by Lauren Layne
Sophie winced as she realized that her own comments about making him more approachable might add to open wounds. How must it feel to always be told that you’re not appealing enough? To be shy, but told that in order for someone to like you, you had to be more talkative?
Had anyone ever told Gray that he was sufficient just as he was? That he was successful and kind, even if he had no idea how to show it?
She doubted it.
Not that he was faultless, of course. That chronic scowl had to go, she didn’t care how introverted he was. But at the same time, she no longer was sure she wanted him to smile just because it was expected. Sophie was beginning to like the fact that Gray’s smiles had to be earned. They felt more like a reward worth reaching for instead of a superficial grin freely given.
Perhaps most startling of all was the fact that the two of them weren’t quite as different as she’d assumed. They were both struggling to reconcile being true to themselves while managing the expectations of others. He with being more approachable, and she with being more conventional. On the one hand, they wanted to be open to self-improvement. On the other, they didn’t want to compromise their own values.
“Please tell me you’re not having some sort of melodramatic womanly moment over there,” Gray said as he drizzled some oil over a bunch of exotic-looking greens.
“I totally was. You want to hear about it?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.”
She told him anyway. “I was just thinking how we have more in common that I would have guessed.”
He sighed and put a salad in front of her. “Is listening to this optional?”
“Quit being so emotionally closed-off,” she said without heat.
“And this is why I don’t read Cosmo.”
Sophie dug into her salad, pleasantly surprised that something so simple could taste gourmet. “Hey, this is really good. You should open a restaurant. And you still haven’t told me how you learned to cook like this.”
He shrugged awkwardly. “I kind of stumbled into it, really. At some point after college I realized that I wanted to be able to make something other than grilled cheese. So I went to cooking school. Le Cordon Bleu, actually.”
“Isn’t that where professional chefs go?”
“They take anyone with enough money.”
“Ah, so you bribed them. Fair enough. You pay for cooking school, you pay for sex. It all makes sense.”
He let out a low growl. “When do we get to drop the prostitute thing? I’m making dinner for you, and I think in return you should quit making cracks about that night.”
She bit into a perfectly crisp green bean and considered. “I will under one condition.”
He muttered a string of obscenities which she pretended not to hear.
“I promise never to bring it up again if you tell me what exactly about me made you think I was a hooker. I mean, I know I wasn’t exactly classy, but it was Vegas. I was hardly the only one in skimpy attire.”
He looked almost hopeful. “If I address the elevator incident, we can move on?”
“Promise. I will never ever imply that you once wanted to pay me for sex.”
“I never wanted—” He broke off, realizing that she was baiting him.
He was really getting better at this whole reading-of-the-people routine. She felt so proud.
Gray’s jaw tightened, and his voice sounded gruff. “It was just those damn boots. They were awful. I figured no self-respecting woman would wear them.”
Sophie let out a half laugh. “You made a snap judgment based on my shoe choice?”
He lifted a shoulder and continued eating his salad.
She shook her head. “Talk about judgmental crap.”
“Talk about slutty shoes.”
That made her smile ruefully. “And to think I spent a good hour getting ready that night. All my hard work defeated by the wrong shoe selection. I was this close to picking a very respectable sandal.”
“Now can I ask you something?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Very good, Gray. Showing interest in your date is progress.”
He ignored her attempt at evasion. “Two questions, actually. First, why did you quit law school?”
Sophie blinked at the unexpected change in topic. She thought carefully about how to respond. Did she even know anymore? Her twenty-three-year-old self seemed like a distant stranger. “I don’t really know,” she said slowly. “It’s like one day I was contentedly going through the motions of the path I’d always been on, and the next day…everything just felt wrong.”
“So…you wanted to go into the restaurant business?”
Sophie laughed softly. “Very delicately put. And no, not really. I suppose you could say it was a very delayed form of rebellion. I’d done everything I was supposed to up until that point. Good grades, the “right” extracurricular, the right school, wholesome boyfriend…When I fell off that path, my parents flipped. There was a whole lot of talk about being respectable, and not a whole lot of dialogue about happiness. I guess in turn I tried to get as far away from their path as possible.”
“By becoming a cocktail waitress,” he finished for her.
“Well…it was that or a hooker,” she said with a sly smile.
He took a sip of wine. “Which leads me to my next question…Why are you still so preoccupied with what happened that night? It was a simple mistake, and we’ve already established that neither of us was at our best. Add to that a freak elevator malfunction. But you can’t let it go. Why is that?”
She let out a long breath and pushed her salad aside. “I’m going to need more wine for this discussion.”
He complied, refilling both their glasses without comment. Then he turned and studied her, his dark eyes latching on to hers with uncomfortable intensity.
She looked away and idly ran her finger along the stem of her crystal glass before speaking.
“So, the thing is,” she began slowly, “my career path hasn’t been exactly typical for a Stanford graduate. The alumni house is hardly pounding on my door begging for interviews.”
She took a swallow of wine, feeling his intent gaze still fixed on her profile.
“And I guess I’ve always known that I’m better at being liked than being admired,” she continued. “And I’m okay with that. Mostly. But being mistaken for a prostitute somehow felt like rock bottom, you know? Like I’d been able to handle the You can do better pep talks up to a point, but…”
She broke off, not knowing how to explain herself and worried she’d revealed too much.
He didn’t let her off the hook. “But when I thought you were at the bottom of the employment food chain, you doubted yourself and began to wonder if your family was right about you?” he guessed.
“Yup, that pretty much sums it up,” she said glumly.
“Hey,” he said softly, nudging his knee against hers.
She raised her eyes to his, ignoring the flip of her belly.
“You’re not inferior to anyone. You have skills that nobody else in your family has. Hell, the way you handled the Blackwells? I’ve never seen anyone wrap someone around their finger so efficiently. That kind of skill is worth something. You’re worth something.”
The last sentence came out in a mumble, and he tensed his jaw, probably from the uncomfortable sensation of saying something nice. Sophie wanted to give him a hard time about the uncharacteristic softness, but she felt too warm and melty to ruin the moment. This kind of affirmation coming from anyone would have given her a flutter.
But coming from Gray? She felt like grinning.
What would it be like to lean into him for just a moment? To beg for more reassurances. To hear that he liked her. That he respected her, just as she was, not for what she could be.
Before she knew it she was leaning, and from the way he was staring at her mouth, she wasn’t the only one who felt the pull of whatever was going on there. He moved imperceptibly closer and Sophie held her breath, not da
ring to let herself think. Not about work, not about Brynn, not about Vegas.
Kiss me, she thought.
Gray drew back so quickly he nearly knocked his plate off the counter.
“Anyway, I just wanted you to know,” he said gruffly, grabbing their plates and standing.
Sophie shook her head and tried to shake off whatever had just flashed between them. She took a deep breath and ordered herself not to be disappointed.
You are not to make out with your boss, you are not to make out with your boss…
She repeated the mantra in her head as he dumped their barely touched salads down the garbage disposal with a fierce scowl. She had the insane urge to press her lips against the crease between his eyebrows.
How had the night turned so quickly from dreaded family dinner to downright sexy?
The taciturn, irritable version of Gray never made her feel off-balance. But this flirty, sweet version made her wary. This Gray could too easily slip past her guard, and the last thing she needed was to fall for someone who would never approve of her. Throwing a few morale boosters her way was one thing, but someone like Gray would never be in a serious relationship with someone as unfocused as her. Hell, Brian had been a freaking nomad, and even he thought she was floating aimlessly through life.
The thought depressed her more than it should. Most of the time she couldn’t stand Gray, and now she was thinking about a relationship?
They needed to abort this cozy chatter before she did something crazy. Like grab the lapels of his crisp white shirt and kiss him senseless. And every instinct in her body told her that getting personal with Grayson Wyatt could only lead to heartbreak.
“Can I help with the main course?” she asked too loudly.
He glanced up, looking relieved that she wasn’t going to continue their bonding moment. He’d probably reached his quota of emotional availability for the year.
“You can chop the parsley,” he replied. “You can’t possibly mess that up.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said, sliding off the bar stool. “Do you have an extra cutting board?”
He slid the garlic he was mincing to the right side of his cutting board and gestured to the space he’d just cleared. “Grab a knife. Parsley’s in the produce drawer of the fridge.”
Unsurprisingly, his fridge was both well stocked and well organized. She took her time browsing through the assortment of fancy cheeses and meats and wide array of produce. It had more variety than her local grocery store, she marveled as she checked out some expensive-looking ham.
“Quit fondling my meat, and just get the damn parsley.”
“Cliché sexual references, boss? I didn’t think that was your style,” she said as she grabbed the parsley and a knife and settled beside him at the cutting board.
Despite her intention to keep things completely professional between them, she couldn’t help but notice the domestic coziness of them sharing a cutting board. He seemed to think the same, because his eyes slid to hers and he gave her a shy smile.
She followed the motion of his hands as he adeptly minced several garlic cloves. He looked so at home with his cooking utensils. It was strange to think that the same hands deftly handling the chef knife were the ones she’d seen typing, holding a phone, or shooing her out of his office.
Awkwardly, Sophie began chopping the parsley. She’d never thought much about her chopping technique before. She’d watched plenty of Food Network and could whip up the occasional spaghetti or stir-fry without embarrassing herself. But after watching him go all Julia Child on her, she felt strangely inept.
Her eyes slid again to his hands, trying to mimic what he was doing. Noticing that he used shorter, more efficient chopping movements, she tried the same—
“Ouch!” she exclaimed. “Son of a…”
She’d never exactly been keen on blood, and the sight of red fluid covering her hand had her swaying.
“What the hell?” Gray said, grabbing her by the wrist. “You’ve cut yourself!”
“Wow, nothing slips by you.” she said dazedly, staring down at her bloody hand. It was hard to see around the Braveheart-worthy puddle of blood, but it looked like a major gash was running along her index and middle fingers right below the knuckle.
“You’re going to need stitches,” Gray muttered.
“Just get me a Band-Aid,” she said, humiliation beginning to sink in around the queasiness. “It’s only a little nick.”
But Gray had grasped her wrist and wrapped a towel around her fingers. “Into the car, now. We’re going to the ER.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? Just get me another glass of wine and another towel or something. Maybe some tape.” Her hand began to throb. “Actually, make that wine a whiskey. But I’m not going to the hospital because I cut myself chopping parsley.”
“I can see your bone, Sophie,” he said as he ushered her out of the apartment, down a stairwell, and into the garage. Throbbing finger or no, she wasn’t so out of it that she didn’t notice the careful way he tucked all of her limbs into his black BMW or the way he quickly ran his hand over her hair.
Then again, that could have been the woozy at work.
“Just great. I’m even a failure at cutting herbs,” she muttered, throwing her head back against the headrest and clutching the towel more closely around her fingers. The blood had soaked through the folded dish towel and she was beginning to realize the sheer stupidity of what she’d done. She couldn’t even blame the wine. Sure, she’d had a glass, but most of her intoxication had been from watching the man next to her.
Distraction by lust. It happened to the best of women, right?
Through the haze of pain and humiliation, she realized that Gray drove just like he did everything else. Quickly, quietly, and with no unnecessary movements.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, glancing over at her.
“I’m feeling really great, Gray. For the first time ever I was getting the impression that maybe you didn’t hate me, and then I go and ruin the night by nearly slicing off the fingers of my dominant hand. So yeah, I’m great. Maybe later we can go shoot puppies at close range.”
“I never hated you,” he said quietly.
And then he reached over and briefly set his hand on her knee before he jerked it back to the steering wheel.
Despite the fact that her hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel, and that she was about to spend her Friday night in a hospital waiting room, she couldn’t hide a giddy little smile.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Somehow Gray had never imagined that his personal version of hell would include an emergency room waiting area, the frantic parents of his secretary, and her scarily stressed-out sister, who also happened to be an ex-girlfriend. Will Thatcher had shown up as well, although he at least seemed calm.
Resisting the urge to press his fingers against his temples, he turned to Will, the only one of the group not either wringing their hands or scowling at him. “Would you please explain to me how it is that you all ended up here for a very minor finger injury?”
Will shrugged good-naturedly as he dug into his second bag of peanut M&M’s. “Soph’s dad used to run this emergency room. There’s no way you could have snuck beloved Dr. Dalton’s youngest daughter through here without the whole fam finding out. M&M?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Tell us again how this happened?” Sophie’s mom asked, shredding her thumbnail to pieces with her teeth.
“Calm down, Marnie. Dr. Hoyne said it was nothing a few stitches wouldn’t fix,” Sophie’s dad said while rubbing his wife’s back.
Marnie hissed. “Oh, and what does Richard Hoyne know!”
“True, med school teaches those docs nothing these days,” Will said.
“I heard that, William,” Marnie said.
“Dr. Hoyne is a fine ER doctor. I trained him myself,” Chris said soothingly.
“So she’s not going to lose her fingers?”
Oh Jesus. Gray pinched t
he bridge of his nose. Of all women, the one who had to go and slice her finger was an employee. And of all the employees, he had to end up with the one whose dad was a retired doctor and had apparently handpicked the entire emergency room staff.
“I just don’t understand how this happened,” Marnie asked.
“I didn’t realize I owed you a report,” Gray snapped, losing his temper.
“Don’t get snippy with Mama Dalton,” Will said. “You’re the one cavorting around with your secretary on a Friday night, chopping off her fingers.”
“Yeah, how is it that you ended up spending Friday night with my sister?” Brynn asked, stopping her pacing for the first time since arriving.
“Oh, here we go,” Will said, noisily crunching his M&M’s.
Gray avoided Brynn’s accusing look. He hadn’t expected to see his ex-girlfriend again, and definitely lacked the quick thinking to smooth over the situation.
What the hell am I doing here? Just when Gray was about to make a cowardly exit, the doctor finally came out. Frankly, Gray couldn’t understand why they’d all been banished to the waiting room in the first place. It wasn’t like privacy was needed to sew up a couple of fingers.
“Hi, everyone, thanks for waiting,” the doctor said somberly, as though he’d just finished rebuilding Sophie’s spleen from scratch.
Dr. Hoyne shook Sophie’s dad’s hand. “I have some good news. Sophie’s going to be just fine.”
“Oh good, we were so worried,” Will said, earning a punch from Brynn.
“Will she have any permanent nerve damage?” Marnie asked, her hand pressed against her lips.
Seeing the genuine maternal concern, Gray felt some of his irritation fade. Yes, in the grand scheme of medical emergencies, this was barely a blip on the radar. But to the Daltons, one of their own was wounded.
Hell, Gray felt like one of his own was wounded. Not that Sophie was his, even if it had felt that way for a few strange moments in his condo.
However, surrounded by her family and friends, who really knew her, he suddenly felt out of place. At the end of the day, he was just her boss. And no matter how blatantly the attention-starved little minx had flirted with him, he wouldn’t be the one she wanted to see right now.
