The CEO'S Wrong Sister (The Black Sheep Bride)

Nobody told Nora the meeting was about her.

That was the annoying but usual thing. The way they all sat around the formal dining table her father at the head. Her mother beside Madison, and Nora in the chair slightly that had always been slightly to the left, and nobody thought to mention that the man sitting across from them with the dark grey eyes, and the charcoal suit that probably cost more than the Voss family car was here, in some way, because of her.

She found out the same time everyone else did.

Which was to say, she found out when Xavier Holt looked directly at her father and said, "I'd like to marry your daughter," and then turned those dark grey eyes across the table and looked, not at Madison, but at Nora.

The room stopped.

Not figuratively. Literally. Her mother's hand froze halfway to her wine glass. Her father made a sound that wasn't quite a word. And Madison, she went very, very still.

Nora looked behind her. Purely on instinct. Just to make sure there wasn't another daughter standing there that she didn't know about. There wasn't, there was only the wall and the painting of the countryside her mother had bought at an auction twelve years ago and never quite liked.

She turned back around.

Xavier Holt was still looking at her.

He was, and she would hate herself for noticing this, later, in the privacy of her own room.

The man was extraordinarily good looking. Not in the approachable way. In the way that made you forget what you were about to say. Tall even sitting down, broad shouldered, dark hair with one piece falling slightly forward that he didn't bother to fix. His jaw was sharp enough to be its own argument and his eyes were the grey of a sky deciding whether to storm.

He did not look like a man who made mistakes.

Which made this all very confusing.

"I'm sorry," Nora said, because someone had to. "Did you just ..."

"Yes," he said.

"You looked at me."

"I did."

"Not at. ." She stopped herself. Gestured vaguely across the table without finishing the sentence because finishing the sentence felt cruel, and she wasn't cruel even when people deserved it, and Madison was sitting right there with a smile painted on her face that didn't reach anything above her cheekbones.

"I'm aware of who I looked at," Xavier said.

His voice was low, and unhurried. The kind of voice that didn't need volume because the room always got quiet for it anyway. He picked up his water glass, and took a measured sip, and set it back down with the precise ease of a man who had never once in his life been caught off guard.

Nora had been caught off guard. Enormously. She was still off guard. She was so far off guard she could no longer see guard from where she was standing.

"Xavier," her father started, recovering.