“He just left,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at the water, where a skiff retreats into the distance.
I stare at the Grayson-shaped figure behind the wheel, all my hope and happy anticipation collapsing like a house of cards.
I’m two minutes late.Two minutes.
And he…left.
Thatasshole.
“Was he…not supposed to leave?” Amanda asks cautiously.
I lick my lips, head wobbling in stunned disappointment. “He was supposed to take me with him. We had a deal.” And I thought he was starting to respect me.
Maybe…maybe there was an emergency? Something that required his immediate attention?
When I ask, Amanda purses her lips. “Not that I know of.”
My disappointment expands into a ball in my throat, and the sensation triggers a swell of anger.
Because that sensation feels a lot like when I learned that Kyle cheated on me, that Jane and Sami still spoke to him, that I’d been laid off.
I’d come to Garnet Shores to getawayfromall that. And Grayson had donejustenough over the last week to make me think hewasn’tsuch an asshole—setting me up perfectly for this pathetic fall, right here.
“What the hell is she doing down here?”
Apparently my day is on the greatest upward trajectory of all time because Mark, the farm’s oldest team member, marches toward us with a scowl plastered on his grizzly face. Everyone else on the farm has acknowledged my existence at least once, even offered a “hello” or an introduction. But Mark treats me like I’m trying to infect them all with chicken pox.
“Just doing my job,” I reply plainly.
He grunts. “Do it somewhere else. Far away.” He grumbles under his breath as he brushes past us.
“Don’t take it personally,” Amanda advises.
“I won’t.” With Mark, anyway.
With Grayson? I’m taking this so personally it’ll be written into my obituary.
Never mind that we had a deal, or that I thought we were edging away from enemies and toward, I don’t know, whatever it was he’d been stirring in my gut. The reality is, the content I’m no longer getting today is going to impact my entire workweek.
Grayson justscrewedme.
“You look like a very dangerous person right now,” Amanda observes, studying my face.
Good.
I am.
Because Grayson Gold doesn’t know the ins and outs of my mind. He doesn’t know that I’ve been toying with a content idea from the first day I saw him, in all of his rugged, grouchy glory. An idea I’d shoved away because Iknew how much he’d despise it, though the results would undoubtedly please Anson.
An idea that’s now slithering to the front of my mind.
I smile at Amanda, who’s growing more wary by the second, and head back to my car.
I have some planning to do.
14
GRAYSON
