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“That’s it?” she asked snidely. “You’re not going to grill me on why with a perfect college GPA, top-notch alma mater, and a couple impressive degrees to my name, I’m here fetching you coffee and figuring out how to rid your walls of animal heads?”
Gray shrugged. “If I thought you’d tell me the truth, I might ask. But if you’re going to continue with your evasive bullshitting, I’m not going to waste my time.”
Sophie scowled and tensed as she waited for him to move down the résumé. No doubt his interrogation over her education was just a lead-in to give her a hard time about her lack of office experience.
But he said nothing.
“I didn’t bullshit you,” she said finally.
He gave her a look.
“Well not all of it was lies,” she amended. “I really do like cute boys.”
His lips twitched in something that may have been a smile. “I’m sure you do,” he said.
“You’re not thinking about me as a call girl again, are you?”
“Ms. Dalton, I’m fairly certain that human resources would be in here pretty quickly if I started thinking about my assistant in such an intimate manner. Perhaps we could avoid such references going forward?”
“If I don’t mention The Incident again, can I keep my job?” she asked.
His silence wasn’t a good sign.
“Explain to me why you want this job,” he said.
“Well, gosh, unemployment does have a certain appeal, but I find I’m rather fond of having money for frivolous things like food, rent, condoms.”
“If you’re trying to endear yourself as an employee, you’re doing a miserable job.”
She bit her lip. Why did she keep baiting this man? This was so not the time for her snark to come out in full force, and yet she couldn’t seem to muster the polite, professional assistant routine around him the way she could everyone else in the office.
And even when she tried, he seemed to see right through it.
Gray leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his mouth. “I’m not going to ask you to leave, Ms. Dalton. Despite our unconventional meeting and the fact that you don’t seem to respect me in the least, you’re competent. More important, people seem to like you. To be honest, I could use some of that popularity to help people get accustomed to my…style.”
Ah, so Mr. Perfect was aware of his shortcomings. Interesting. “So you’re keeping me around because I’m popular?”
“Something like that,” he said.
Sophie considered. He had a point. She was good at that sort of thing. And it could be kind of fun to give a personality makeover to someone so socially
stunted. Her brain was already bubbling with ideas.
“A project,” she said thoughtfully. “How fun! I promise it won’t be as painful as you think. I just need a month, and soon all of your weekends will be filled with golf rounds, cocktail parties, poker games…”
He winced. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I just meant that I could use your presence to buffer my…impatience.”
“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?”
He looked as though he wanted to smile but managed to resist the urge. Sophie was oddly disappointed. What would he look like without the pinched tension in his face?
“You have entirely too much of a smart mouth to be anyone’s assistant, Ms. Dalton.”
“For the last time, call me Sophie. This isn’t 1793. First names in the office are normal.”
“We’re not friends, Ms. Dalton, we’re colleagues. And casual workplace or not, I like to keep some semblance of mutual respect.”
“Fine, if you want to act like an eighteenth-century dandy, who am I to intervene?” She steeled herself for the big question. “But…I can stay?”
