Page 9 of Hate On

Roman returned her look with a hard gaze of his own, but let her see something that he wouldn’t have normally shown.

Appreciation.

But if he was expecting her to blush or stammer, he was clearly looking at the wrong woman. Julianna Castle inclined her head and met his gaze levelly, their eyes holding for a long moment. Then, as a smile curled her lips, she let her gaze roam over him briefly.

Heat touched everywhere her eyes did.

While he was processing the magnitude of that heat, she turned on one spiked heel and strode into the boardroom. Under the slim fit of her pencil skirt, her hips swung from side to side in a seductive come-hither.

Oh, he wouldn’t mind coming hither.

Let’s get this show on the road,Roman thought, interest stirring inside him.

He thought idly of the small girl he’d once known.

But the girl she’d been and the boy he’d been, they were long gone.

* * *

From the timethey’d rejoined the meeting, everything seemed to move at lightspeed. Julianna sat with her father, Charles, and from time to time, one of the two would ask another question. It was Julianna, though, who asked the majority of them, something that intrigued Roman.

Roman only had one or two, while his father had one right after the other, each one designed to try and wheedle more information out of Edgar, but he was a canny old bastard. Roman doubted his father had managed to get much of anything useful.

The legal teams took over, adding in their two—or ten cents—but for the most part, everything had been settled before the initial break.

Roman spent most of that time contemplating his approach to Julianna after the meeting.

He sent a text to his father on the sly, letting him know he’d linger after the meeting.

To his credit, his father didn’t ask why.

Michael probably had an idea of what Roman was up to, but he wouldn’t ask. The old man probably knew better. Or at least he knew enough about Roman to know it was better just to let the man work.

As the meeting came to an end, Roman kept an eye on Julianna, planning on his moves for the night, how she might react, his counter-reactions. Roman was a man who liked to have everything aligned and thought through all the alternatives before he made a move.

It was almost second nature as he made his move then.

Her father had already slipped outside, after pausing to drop a kiss on his daughter’s cheek.

Roman’s father lingered an additional few minutes before following the same route Charles Castle had taken.

The legal teams had already departed, leaving Roman to linger over his briefcase and coffee while Julianna spoke to Edgar in low tones.

He’d already picked up on the fact that the materials, the prototype and several samples would be in her hands by the end of the evening.

That told Roman everything he needed to know.

He timed his movement toward the door perfectly, using their body language to judge when their conversation was drawing to a close. He kept his pace deliberately slow and by the time he reached the elevator halfway down the hall, Julianna was just a few steps behind him. He glanced up, feigning surprise when she stepped into the elevator with him. “I thought you were still talking with Templeton.”

She gave him a cool look as if she knew exactly what was going on behind his eyes.

“Guess I should learn to speak up a little quicker,” he said with a grin full of chagrin. “I could have been the one getting first look at it.”

“You’ll know better next time,” she said easily enough.

But she kept her dark eyes on the rows of brightly lit buttons on the elevator’s polished wall.

The rest of the elevator ride passed in a silence as Roman decided he was going to have to try a different approach.