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“I’ll go if you go,” he blurted out.
Four pairs of startled eyes glanced at him.
“Who are you talking to?” Jeff asked.
“Sophie,” Gray said, daring her to meet his eyes. “Come on, the president against his assistant? It’ll be great for company morale.”
He’d chosen his words deliberately. She was all about company morale. She narrowed his eyes at him, and he could see her mind reeling with possible excuses.
Finally she nodded. “All right. You’re on. But you should prepare yourself for a crushing loss. I’m extremely agile and flexible. It’ll be no contest.”
“I’m bigger. And taller.”
“I’m scrappy.”
“I lift weights.”
“I play tennis,” she snapped back.
“Okay, then!” Jeff said with a laugh. “Let’s see this battle go down, shall we?”
And suddenly Gray felt the lightest he had in weeks. Sophie had let her fake cheerful mask down for the first time since The Talk, and it felt good to have her back, if only for a moment.
Just this one stupid activity, he told himself. Just this one last moment to draw out the real Sophie. Then it was back to professionalism and talks about the weather.
* * *
Kicking off her sandals, Sophie stared up at the beast called “The Castle.” When she’d signed the contract to have the damn thing set up, she certainly hadn’t pictured herself going through it. It was supposed to be for kids.
She watched as the two teens in front of her began climbing up the tubes that marked the entrance to the death trap. A crowd of spectators cheered and someone wearing a striped ref outfit held a stop watch.
Why had she agreed to this?
She studied The Castle more closely, trying to gauge what it was like inside. There were a couple parts of the maze with see-through nets, and from what she could tell, The Castle was basically a combination of slides, ropes, ramps, and awkward-looking ladders. Most of the obstacle course was hidden from view, but every now and then she could see the two agile teenagers laughingly struggling to keep their feet as they pushed each other aside in a race to get to the next tube.
“Are you sure this is meant for adults?” Sophie asked a Castle employee.
“Oh, definitely,” said the pudgy worker, who looked like she couldn’t fit through the small spaces of The Castle if someone paid her. “Usually it’s the adults who end up hogging the whole thing after the kids have had their fun.”
“Yeah, fun,” Sophie muttered as she tucked her shirt into her shorts. Her cute yellow sweater set really wasn’t meant to be tucked into anything, but she’d take the fashion faux pas in order to keep this party family-friendly. Last thing she needed was to give all of Brayburn Luxuries a glimpse at her less-than-toned belly.
Where the hell is Gray? she wondered as she looked around. This was his damn idea and now he’s nowhere to be found. Maybe he chickened out.
Nope. There he was, laughing with Jeff as though the two were old long-lost friends. For a while there she’d thought that he might actually be jealous of Jeff, but obviously that had been her imagination. Or wishful thinking.
Because why would he be jealous if they were just friends?
It was better this way, she told herself for about the millionth time in the past month.
To be honest, he’d surprised her. She’d figured that his suggestion of being friends had merely been his polite way of saying Get lost, but to his credit, he did seem to be making an effort to actually be friendly. He’d invited her on a couple of morning coffee runs, rambled to her about sports (as though she would ever care), and even asked her advice on what to get Jack and Jenna for their birthday.
There was nothing romantic about
it in the least. Nothing but buddy-buddy platonic chitchat. And that’s what irked her the most. It would have been cleaner if he’d merely decided to blow her off completely. That way she could just give him the finger, quit, and move on with her life.
But the man was actually trying. He was stretching his stilted, introverted ways and trying to reach out. Granted, it wasn’t in the way that she wished. And certainly not the way that her lady parts wished. But it was something.
The part of her that was a sucker for wounded creatures wouldn’t let her turn her back on him while he was clearly trying for self-improvement. However, the man didn’t look quite so wounded and needy at the moment as he laughed with Jeff and flirted with Rachel, the new receptionist.
