A Girl Less Ordinary by Leah Ashton

Author:Leah Ashton [Ashton, Leah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780373178407
Amazon: 0373742096
Goodreads: 13706750
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

SO far, the launch party was exactly as excruciating as Jake had expected. It had it all: inane conversation. Wannabes posing all over the place. Air kisses. Overly loud laughter. An abundance of suits.

And it had only been going fifteen minutes.

He sipped on his beer, surveying the room from where he stood, braced against the bar. Armada had booked out the opulent Darling Harbour restaurant for the launch, and beyond the crowd of Armada staff members and the aforementioned wannabes large windows opened out to a balcony. The sun had long ago set on this late winter evening, so the water was just a black nothingness, reflecting the multicoloured lights of the casino that loomed above it. Jake knew this, as he’d been out there on the balcony a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately, his tolerance for pointless conversation was as low as usual, and so he’d excused himself to get a drink.

He was fully aware his time alone would not last.

He was supposed to be out there, schmoozing. Regurgitating the Armada ‘mission’ and ‘message’, just as he had on the radio yesterday. Except for the bit at the end, of course.

It was only another couple of weeks of all this hoo-ha, and then he would schmooze no more.

He couldn’t wait.

‘Jake.’

At Ella’s soft voice to his left, he rested his glass back on the bar.

‘‘Evening, Ella,’ he said as he turned to face her.

He’d planned to say something further, but the words were suddenly clogging his throat.

She looked—and there really was no other word to describe her—spectacular.

She wore a dress of some clingy black fabric that did its job and clung all the way from just above her knee to her shoulders. Or, rather, shoulder, as the fabric flowed from just one, leaving the other bare.

Chunky, flat jewels were embroidered densely to the fabric at her collarbone, becoming increasingly more sparse as they travelled towards the upper curve of her breast before blending entirely into black.

Too late, he remembered to look at her face.

When he met her gaze she raised one perfectly arched and bemused eyebrow.

He didn’t quite know what to say. Instead, he blindly reached for his beer, and took a long, long drink.

‘You look,’ he tried, eventually, ‘great.’

There was an appalling understatement.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and her gaze dipped to the floor for a moment. He recognised the action for what it was—a throwback to shy Eleanor, who’d always had difficulty accepting, or believing, compliments. ‘I was about to say the same about you.’

She flicked her eyes over the outfit she’d selected for him. ‘Nice suit,’ she said, wryly.

‘I suppose it’s not so bad,’ he said. This elicited exactly the response he was after—narrowed and flashing angry eyes.

‘You’re the best-dressed guy here, and you know it.’

He grinned, shrugged as if he couldn’t care less and enjoyed Ella’s obviously frustrated reaction. She knew perfectly well he was teasing her, and yet she still reacted, despite her best efforts.

In that way, at the very least, Ella hadn’t changed at all.

Then

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.