Instead, I stand there in stunned silence because the brain power it takes to do anything else is the same brain power that wants to spew venom from my lips, and I need to keep that locked down.I can practically hear the pause lengthening, stretching, turning from normal to weird.
My mouth opens, half a second from telling them to kiss my ass, when a warm, solid weight settles around my waist.
I can’t help the automatic jump my body decides to perform, even though I don’t need to turn my head to know who it is.
Grayson.
His arm slides around me like it belongs there, easy and firm and so natural it makes my heart trip over itself. Heat presses along my side through the fabric of my dress. The clean scent of him — cedar, musk, and something sharp I can’t quite place — cuts through the restaurant air and lands straight in my bloodstream.
“There you are,” he says to me, his voice warm in a way I haven’t heard since before the pool yesterday. “Was wondering where you’d snuck off to.”
Aaron blinks in utter surprise. It takes every bit of sense I have left not to do the same.
I turn just enough to look up at Grayson.
He’s calm. He’s ridiculously, overwhelmingly attractive in that middle-aged, polished way he nails. And he is entirely unreadable except for the look in his eyes that tells me heunderstands exactly what he just walked into and has decided to set it on fire.
His hand flexes once against my waist as if to say,I’ve got this.
“This is Grayson,” I hear myself say, feeling like I’ve just taken a seat in the back of my brain and have decided to let him take the reins.
Aaron stares. “GraysonSparkks?”
Grayson gives him a courteous nod as if this is entirely normal. “You want me to sign something?”
I nudge him gently in the ribs for that.
“Uh, no, that’s okay,” Aaron says carefully, his gaze slowly turning back to me. “You’re dating your boss?”
Silence hangs for a second too long. I can’t tell if Grayson is internally panicking that Aaron knows he’s my boss — if he is, his poker face is next level.
I don’t want to answer. If he decides to back out of whatever the hell he’s doing, me confirming it just makes this a million times worse.But then he pulls me a fraction closer, dips his head, and presses a kiss to the side of my head just above my temple as if he’s claiming this head-on.
My lungs forget how to breathe.
“For a little while now,” he says. “You going to introduce me, sweetheart?”
Chapter 13
Carly
By the timeI leave work, my nerves are shot and my brain is exhausted.
The lunch from hell is over. Aaron and Sarah are still, unfortunately, alive and engaged. Grayson is also still alive, which is impressive considering he decided on a whim to be a fictitious boyfriend I never should have pretended to have, kissed the side of my head, accepted the invitation to the wedding for me, and then somehow returned to the table to talk business like none of that had happened.
I, meanwhile, have spent the rest of the afternoon trying to function like a normal employee while feeling like my skeleton has been replaced with live electrical wire, so when it’s time to pick Penelope up from school for the first time, I am deeply grateful for the excuse to leave early.
I collect my bag, shut down my computer, and head out before I can overthink whether Grayson looked at me oddly in the last meeting or whether I imagined the whole thing because I was too busy reliving the feel of his mouth against the side of my head.
Halfway there, I call him on Bluetooth just to make sure he remembered to handle the school pickup list.
He answers on the second ring. “Everything okay?”
“Yep,” I say, trying very hard to sound normal and not like a woman currently fake-dating her boss in at least one social circle. “I just wanted to double-check that you called the school earlier to add my name. And, uh, my car.”
“I did.” His voice is calm, even, infuriatingly steady. “You’re approved. They have your name, the make and model, and your plate number.”
“Okay. Good. Great.”
