had been lied to by Hollywood. New York seemed to be filled with men and women offering a wide range of varied and different kinds of services that were not limited to escorting.

I grimaced and then chewed harder on the pen. Not that I’d ever admit that to Aaron. I’d rather give up chocolate for a full year than admit to Aaron that he was right.

But I was desperate at this point. He had nailed that down too. I needed to find someone who would pretend to be in a serious, committed relationship with me in front of my whole family. And that didn’t only include the wedding day, but also the two days of celebratory events that preceded that. Which meant, I was screwed. I was—

“… and that would be Lina.”

My name broke into my brain, making everything else vanish.

I dropped my pen on the table and cleared my throat. “Yes, here.” I tried to reinsert myself in the conversation. “Listening. I’m listening.”

“Isn’t that what someone who wasn’t listening would say?”

My gaze shot across the room, meeting a pair of blue eyes on the verge of showing amusement if the man behind them was capable of human emotions.

I straightened my back and turned a page of my planner. “I was writing down something for a call I have with a client later and lost track of the conversation,” I lied. “Something important.”

Aaron hummed, nodding his head.

Thankfully, he let it go.

“Let’s recap a little bit.