Waving a hand in the air, Aria shrugged as if to ask, ‘Who cares?’ “Brown hair, blue eyes, quite tall.”

“Like that guy over there?” Avery asked, tilting her head toward the end of the bar.

Sure enough, Elijah Lockwood was nursing a beer only a few seats away from them. His eyes met hers. Aria jolted in her seat. Stunned, she tore her eyes away. The breath trapped in her chest rattled out unevenly as she fought the instant wave of attraction. Not now. Not with this man. She didn’t need to complicate matters by being attracted to him.

Sophie’s jaw went slack.

“Oh, quit drooling,” Aria snapped. “He’s only a man.”

“You said he was cute, not gobsmackingly hot,” Sophie said, loud enough to be heard across the room. Aria begged the floor to swallow her up.

Did trouble never cease to follow him? Here she was, sitting at the bar: the last person Eli had expected to see. Usually, he didn’t have much downtime, but with all nonessential meetings cancelled, he was at a loose end. Anyway, he needed to eat sometime. He’d barely taken a seat and asked for a beer when a splash of color caught his eye. On closer inspection, he recognized the journalist, Aria Simons, the one who was intent on ruining his plans. He couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to observe her. In his business, it paid to know your enemy.

Miss Simons appeared older than he’d originally thought, perhaps mid-twenties, although she dressed like a five-year-old girl let loose in a mall. The fluffy pink jersey and purple leggings she’d worn earlier had been joined by a blue hat and a pair of knee-high green boots. The result was eye-catching. One of those sights you couldn’t look away from, no matter how much you tried.

She was with friends: a tall, willowy woman with deep-set eyes wearing jeans and a scruffy alumni hoody, and a short, slight woman wearing a pencil skirt and a white blouse with sky-high stiletto heels. One of these women should help Miss Simons with her wardrobe choices.

He didn’t believe Miss Simons posed any real threat to his project, but she was likely to make a nuisance of herself. Reporters always did. For as long as he could remember, the media had been interested in his family. Eli had been raised by wealthy parents who had thrived in the media spotlight and used it to publicize their advertising company. The media had its uses, but growing up with cameras around every corner had made him jaded. Despite that, it had never bothered him overly until the mess with Victoria. Now, he preferred to avoid the media whenever possible. Happily, Lockwood Holdings Limited sold itself. Because they did good work and made good money, he rarely had to interact with journalists, publicists or media moguls.