Free Deacon: A BWWM Billionaire Romance by Paige Notaro Page B

projector, taking it in, basking in the cold echo of what I had wrought.
     

CHAPTER NINE
    Kiara
    I sat alone in a spacious exterior office, willing the financial numbers on my laptop to tell me their story. My nerdy brain usually assembled them all nice and neat for me, but now it looked like just a jumble of digits. This must be what normal people saw.
    I sighed and looked out at the large pond down at ground level. The sun would have made the rippling waters blinding, but the tinted windows kept it cool and calming. This was a nice office. It'd take a while to get it working inside Stone Holdings.
    Lucky me. I'd gotten it for spreading my legs.
    Deacon could spin it any way he wanted. He could even mask it by giving my whole team their own rooms like this. But I saw the snide looks I got at our evening team meetings now. The whispers that disappeared under the a/c’s whir when I entered a room.
    They were the best analysts in the company. And it didn't take a lot of analysis to figure out what had happened.
    My hands were clenched so hard just thinking about it that my nails dug into my palm. Yeah, this wasn't calming me down any.
    Maybe sinking one of these fists into Deacon's smarmy face would. It was almost too bad he hadn't been around the whole week we'd been working here. He hadn’t attended a single meeting, just sent in a vice president from his in-house accounting team.
    No, it was a good thing he wasn’t around. Even after years of deconditioning, I couldn't trust I wouldn't slowly just defer to his seniority.
    Even if I didn’t, socking a client wasn’t exactly going to get people to stop talking.
    Ok, even if I hit him in private, it wasn’t like I could crack the powerful cliffs of his cheek. I'd just end up cupping his face.
    That'd just give him an excuse to scoop me up in his arms. He'd probably punish me for it, right here on the desk. It wouldn't matter at all to him that our winding silhouettes would be obvious to anyone who walked past the fogged glass walls. He’d do whatever he wanted to me.
    Someone rapped once on the door.
    I startled from my nightmare of a daydream. Even with Deacon out of sight, my traitorous mind just kept leading me further into Deacon’s grasp.
    “Come in,” I said, brushing my shirt down.
    Trey strode in, an immaculate slate suit draping off his long, lean form. He could have crashed a Houston Rockets post-game press conference and not looked out of place. Or he could have just as easily crashed a Harvard economics lecture. The guy was really smart.
    “I've got the files you requested,” he said. He fanned himself with a brown folder just a shade lighter than his face.
    Oh, good, something real to be annoyed about. “Habibi Solar sent you a paper copy?” I said. “Are you serious?”
    “Some of the guys in the Middle East are old school when it comes to existing contracts.”
    “Or they're hiding something.”
    His lips trembled then stilled. “It’d surprise me if they are.”
    Of course it would. He’d done all this work already. It’d taken one meeting for it to be clear that he wasn’t expecting much from us. My team and I were just actors in a really dull improv skit.
    Though maybe that was because I’d gone and shut Deacon down with a ‘no’ instead of a ‘yes, and.’
    “It’s always good to be skeptical,” I said.
    “Sure enough. That’s what you’re here for.”
    He handed me the folder. My fingers brushed his palm as I grasped it. His skin was rougher than his manicured hands and his VP title suggested. Not exactly cowboy hands, but not completely moneyed ones either.
    I took a fresh glance at him. He wasn’t old at all. He could be Deacon’s leaner twin if they were the same color.
    “Can I ask you something?” I said.
    He chuckled. “You’ve asked me more since you walked in than the rest of your team combined.”
    “This is more personal.”
    “I see.” His eyes glowed like copper. “Go on.”
    “How long have you been