The presentation was going fine until it wasn't.
I had the slides up, and I was moving through them the way I had practiced, covering the design proposal for the mall, the material selections, the spatial flow Lucas and I had mapped out across three late evenings this week. I knew the content. My pointer was steady, and everything was absolutely fine.
Except for the gaze drilling into the back of my skull from across the table.
I could feel him watching me, the way you feel a room temperature drop; it was the only thing you could think about. I gripped the back of the chair in front of me once, then again, and told myself it meant nothing that Alexander Sterling was sitting twelve feet away. He was a client. I was a professional.
I stuttered on the third slide.
Just once, just briefly
