Page 19 of Hate On
The STEM gala was one of her personal favorite events, a rather new one in the city, but she’d been attending since the first year when it had just been a handful of couples. In the past few years as the support for STEM projects grew, the popularity of the gala had grown as well.
“Of course, I’ll be going.” She sipped her coffee and looked outside, taking in the familiar sights of Lower Manhattan.
“Do you have a date?”
She laughed. When had she last had time to go on a date? She couldn’t remember, but it had been months, at least. “No, I don’t have a date. I’ve been…busy.”
“Perhaps we could go together. I haven’t had time to find a date either.”
“You and me. Going together.” She tapped her index finger on the side of the coffee cup and shook her head at the very idea. “Eyes would pop out if the two of us arrived at an event like that together.”
“All the more reason.”
The humor in his voice tugged at a sense of mischievousness she’d long kept buried and before she realized it, Julianna found herself saying, “Yes. Why not?”
It wasn’t until after she’d disconnected the call that she realized what she’d just committed to, though. There were amillionreasons as towhyshe shouldn’t go and very few reasons why she should.
But she wasn’t going to call him and tell him she’d changed her mind.
Instead, she eyed the number on her phone, then went to edit the contact so she could save it.
After all, she’d have to call him to make plans for their upcoming…date.
7
Roman
Roman was torn been smilingabout how the night had gone and scowling because Julianna had rushed out of there before they could fit in a morning fuck.
He had hopes of at least one more chance with her since she’d agreed to go to the gala with him, but he wasn’t sure if it would happen or not.
If she found out—
He cut the thought off before it could finish. He had to stop brooding over his actions. He’d done what was necessary to secure the future for his family’s company as one of the top jewelers in the world.
If the prototype Templeton had bragged about was truly everything he’d made it out to be, then the Montrose family had to be the ones to win the bid.
Spying his father through the glass walls of the family boardroom, he smiled and tipped his coffee cup in greeting. He also took note of those two people with Michael Montrose, both company employees. One of their top gemologists, Meredith Chin, a Chinese woman in her fifties with sharp brown eyes and an even sharper sense of humor. She rarely let it out of the box, which made it all that much more cutting. Roman’s smile widened as he saw her. He’d always liked Meredith. She inclined her head in greeting but continued her conversation with the senior Montrose. The third person in their room was another one of their top people—a member of one of the science teams, although Roman couldn’t remember his title. His name was Douglass…something. Roman rarely had reason to meet with him and the man hadn’t made much of an impression on him.
Idly, he recalled some of the questions Julianna had fired off at Edgar Templeton and he suspected that Julianna would remember exactly what the man’s title was, if he’d been one of her employees, and she could explain exactly what his function was.
Roman would have to be honest—some of the more scientific aspects of the business bored him senseless. He could follow the science and tech well enough, but he found it uninteresting.
He wondered if the geological surveys and the dry data that lie behind the glamorous face of the gem and precious metal industry was something that would appeal to Julianna.
He didn’t know and he found that he was irked by that lack of insight.
And he didn’t know why in the hell that was the case. He wanted to know more about her.Everything, a small voice inside him whispered. He silenced it because that wasn’t going to happen. Their brief time together was already almost over.
Pushing his way through the boardroom doors, he greeted everybody and sat down across from his father.
“Were we able to find out what we needed?” he asked in lieu of greeting. His father wasn’t one for small talk and Roman had learned by example.
Michael gestured to Meredith and she turned her gaze toward Roman. “It’s an interesting prototype for certain, and I can see where Templeton had reason to be excited.” A grin tugged at the corner of her lips and she offered an elegant shrug. “I would have liked a bit more time with it, to be honest.”
“I hear abutcoming,” Roman said.
“You do, indeed.” She gestured to Douglass. “Fenwick did the majority of the testing since we were so pressed for time and it was the tech aspects we were most interested in at the moment.”