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“How could I not notice the one person in the whole company who looks me in the eye every day? Your first day at Mailbox you smiled at me and said ‘good morning, sir’ in that cheerful way you always do. Even when I walk in with the scowliest of scowls on my face, you smile at me.”
A giggle escapes Sophie. “Did...did you just say ‘scowliest of scowls’?” The giggles turn into a full-throated laugh. “Who are you and what have you done to the Theodore Sutton I know?”
Max comes nosing back to us, bumping his head against my leg. “Hang on boy, we have a situation here.” I scratch the top of his head while Sophie belly laughs beside me. I hide my grin by roughing up Max’s ears the way he loves. “I told you, today I’m Teddy.”
“You say that like Teddy and Theodore are two different people. Should I be worried? Is Theo also a different personality?” Sophie manages to get out between giggles. I squat down to dig in Max’s harness for the ball I stowed there earlier.
“If I said yes would you run away screaming? I have to be Theodore at work. Theodore has to make tough calls, be the hardass who gets things done. Teddy hates that kind of thing, just wants to play with code and hang out with his dog. Is that weird?”
Sophie squats down next to me to pet Max. “So, behind that scary front you put on at the office, you’re just a sweet guy named Teddy who likes to play with computers and his dog?” She pauses, glancing at me. “I imagine being the CEO of a company like Mailbox is harder when everyone thinks you’re easy to take advantage of. So the gruff armor protects your soft, squishy insides?”
Max punctuates her words with an impetuous lick of her chin. Sophie falls back with a laughing cry, her feet slipping out in front of her.
“Max!” I push him back before he can knock Sophie down again, although she’s grinning and making no attempt to stand back up. I toss his ball as far across the grassy park as I can before sitting down next to her. My legs stretch out inches past hers, our shoulders bump softly as her laughter infects me.
“So, we’ve established that my multiple personalities are a defense mechanism at work. You know you can’t tell anyone at the office about Teddy, right?”
Sophie mimes zipping her lips. I want to kiss those lips.
“What’s with yours?” I have to know. Did she pretend to be Elinor for the same reason I pretend to be someone I’m not? “I understand the need for a pen name, but why not come clean at the fundraiser?”
The smile drops off Sophie’s face at my questions. “Honestly? I just didn’t want to be sad, old Sophie Alexander. Dressing up, going somewhere fancy? That’s not my life. I felt like Cinderella. I just wanted to pretend to have a different life for a night. Elinor doesn’t share a one-bedroom apartment with her teenage daughter and sleep on the couch, doesn’t have to worry about paying the bills, or deal with her ex-husband.” She shrugs and the weight of her life settles back on her shoulders. I hadn’t even noticed the difference until it changed. I hate seeing her defeated, it makes all my protective instincts roar to life. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior that night, actually. I, uh, got some upsetting news right before you got there.”
Max lopes back and drops his ball in my lap. I scoop it up and toss it for him again, giving Sophie a moment to gather her thoughts.
“As Lauren has loudly proclaimed to everyone in the office, you know I’m newly divorced, right?”
“I may have overheard your conversation at Uno, Dos, Tres on your birthday.” I rub the back of my neck.
“Long, sad, story short, I found out right before you arrived that my ex-husband not only was cheating on me for longer than I thought, but he and his girlfriend just got engaged. And she’s pregnant.” Her breath whooshes out of her in a gust and she flops back in the grass. I’m torn between admiring the extra inches of her lean thigh the movement exposes and pulling her into my arms, while a murderous rage in my gut insists I need to do something about her ex. I let myself drink in her thighs for a moment before I do the smarter thing and stretch out next to her, head propped up on my elbow.
“That would explain the throwing up and the shots of whiskey.” I’d been judgmental of it, even though she hadn’t seemed drunk at all. But now, hearing about the news she’d received just moments before? I’m in awe of her strength, that she was able to push aside something so upsetting to play nice and make small talk for hours. Not only that, but converse knowledgeably and sincerely with everyone we encountered.
Sophie groans, throwing an arm over her eyes. “Don’t remind me. I was being such a cow that night.”
“You were utterly charming.” I reach out and pinch the ends of her fingers with mine, wiggling her arm lightly, hoping the silly gesture brings a smile to her face. “Well, to everyone except me.” She doesn’t move, but she does turn her head, looking at me from underneath her arm. Her small smile is tinged with sadness and something else.
Before I can ask what she’s thinking, Max comes charging between us, tail wagging and paws dancing too close to Sophie’s stomach. He drops the now slobbery ball on her chest and steps on the almost empty cup sitting next to me. Coffee and chocolate dregs explode everywhere, splattering both of us.
“I’m sorry.” I reach out to shove Max out of the way, but my big dopey dog is too busy chasing his tail in the space between us. Laughing, Sophie sits up and tosses the ball for him, sending him running after it and giving us space to assess the damage.
We sit there for a second, just staring at each other. There’s a drip of coffee running down Sophie’s cheek, a Pollock-inspired splatter across the side of her dress and a decent-sized splash on the side of her arm. Her laughter dies as she takes in my damage—there’s a trail of it tickling my neck, pooling against the collar of my shirt, and a hit of it decorating my chest.
I wonder if she wants to lick the drips off me the same way I want to lick them off her?
Fourteen
Sophie
On a scale of one to can-never-show-my-face-at-work-again, how inappropriate would it be to lean in and lick the trail of coffee running down Theo’s neck? His eyes have gone dark, just like they did in the limo seconds before we kissed. I’d thought it was a trick of the light at the time, but maybe I was wrong.
Before I can decide how much I’m willing to humiliate myself, Theo leans forward and swipes the drop of coffee off my cheek. Without breaking eye contact, he sucks it off his finger. This isn’t the disconcertingly playful Teddy anymore, lulling me into a sense of ease with his banter and “aw shucks’” charm. No. This is Theo. A predator. A man who knows how to get what he wants.
Me.
So of course I do the stupidest thing possible.
I lean forward and lick the coffee off his neck. I don’t run away. I don’t hop up and apologize or try to clean up the situation. And I don’t just lick the droplet off. If I’m going to make things messy, I’m going to make things really messy, so I lick all the way from the collar of his shirt to that sharp jaw, before veering left and running my tongue all the way to his ear. I don’t catch his earlobe between my teeth, though, because Theo grabs hold of the back of my neck and pulls me back with a feral growl.
