Love Is A Noise Complaint

Genevieve Lennox’s POV

The champagne was obviously mine.

I want to be very clear about that before anything else, because the version of events and happenings Kieran Everett would likely tell everyone, if anyone ever made the mistake of asking him, would probably start with something like.

“She wasn’t even drinking it.” Or “Technically I set it down first.”

And for the record, I was mid-sip when he appeared out of nowhere, plucked the glass out of my hand, and drank the rest of it while maintaining the most infuriating eye contact with me like that was completely a normal thing to do at an event like this.

The Devereaux Charity Gala.

What a weirdo.

“That is mine,” I said with a pure poker plastered on my face.

“I know.” He said, like a smug with a smirk and turned to look at the room.

“You’ve been nursing that same glass for the past forty minutes, Lennox. I did you a favor. The bubbles were dead.”

“The bubbles in my drink were fine.” I tried to take back the empty glass of champagne from him but he instead raised it higher than what I could possibly reach.

For Pete’s sake, someone blessed the wrong man the blessings for height.

“They really weren’t.” He looked at me in a teasing way, which annoyed me even more.

And how I wish I could just kick his balls at this moment but I cannot.

I was this close to a signed partnership agreement with Yves Marchetti.

This close.

I had been working that corner for the past twenty minutes, positioning myself just right, steering conversations until I reach the bubble of Marchetti, and getting Marchetti to the point where he was already warm and laughing.

And about three more minutes away from saying

“Yes, let’s talk properly next week.”

Kieran decided to ruin things for me and went to stand like a statue beside me like some kind of well-dressed disaster, steal my drink, and all of a sudden, my efforts were down the drain because Marchetti’s attention shifted to him immediately.

Apparently, because he’s a freaking Everett.

This man had the gravitational pull of a whole sun.

Everett Co. has been one of the famous companies in the region the last decade, and is already well known national and international under his father’s management. Which was absolutely impressive and inspiring.

But the thought that Kieran is associated with the ace of the century just makes my blood boil. Like how is he the actual heir to that multi-billion-dollar company, with that annoying personality of his.

It just doesn’t click.

Marchetti tapped Kieran on the shoulder with a beaming face. “Everett! I didn’t know you were here.”

“Just arrived,” Kieran said and smiled, then the whole dynamic of the conversation changed in the span of only just four seconds upon his arrival.

It happened in not even a pinch of malicious way.

And that was almost the worst part.

He wasn’t even trying. He was just there, existing in the same space as me and dismantling twenty minutes of carefully laid plan and work purely by virtue of being Kieran Everett.

I smiled.

I forced one, even though I am very good at smiling.

Because that’s the only thing I can do right now after my show got stolen, to keep my composure between the two men in front of me talking like they didn’t see each other for ages.

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Marchetti said, looking between us.

“We don’t,” I said, at the exact same time Kieran said, “We go way back.”

I looked at him, and he looked at me.

His expression was somewhere between amused and completely unreadable, which was the default setting on his face as far as I could tell.

“We’ve been introduced a few times,” I said, which was technically true.

We’d been introduced at the Fontaine reception in Paris, the Okafor dinner in London, the Beaumont thing in Geneva, and approximately more or less four other events that I had not put in my mental Kieran Everett storage, because I did not have a Kieran Everett mental storage.

And why would I have one?

I don’t want one.

Definitely not.

“At various things.”

“At various things,” he repeated, like that was somewhat funny.

“Industry events.” I turned back to Marchetti that’s been watching the both of us exchange absolute nonsense.

“You should hear what Lennox's been building at Lennox Essenxe,” Kieran said to Marchetti in a casual tone like it was a casual conversation.

My head started throbbing, fearing I might just, casually, lose a huge client because of him and his reckless acts.

“The reformulation of the Celeste line was remarkable. Best thing to come out of Monaco’s fragrance circuit in five years.”

I blinked, not expecting that move from the great Kieran Everett.

Marchetti looked interested in a way he hadn’t looked two minutes ago. “Is that right?”

The compliment Kieran made had landed perfectly, framed, timed, dropping exact words and right sentence into it like a cherry on top.

Which he hadn’t. He couldn’t have.

I hadn’t told him anything about the Celeste reformulation.

Neither anyone except my workers who worked closely with me and on the reformulation.

And it’s not very Kieran Everett of him to mind my business and actually do help, not mess it up.

He just, I don’t know, he just knew.

Because apparently, Kieran Everett is the type of man who will go around casually holding detailed knowledge of his competitor’s, even everyone on the guest list’s product lines in his head like some kind of extremely irritating walking industry digest.

In short, a trump card and a blackmail.

And I hated him for that.

One of million reasons.

I sometimes think if he actually had some sort of photographic memory or memory issues if not that.

“The feedback has been strong,” I said, because what else could I say when someone accidentally helps you while also being the most annoying person in the room.

Marchetti spent the next five minutes asking me questions that I answered, while Kieran stood there drinking my stolen champagne glass, wherein he got refilled and saying nothing further, which was somehow worse than if he’s keep talking.

At least then I’d have something to push against him.

The conversation ended with Marchetti saying “Have your office call mine,” which was the exact outcome I had been working toward, so I should have felt good.

But I felt annoyed and pissed off, with joy and excitement at the very least of my emotions running down my system right now.

“You’re welcome,” Kieran said, when Marchetti walked away.

“I didn’t thank you.”

“I know you were about to.”

“I really wasn’t,” I said, imitating how he spoke to me earlier after stealing my champagne.

He looked at me properly, oddly in a serious manner.

With full attention, which was a different thing than half of it.

His attention only is shown when something piques his interest, or he noticed something. I’d noticed that the first time we had met, at the Fontaine reception, when I had caught him watching a room the way a chess player watches a board.

It made me want to stand very straight.

“Trust me, the bubbles were dead,” he said again, and held out his other hand, which was holding a fresh glass.

He must have grabbed it from a passing try at some point without me noticing.

I looked at it and back at him.

Trust who? Him?

“Are you kidding me,” I mumbled, almost a whisper that I’m a hundred percent sure he didn’t hear at all.

I rolled my eyes and decided to take it, because I’m not an idiot, I have empathy and I don’t like him handing the glass for hours if must, and also because I needed something to do with my hands.

“Don’t follow me to my next conversation,” I said.

He smiled with that annoyingly teasing expression like he’s not going to follow through with what I asked for. “Wasn’t planning to, Lennox.”

I walked away in that instant.

I did not look back, it felt unnecessary for irrelevant things, like Kieran Everett, and because I could feel him watching me and I refuse to give him the satisfaction.

I was halfway across the room when Saoirse appeared at my elbow, eyebrows already raised, smirk at the corner of her mouth, and holding a canapé she was not going to eat because I know she was on diet.

“Was that Kieran Everett?”

“You have eyes, why are you asking me?”

“Were you two—”

“No.”

“It looked like—”

“It wasn’t.”

She popped the canapé in her mouth anyway. “He’s annoyingly good looking.”

“He stole my champagne.”

“And got you the Marchetti deal.”

“I was already getting the deal, Saoirse.”

“Sure girl, I believe you,” she said, in a tone that for sure meant she didn’t believe me at all, and linked her arm through mine before starting to steer us through the crowd and towards the bar.

I don’t want to deny the credit of him helping me but I can’t accept that.

Me? Accepting the fact that he indeed helped me this time? Over my dead body.

That’s like raising a white flag in this blood feud.

I let Saoirse do her thing, because the alternative course of action for me tonight was standing there thinking about the way he said “We go way back,” like it was an inside joke about something and I wasn’t informed.

An hour later, when the gala was winding down and I was putting on my coat and mentally drafting the follow-up email to Marchetti’s office, I reached into my clutch for my business card holder.

I always keep three cards with me exactly for this kind of events and found one missing.

I hadn’t given one out tonight, which totally confused me.

I turned around. The room and the large crowd earlier had thinned.

I saw Kieran near the exit, with his jacket on, probably already half-turned to leave the venue.

He looked back at me at the same moment I looked over his direction, which was a coincidence I was filing directly in the bin.

To my shock, he held up my card between two fingers.

I raised an eyebrow at him. I hadn’t seen him take it.

“Lennox,” he said, not loudly, just enough for me to hear and carry. He looked at the card, then at me.

“Call me,” he said then laughed his ass off while putting the card in his breast pocket, and walked out.

Is he crazy?

I ran my hand through my hair and left with a long face.

Would prefer calling the devil instead.