“What’s up with you? I’d think you’d be dancing on the ceiling with how well this round of voting is bringing in page visits.”
“Huh?” I drag my attention away from the window I’ve been staring out of for the last I-don’t-know-how-long and turn to Rissa. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“About?” Her smile is wide and her eyebrows are raised as she looks toward the screen of my computer and then back at me.
“Oh. No. Not him,” I stumble over the words as I alt-tab out of my screen, which was open to Grayson’s picture.
“I’m sure you weren’t. Why daydream about him when you can have him whenever you want, right?” she teases and has me catching my breath momentarily. Does she know? Does anyone know? It isn’t as if our water fight couldn’t be fodder for Sunnyville gossip, but he left under the cover of night. After I put his clothes through the drier, he jogged right out the front door in time to get Luke from the movie Grayson’s mom took him to.
Rissa’s words still give me pause. They make me question whether anything has been said. Instead, I laugh and decide to go with my assumption that no one knows. “You’re going to start more rumors, Rissa.”
“If it’s in the Sunnyville Gazette, it must be true.” She winks.
“What’s in the Sunnyville Gazette?”
“That you and Grayson were seen out at dinner at McClintock’s the other night.”
This time, I laugh for real. “Is McClintock’s the restaurant that overlooks the Hoskins’ vineyards?” I swallow over the bitter taste in my mouth at the mention of one of the many businesses Claire’s family owns.
“The one and only.”
“Well, I, for one, have never been there. Not even when I was a kid . . . so rumor away.”
“Shush!” She waves a hand my way. “Let me pretend you were there so I can live vicariously through you and that fine specimen of a hot man.”
If she only knew.
I think back to the other night. To Grayson and everything he was more than capable of handling when it came to me.
“Get your own man, Rissa. Better yet, let me spread rumors about you being with Grayson. That would be more believable since you’re a resident here. Since your kids are around the same age as Luke. I mean, you’re a match made in Heaven.”
“First off, you’re the only one who could get away with sleeping with a contestant and not get fired.” I choke out a cough. “Your dad would can me in a second if our positions were flipped.”
“Nice try, but the warning has already been not so subtly issued. Any fraternizing with the contestants could be perceived as bias as it relates to the voting,” I say, using my best impersonation of Frank Thorton all the while remembering my and Grayson’s discussion about bias and the sexy smile that was on his lips. “Didn’t you know? Life is never allowed to interfere with business when you’re a Thorton.”
“We’re talking hypothetical here.” She lifts her eyebrows and holds a finger up to stop me from interrupting her. “Unless you have some juicy details you’re withholding.”
“Yeah, right,” I say through a nervous laugh.
“You better not be; besides, I think the town would turn against me if I went after him. They love the idea of you two together. Hometown hero who was wronged by his ex and the popular prom queen who returns to reunite with her long-lost crush.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“That’s what’s being said on the streets.”
“You mean on Main Street.” I glance back out of the window and shake my head before looking back at her. “And I’m sure you have absolutely no part in the spreading of these new rumors.”
“Who me? Never.” I can’t tell if she’s being serious or not. “All I did was get the ball rolling. You’re the one who pushed it downhill with that kiss. But I will tell you that the gossip hens in this town are already secretly planning your wedding.”
“Yeah, well, that is not going to happen,” I say as that unsettled feeling hits me again. The same one that hit me when he left my house. The same one that got stronger each time my phone rang and it wasn’t him. I know that isn’t what she means. I know Rissa is playing in her pretend world, so I go along with it.
“Oh my God! Could you imagine the story we could do if that happened? Modern Family’s hot dad contest nets him a wife.” She holds her hands up like she’s reading the words off a billboard.
“You need help.”
“Nope. It’s you who’s going to need help if he ever acts on the look he gets in his eye when he watches you. Pure lusty sexiness.” She wiggles her shoulders for emphasis, and I roll my eyes at her.
“I’m going back to work now.” I turn to my social media account to check my ad statistics where click-through rates and impressions and organic reach figures litter the page.
“And I want to know why you aren’t acting on it.”
I sigh in exasperation and lean back in my chair, turning my head her way. “Didn’t we just talk about why? My father. His rules. Bias?”
“So, you do want a little something from Malone.”
I just walked right into that one.
“It’s complicated.” Great answer, Sidney. Way to shoot her down.
“Everything good is.”
Don’t I know it? Grayson’s groan fills my ears. The way he bit into his bottom lip as he came owns my mind. “Leave it be, Rissa.”
“You’ve seen him, right? Six feet plus. Nice ass. Great smile. Sexy as sin. Hell, you’re the one who wrote his bio. You know all about that fine package.” Package. I gulp down the laugh that bubbles up and will the flush on my cheeks to go away. “So, why don’t you want to act on it when he’s there for the taking?”
“Uh-huh.”
Leave.
It.
Be.
I’ve been on cloud nine since he left my house. Cloud fricking nine. Regardless of how many times I’ve told myself it’s just because the sex was incredible, I still don’t buy it. I’m obsessing. Over him. Over wanting him again. Over telling myself it was just sex.
One time.
Well, technically two times . . . but that was all it was.
Sex.
Not love.
“Sometimes rules need to be broken. Sometimes that’s the answer you’re looking for,” she says after a few moments and has me freezing mid-motion as a myriad of consequences flicker through my mind, one more than all others. “What is it you’re afraid to lose if you act on it and sleep with him? Dreaming about that big job at Haute, were you?”
I do a double take. Did I accidentally say that aloud? “How did you know about that?”
“I figured it out.” She shrugs. “There’s no reason you’d accept a job here at a parenting magazine unless there was a serious upside to it for you. A week before you showed up, I heard rumors about the editor-in-chief position at Haute possibly coming up for grabs next year and figured that was what you were aiming for.”
“How did you hear that?”
“I keep tabs on positions within the company . . . I never know when I might want to live the high-journalism life again,” she says and winks.
“Keeping your options open is always a good idea.”
She looks outside at the kids who are getting off the bus and falls silent for a moment, her voice quiet when she speaks again. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Your old life. Your high heels that are meant for fancy nightclubs instead of the Main Street sidewalks of Sunnyville. The city life. The smells and the sounds of it.” She laughs, but it’s small and almost wistful. “That’s what I miss the most about working for The Post. How the city would come to life. The galas and the functions and the hobnobbing, even though none of them trusted me not to put their words on the record.”
“My life isn’t as glamorous as everyone thinks it is.” I say the words but, sometimes, it actually was. They all acted as if that part of my life was something I couldn’t be without. Yes, I loved the galas and the functions and the social parts of my job, but I could take them or leave them most nights.
“Oh, shush, and let this divorced mother pretend that it’s everything I think it is.”
“Okay.” I smile when I look at her. Her hair might be pulled back in a clip, and her lipstick may have faded with the hours of the day, but I can see how she once fit into that life. “In the meantime, I’ll be over here, trying to figure out how to make the next round of voting that much more spectacular.”
“Well, if you look out that window right there, you might just get some inspiration.”
I turn to look where she points, and my breath hitches when I see Grayson walking by with Luke sitting atop his shoulders. Luke has a cone of cotton candy from the farmers’ market in one hand while the other is resting on Grayson’s hat. Grayson has a hold of Luke’s feet so that his biceps flex with each step he takes.
“Oh.”
“Uh-huh,” Rissa says in that knowing tone that tells me that, if I were to look at her, she would see right through me to the fact that I’ve already slept with him. “Maybe you should start by getting a better picture of that man of yours for the site.”
I sigh dramatically. “He isn’t my man.”
“I know, but maybe if you do a photo shoot, you’ll get to spread oil all over that chest of his so those muscles of his shine better in the pictures, and then that would lead to some horizontal hallelujah with him.”
Rissa is just as bad as Zoey is.
I laugh. “You are seriously messed up.”
“You’re telling me you don’t want to see him shirtless and wet?”
I have.
“He doesn’t have to be shirtless to win the contest. Some women look for other attributes.”
“You just keep telling yourself that, and my Braden is going to win.”
“You and your Braden.” I roll my eyes.
“Then get a photo,” she says as she stands and moves toward her desk. “You could always put him into a sex coma and then snap a picture of him barely covered by the sheet. That would get him votes right quick.”
I start to refute her and then stop. “I know, I know. You’re just living vicariously through your fantasies of me.”
“You got it, girl.” She gives a glance out the window to where Grayson is no longer in view. “If you want to live vicariously through me—because let’s face it, everyone is jealous of my life—I can show you how to wear sweatpants and cook frozen freezer meals.” I snort. “See? I told you my life was glorious.”
“Divinely glorious.”