Fallon was nervous. And not her usual level of nervousness either. I had come to recognise the skittish way her anxiety would present. But the person sitting beside me in an ostentatiously large conference room was someone I didn’t recognise.
I knew that reasonably I couldn’t assume to know her all that well. You can’t know someone that well after fourteen days, especially when one of those days included me threatening to fire her and storming out. And yet, what had drawn me to Fallon in the first place, was her utter lack of arrogance. She said what she felt and didn’t care what people thought about her. She certainly didn’t seem to care whatIthought about her.
So, it shook something inside me seeing her slumped in her chair like she hoped that the smaller she made herself, the more invisible she would become. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, rather than her messy waves. Every so often, I would catch her pulling at it and wincing. I wanted to reach over and yank the fucking hairband out if it wascausing her that much pain. But I kept my hands rooted in my lap as I sat back and listened to Tony do what he did best.
Talk a lot of bullshit and be brilliant at his job.
The meeting didn’t require me to speak, aside from inputting my opinion here and there, so I mostly spent the last hour inspecting the row of people sitting on the opposite side of the table.
Charlie, the blond haired prick that had seen Fallon almost fall and done fuck all to help, sat opposite her and periodically scribbled notes on his iPad. He had the face of a punched pancake. His expression mirrored the one worn by the woman sitting next to him. A woman who looked like she spent the entire morning kicking puppies and stealing little kids’ ice creams. She wore a skin-tight navy dress, and I couldn’t place her age for the life of me. I assumed she was somewhere in her forties, but based on the amount of makeup she wore and how little her face moved, she could be anywhere from late thirties to late fifties.
We had all taken our seats when she’d swanned into the room, giving me a perfunctory handshake and an exclamation of how happy she was I was there. Completely ignoring Fallon. That alone set my teeth on edge.
As the meeting wore on, a dull throb banged against my temple. The business side of my job wasn’t where I thrived.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fallon twirl a gold ring around her finger under the table. It was a practised movement that was getting more frantic the longer the meeting went on.
Unable to bear her fidgeting any longer, I reached my hand under the table and rested it on hers, stopping the movement. Her head snapped to mine. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring look, but her expression remained blank, so I had no way of knowing if she understood me. Her eyes, usually full of expression and, in my case, full offrustration and anger, were now dull. They didn’t sparkle. They didn’t hold an ounce of humour or the confidence I’d come to associate with her. If we weren’t in a room full of people, I’d have pulled out my dipstick card, as she called it and made her tell me what was wrong. But it wasn’t the place, so I gave her hand an awkward pat and pulled away.
I’d never been good at comforting people. That was my brother’s role. Not mine.
‘Mr. Blake,’ Belinda’s commanding voice spoke. I straightened slightly in my chair. ‘We want to assure you that we will be treating this project with the utmost care and discretion.’
It was a load of bollocks. They wanted to be the ones to publish my story, and they’d get a juicy paycheck when it sold. But I flashed my professional smile.
‘I appreciate that.’
‘And you’ll be needing a ghostwriter.’ Belinda jutted her head towards Charlie, who scribbled something down—a smirk twitching at his lips.
The little fucker.
‘No. I have a biographer. Fallon will be writing it, and it will be her name on the book. I’ll be assisting in giving her stories and fact-checking.’
I felt Fallon shift next to me, but I didn’t turn to look at her.
Belinda’s eyebrows raised in an expression of disbelief and no small amount of condescension as she finally cast her eyes over to Fallon.
Belinda cleared her throat. ‘Ms Lowell, you are not a writer. In fact, I can’t call to mind anything original you have produced. You were a proofreader when you worked here. Unless you’ve managed some incredible career change in the last three months, this seems entirely out of your realms of expertise.’
The room went eerily quiet.
I was about to jump in when Fallon pulled herself upright, back pin-straight—levelling an intense stare at Belinda as she spoke.
‘Myexpertise,’She enunciated the word, narrowing her eyes at her old boss, who continued to stare back with growing animosity. ‘Has given me five years of working in this industry. And I wasn’t a proofreader as you well know; I was a copywriter, which gave me ample writing experience.’
The storm cloud hovering above Belinda’s head threatened to break as Fallon corrected her. I swiped a hand over my face to hide the fucking proud smile I was wearing.
‘I came to Oliver, Mr Blake’—she corrected herself with an embarrassed shake of her head I foundunreasonablyadorable—‘with this proposal. I assured him I was more than qualified to write this book. Which I am.’ She jutted her chin in defiance.
‘Do you know anything about football?’ Belinda arched a brow.
Fallon hesitated. ‘Well…’
A smirk rose to Belinda’s lips, thinking she’d stumped her. ‘Yes?’
All eyes turned to her. Her hand flexed under the table. ‘Whilst I might not be up to speed on every aspect of the sport—I'm a quick study.’
Charlie all but sneered at her as she spoke, and I wanted to reach across the table and smack the self-entitled look off his face.
