The Spanish Love Deception novel Chapter 7

Chapter Two

I wasn’t late to our meeting.

Ever since that day a year and eight months ago, I was never late.

Why?

Aaron Blackford.

One time. I had been late one single time in Aaron’s presence, and yet he kept flaunting that fact every chance he got.

He never chalked it up to me being Spanish or a woman. Both unjustified stereotypes when it came to being notoriously unpunctual.

Aaron didn’t do nonsense. He pointed out facts; he stated verifiable truths. He had been disciplined to do that, just like every other engineer in the consulting company where we worked, me included. And technically, I had been late. That one time all those months ago. It was true that I had missed the first fifteen minutes of an important presentation. It was also true that it had been Aaron leading it—during his first week in InTech—and it was again true that I had made a miserably loud entrance that might have involved accidentally knocking over a coffee pitcher.

On Aaron’s stack of dossiers for the presentation.

Fine, partly on his pants too.

Not the best way to make an impression on a new colleague, but tough shit. Things like that happened all the time. Tiny, unintentional, unexpected accidents like those were common. People got over them and went on with their lives.

But not Aaron.

Instead, week after week and month after month ever since that day, he had barked stuff like, “Try not to be late to our ten o’clock meeting. It’s not cute anymore,” at me.

Instead, every single time he entered a conference room and found me sitting there, painfully early, he checked the watch on his wrist and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

Instead, he moved coffee pitchers out of my reach with a warning tilt of his head in my direction.