Chapter 114: Near and Far
** Eli **
By the time the Luau finally ended, Eli was both disappointed and relieved that Harper didn’t come to find him like she offered before. Oh how he wanted to see her ... But if he did, he probably wouldn’t be able to resist pressing her to a wall and demanding her to repeat those dance moves just for him.
So instead, he went to sleep and dreamed of her. In his dream he did exactly that, among other things.
Needless to say that the next day, it took quite a bit of effort for him to hide the guilty sheepishness from his face as he showed up to their shared meetings.
Monday spelled bad luck for his chances at keeping his distance from Harper. It was the only day that everyone from the group would be sitting in the same meetings, making it impossible to avoid her presence. It was also the only day that consisted entirely of presentations that he had already seen before, some more than a dozen times, which meant that he’d be utterly bored during every meeting ... and his eyes would naturally drift in her direction instead.
Having learned his lesson from last night, he couldn’t let that happen again. So when he strode into the conference auditorium and found the seats unassigned, he picked the table right up at the front, not giving himself an easy spot to ogle anyone from.
He had barely settled down when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Harper and a few of her coworkers enter the auditorium door. The suitcase guy was unsurprisingly among them. The group looked around, coming up to the second table from the front, and the guy looked definitely too eager to glue himself to Harper’s side again as soon as she could pick a seat.
Eli turned his eyes away, reminding himself that he really shouldn’t, couldn’t, mustn’t, interfere blatantly this time.
"Oh, Eli! Glad we found you over here. Lindsey has been nagging me to introduce you guys for weeks!"