Read Online Since I Saw You by Beth Kery - Free Book Online

added wryly.
    Palpable relief swept through her
.
Kam didn’t say anything.
    “It’s just . . .” She stared out the windows at the pristine skyline of the city. Having never been substantial from the start, her carefully constructed lie completely evaporated beneath Ian’s incisive stare. “I think you’d be the more ideal person, as his brother, to accompany him for these meetings. Don’t you?”
    “Not really, no. Kam needs someone to guide him, not take the spotlight off him. Besides, he’ll be the first to tell me I’m being too heavy handed in dealing with matters that concern him. I can’t tell you how many times he’s told me since I’ve met him that it’s his
life, not mine—usually in much blunter terms. Your subtlety, your charm and manners are precisely what’s called for. Next to you, he’ll come off like royalty.”
    “You think far too much of my abilities,” she muttered under her breath.
    “I sincerely doubt that,” Ian said, glancing at his watch. “At any rate, we can ask Kam what he thinks about the whole thing. He’s due here any minute to get a tour of Noble. It’s his first visit to the offices. Coraline went down to the lobby to get him.”
    Lin didn’t have much time to get panicked. A knock sounded at the door.
    “Ah, here he is,” Ian said, standing.
    •   •   •
    A middle-aged, attractive brunette had been waiting for him in the lobby when he entered Noble Tower. She identified herself as Coraline Major and explained as they got on the elevator that she was one of Ian’s administrative assistants.
    “I thought Lin Soong was his assistant,” Kam said as the elevator doors closed silently.
    “Ms. Soong? Mr. Noble’s secretary?” Coraline said, thin, plucked eyebrows arching high at the idea. Coraline waited discreetly while two young men in suits got off on the tenth floor. The door closed, leaving the two of them alone in the elevator. “Myself and three others are both Mr. Noble’s and Ms. Soong’s assistants. Ms. Soong is a Noble executive. She sits on Mr. Noble’s advisory board and is considered by many his chief advisor. No one knows the company better, save Mr. Noble himself. She’s worked here since she was just a teenager off and on. Even when she was still in high school, she used to come to the office sometimes and her grandmother would put her to work on the books and such. Ms. Soong has her grandmother’s head for numbers. She’s certainly every bit as elegant and graceful as Mrs. Lee was,” Coraline recalled fondly.
    “She was born and bred Noble, it sounds like.”
    “Precisely. Mr. Noble consults her on almost everything. Ian calls her his right hand. They work together exceptionally well.”
    A sudden, fierce wish went through Kam to return home to Aurore Manor, that familiar, brooding haunt of a home where he was free to do what he chose without overthinking everything, where he existed without the concern of offending. Not that the place was gloomy anymore. It’d been transformed under his hard physical labor, the massive cleaning Elise and Francesca had orchestrated with a platoon of maids, and the items that had arrived to refurnish the place. The shadows were being slowly vanquished, the darkness of Trevor Gaines evaporated by kind visitors, new hopes, organization, hard work, and streaming sunlight. It was becoming a home instead of a shell of a house. But more importantly, there was no one at Aurore to offend but his dog, Angus, and Angus was too good-natured of a beast to stay mad for long.
    Phoebe Cane was caring for Angus in his absence, but he was suddenly quite certain his dog was as uncomfortable in Phoebe’s house as Kam was in his luxury hotel room here in Chicago. After all, Kam himself had never been content in the confines of Phoebe’s house for longer than it took to exchange pleasure. His dog would have one less reason for wanting to be there.
    Coraline seemed to notice his scowl and thought it wise to