I don’t think Bambi would appreciate how much trouble you’re giving me,” Sophie muttered at the deer head that was staying stubbornly mounted to Gray’s office wall. “Oh God. You’re not Bambi, are you?”
The thought made her shiver, which in turn made her teeter on the ladder.
“Pull it together, Sophie,” she commanded once she’d regained her balance.
She pushed Bambi out of her mind and tried to force herself to think of the hunting trophy as a thing.
Davie the Deer was the last to go, and was proving far more stubborn than Elvis the Elk, Morrie the Moose, and Benny the Bear.
Not that she’d gotten attached to the poor guys while she’d been taking them down or anything.
“Come on, Davie,” she said, easing her hands around to where the plaque met the wall. “Work with me here. This looked so easy when Jeff did it.”
Jeff Andrews was Brayburn’s vice president of sales and had become one of her first friends at the company ever since he’d rescued her Red Vines from the vending machine on her first day. He’d offered to help her out, and she’d happily taken him up on it.
But after handily pulling down most of the heads, Jeff had deserted her. Something about couples’ therapy with the wife. He’d seemed more excited about the dead animals.
“Focus, Sophie.” She had to get the damn wall cleared before he returned from his dentist’s appointment.
Today was it. The end of their one-week trial. Sophie couldn’t afford to fail at the one task Gray had asked of her. As in, she literally could not afford it. Not after the whopping credit card bill she’d opened this morning. Unemployment was not an option. Even if the alternative was being employed by the devil.
Sophie took a deep breath and tugged again at the deer. Nothing. Kicking off her shoes, she let them drop to the floor and tried once more. She felt two nails break, and the obstinate deer head stayed exactly where it was.
She pulled back to glare at Davie for several moments. “I hate you,” she whispered. “You’re going to get me fired.”
Feeling frazzled and desperate, Sophie grabbed at Davie’s nose and pulled as hard as she could.
Davie stayed.
Sophie did not.
She let out a high-pitched squeal as she reeled backward on the ladder. Her last thought was that it was all Davie’s fault as she started a graceless tumble.
Straight into Grayson Wyatt’s arms.
She heard his grunt as she fell into him, her back slamming into his chest. The impact was hard enough to jar her teeth, but it was a heck of a lot better than breaking her neck on the office floor.
His arms shouldn’t have felt familiar. Shit, why did they feel familiar?
Probably just reliving that initial moment of terror in Las Vegas, Sophie told herself, remembering the way she’d thrown herself at him then. Still, the sheer rightness of his embrace felt out of place, considering the wrongness of the moment. But she didn’t move.
Neither did he.
Sophie felt his heart hammering again against her back. Her own stupid heart was beating a bit too fast, although she wasn’t sure if it was from the near-death experience or her proximity to a very nice-smelling male.
One strong arm was wrapped around her waist, and the other banded protectively over her chest. Her toes weren’t even touching the ground, but from some deep, abandoned part of her soul, she realized she hadn’t felt this safe in as long as she could remember.
Her soul was apparently a fool. There was nothing safe about this man.
The fingers near her waist moved upward ever so slightly, and Sophie’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment before she realized that he was merely adjusting his grip.
“You okay?” His breath was hot against her ear, and she couldn’t seem to force any words out. She nodded and shifted slightly under his grasp, trying not to be too aware of the firm male body pressed against hers.
His fingers tightened again at her movements, and this time it was Gray who hissed out a breath. He set her down roughly and yanked his arms back as though she’d burned him.
She felt a flash of regret that the moment was over, but she steeled herself and turned around to face him, ready to deal with the lecture she instinctively knew was coming.
He didn’t yell. Of course he didn’t. But his eyes were screaming murder.
“What the hell were you doing?” His voice was as hard as she’d ever heard it, and she couldn’t resist taking the smallest step backward. The ladder blocked her escape.
“I, um…just doing as you asked. Getting rid of the animal heads.” She gestured toward the corner of his office where Jeff had set the remaining trophies.
His eyes never left her face.
“I see that. My question was why you were doing it by yourself. Do you have any idea how much those things weigh? Did you even think?”
Her embarrassment was starting to give way to indignation. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. I was merely following your instructions!”
Gray blanched. “My instructions? When I asked you to clear out my office safari I didn’t mean you had to do it yourself!”
“I didn’t,” she evaded. “Jeff helped me.”
His eyes narrowed at that. “Jeff who?”
He stared at her blankly.
“Jeff Andrews?” she prompted. “Your vice president of—”
“I know who Jeff Andrews is, Sophie. What I don’t understand is why one of my top-ranking executives is helping my secretary play with stuffed animals while I try to get my fucking teeth cleaned.”
“Hmm, that’s quite the potty mouth, Mr. Professional.” Sophie huffed. Although part of her was happy to hear the f-bomb. It made the man somewhat more human. “Look, I can see that you’re upset, and I can’t really blame you. I’d feel guilty too if I were in your shoes.”
“Guilty.” He folded his arms over his chest. “You think I feel guilty?”
She nodded and patted his arm condescendingly. “Of course you do. The only reason I was wrestling that big deer down by myself is because I was paranoid that I’d be fired if I didn’t! So really it’s your fault I almost broke my neck.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it? You gave me a one-week trial period of employment and then asked me to get rid of these stupid animals. It was either pull Davie down or get fired.”
As far as explanations went it was a bit dodgy, but Sophie opted to stand her ground and see where it went. She was finding it sort of enjoyable to see him all worked up.
“You named the dead—okay. Okay.” Gray closed his eyes as though praying for strength. “Ms. Dalton…”
“Sophie.”
“Ms. Dalton, first of all, the one-week trial was in no way contingent upon your ability to redecorate my office. And second of all, if you did assume the two were related, why in God’s name would you wait until the last possible moment on Friday afternoon to complete the task?”
Sophie waggled a finger at him. “Now, that I actually can explain. See, I intended to do it sooner, but it’s taken me this long to find Davie and crew a good home. I couldn’t just put them in the Dumpster, and none of the local donation centers accept…you know…dead animals. And Martin didn’t get back to me until this morning because he’s been in Europe, but good news! He’ll take his babies back!”
“I’m so relieved.”
“You don’t look relieved. You look annoyed.”
His jaw clenched. “Of course I’m annoyed! I came into my office expecting to catch up on filing and instead I find my assistant teetering idiotically on a ladder!”
“That would be upsetting to your delicate constitution,” she murmured.
“For someone who is so paranoid about getting fired, you’re certainly not taking care to get on my good side.”
Sophie bit her lip. He made a valid point.
Poking the beast with sarcasm wasn’t exactly the way to ensure long-term employment.
“Sorry,” she said halfheartedly. “I’ll try to be more biddable.”
“I doubt you know the meaning of the word,” he muttered as he turned and headed toward his desk.
She followed after him, deer mission abandoned. “Just out of curiosity, if the one-week employment trial wasn’t based on the décor update, what was it based on?”
His head snapped up, and something hot seemed to run over his features. “You know full well what I was trying to determine. Whether or not we could avoid that.” He nodded toward the ladder.
Sophie flushed slightly. Somehow she didn’t think he meant her falling so much as his catching her fall.
She hated that he made her feel disoriented. Her eyes narrowed. What was he after? He’d made it clear that even if he was attracted to her, he didn’t like her. Which meant only one thing…
The jerk was probably toying with her.
So she hit back.
“How’s Brynn?” she asked, keeping her voice casual and plopping into the chair across from his.
His hands stilled from rummaging in his drawers, and she could tell the question had caught him off guard.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Sophie took the high road and didn’t rub it in his face that it was very relevant, given that he’d held her for a good sixty seconds longer than necessary when he was supposed to be interested in her sister.
Still, his response was reassuring and confirmed what she’d gathered from her latest conversation with Brynn. Their chemistry level was currently dwindling into the negative numbers.
Whenever Sophie asked one about the other, it was as if she’d just reminded them about a forgotten to-do list item. If Brynn’s bored tone and Gray’s indifferent expression were any indication, that “relationship” was dead before it even left the ground.
Not that Sophie cared one way or the other.
“Are you and your sister not on speaking terms?”
Sophie blinked in confusion at his question. “What?”
“You asked how she was. Since she’s your sister, I must assume you two are estranged if you’re asking a near stranger about her well-being.”
His gaze was cool, and Sophie realized he’d seen right through her not-so-innocent question.
She made a big show of glancing at her watch. “Sooo, boss. It’s nearly five o’clock on a Friday and I’m sort of trying not to freak out about whether or not I have a job to come to on Monday morning. Did I pass your little test?”
Sophie tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. Before the deer-and-ladder incident, and before she’d lost her mind and gone out of her way to rile him, she thought the week had actually gone pretty well.
Other than apparently thinking she was “too chatty” with the clients, he hadn’t criticized her once.
He hadn’t exactly complimented her either. But then, even if he had an employee whom he didn’t loathe, he didn’t seem the type to throw out bits of encouragement like Good job stapling!
Even though she was a pretty good stapler. Very precise.
Gray ignored her and pulled out a sheet of paper from a folder in his desk drawer. He alternated between reading the contents and looking over the top of the paper at her.
She struggled not to fidget. “What?” she finally snapped.
“You went to Stanford,” he said thoughtfully.
Sophie frowned. “I never told you that.”
“You double majored in biology and political science, with a minor in communications.”
“Are you reading my résumé?” she asked in disbelief. She leaned across the desk to make a grab for it, but he pulled it out of her reach.
“The communications focus, I can see. The opportunity to talk nonstop probably appealed to you. But tell me about the other two. Biology and political science?”
“I see no need for us to go through this little interview exercise…” Sophie crossed her arms over her chest, feeling ill at ease. She didn’t want to discuss anything personal with this man.
“Humor me,” he said in a bland voice.
Sophie reluctantly settled back in her chair, but remained tense. Nothing set her on edge as much as someone analyzing her résumé. One could dig through her panty drawer, her purse, her Internet browser history…
But not the résumé. It revealed too much.
The only good news about this little scenario was that she had plenty of practice with this routine. God knew she’d gone through it often enough with her parents, friends, Brynn, prospective employers…She could practically recite his next lines for him.
You have so much potential.
Is this job just a transition phase?
You’re squandering your talent and top-notch education.
“What do you want to know?” she asked, mentally preparing her usual pat answers.
“Biology and political science don’t exactly overlap in course loads. Did you have any career path in mind that would utilize both degrees?”
For a brief moment she considered setting aside her usual speech and telling him the truth. That the biology major had been for her dad, who’d assumed she’d go to med school. And the political science focus was for her mother, who’d long insisted on Sophie’s destiny to be a lawyer.
Her mother had been wrong, as evidenced by the one very big omission on her résumé: her one-and-a-half-year stint at Harvard Law.
But there was a reason that Sophie didn’t put her little law school dabbling on her résumé. People took a chance on those who’d just taken a little longer than average to make use of their college education. But nobody looked fondly on a quitter.
He was staring at her with unreadable cool eyes, and she changed her mind about telling him the truth. Grayson Wyatt didn’t exactly invite her to spill her guts. Instead, Sophie launched into her usual rambling evasions. Better to sound like a ditz than a failure.
“Well,” she said, winding a curl around her finger and fluttering her eyelashes. “It really came down to the cute guys. Biology had all those sexy, smart nerds. And poli-sci had all the confident alpha men. I mean, what girl could resist?”
He watched her for a moment, and then nodded once with something that looked like disappointment.
“That’s it?” she asked snidely. “You’re not going to grill me on why with a perfect college GPA, top-notch alma mater, and a couple impressive degrees to my name, I’m here fetching you coffee and figuring out how to rid your walls of animal heads?”
Gray shrugged. “If I thought you’d tell me the truth, I might ask. But if you’re going to continue with your evasive bullshitting, I’m not going to waste my time.”
Sophie scowled and tensed as she waited for him to move down the résumé. No doubt his interrogation over her education was just a lead-in to give her a hard time about her lack of office experience.
But he said nothing.
“I didn’t bullshit you,” she said finally.
He gave her a look.
“Well not all of it was lies,” she amended. “I really do like cute boys.”
His lips twitched in something that may have been a smile. “I’m sure you do,” he said.
“You’re not thinking about me as a call girl again, are you?”
“Ms. Dalton, I’m fairly certain that human resources would be in here pretty quickly if I started thinking about my assistant in such an intimate manner. Perhaps we could avoid such references going forward?”
“If I don’t mention The Incident again, can I keep my job?” she asked.
His silence wasn’t a good sign.
“Explain to me why you want this job,” he said.
“Well, gosh, unemployment does have a certain appeal, but I find I’m rather fond of having money for frivolous things like food, rent, condoms.”
“If you’re trying to endear yourself as an employee, you’re doing a miserable job.”
She bit her lip. Why did she keep baiting this man? This was so not the time for her snark to come out in full force, and yet she couldn’t seem to muster the polite, professional assistant routine around him the way she could everyone else in the office.
And even when she tried, he seemed to see right through it.
Gray leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his mouth. “I’m not going to ask you to leave, Ms. Dalton. Despite our unconventional meeting and the fact that you don’t seem to respect me in the least, you’re competent. More important, people seem to like you. To be honest, I could use some of that popularity to help people get accustomed to my…style.”
Ah, so Mr. Perfect was aware of his shortcomings. Interesting. “So you’re keeping me around because I’m popular?”
“Something like that,” he said.
Sophie considered. He had a point. She was good at that sort of thing. And it could be kind of fun to give a personality makeover to someone so socially stunted. Her brain was already bubbling with ideas.
“A project,” she said thoughtfully. “How fun! I promise it won’t be as painful as you think. I just need a month, and soon all of your weekends will be filled with golf rounds, cocktail parties, poker games…”
He winced. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I just meant that I could use your presence to buffer my…impatience.”
“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?”
He looked as though he wanted to smile but managed to resist the urge. Sophie was oddly disappointed. What would he look like without the pinched tension in his face?
“You have entirely too much of a smart mouth to be anyone’s assistant, Ms. Dalton.”
“For the last time, call me Sophie. This isn’t 1793. First names in the office are normal.”
“We’re not friends, Ms. Dalton, we’re colleagues. And casual workplace or not, I like to keep some semblance of mutual respect.”
“Fine, if you want to act like an eighteenth-century dandy, who am I to intervene?” She steeled herself for the big question. “But…I can stay?”
“You can stay,” he said quietly. “For as long as it suits you. Which, judging from your personality, I’d assume would be another few weeks before you move on to bigger and better things?”
Sophie tapped a fingernail against her lips. “Bigger things…such as dancing at bachelor parties and installing a pole in my living room to practice my moves?”
He gave one of his lopsided almost-smiles, and Sophie felt something warm and tingling in the vicinity of her lady parts. Annoying how the begrudging twitch of those unsmiling lips was somehow more rewarding than another man’s full grin.
“So we’re good?” Sophie asked tentatively.
“We’re…okay. Just no more thigh-high boots, no more rambling stories about your childhood, and no more climbing up ladders.”
“I make no promises,” she said cheekily, before wiggling her fingers at him and heading toward the door. “Now if there’s nothing else, I’ll go find someone a bit more…suitable to pull down Davie, eh?”
“Fine,” he mumbled. “Oh, and I did have one question.”
She turned and waited.
“The coffee you brought me this morning. There was cream in there.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Yes. There was.”
“You’ve always brought me my coffee black before.”
“Mm-hmm.” She studied her chipped fingernails. “And you really thought I wouldn’t notice that you dumped in two creamers as soon as I turned my back?”
She could have sworn she saw him blush. It was…cute? No, that wasn’t quite right. But it was something.
“I think it’s sweet that you didn’t want to hurt Beth’s feelings,” she teased. “She informed me with great pride that she’d guessed that you like your coffee black.”
“I think we’re done here,” he said, a distinct red creeping over his cheeks. “And don’t tell Ms. Jennings about the cream-in-the-coffee thing.”
Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”
He shrugged awkwardly and didn’t meet her eyes. “There’s really nothing to be accomplished by telling her that I don’t like it black.”
She cocked her head. “But you don’t it like black.”
“Just don’t mention it, okay?” he snapped. “Honestly, is occasionally keeping your mouth shut that difficult?”
“Fine. Can I go?”
“Please do. And Sophie,” he said, stopping her for the third time.
She sighed and spun around. “Yeessssss?”
“That, um…moment by the ladder?”
“Yeah?” Her voice had gone unintentionally husky.
“It meant nothing. It never happened. Got it? You and I…We’re not…I’d never be—”
She felt the hot rush of humiliated anger. She might no longer be an actual prostitute, but apparently she was still a worthless tramp.
“I get it,” she spat out. “You’d never be interested in someone like me. Loud and clear.”
“Good, then,” he said with a nod. “We’re agreed, then—it was all a big mis—”
Sophie let the door slam before he could finish the sentence.