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He grabs me then. Turns me and pushes me up against my office door. His hands are at my waist, his face is close to mine. I can smell cologne I don’t recognize on his skin, and the mint on his breath.
“Do you not want this?” he asks, his voice low, just above a whisper. “Because if you’ve changed your mind, then that’s one thing.”
I shake my head. “I want this,” I say. “I just thought with everything going on it might be easier.”
He lets out a breath—I can feel it on my neck. “It wouldn’t be easier for me. I promise. Both ways are hard. But if we’re in this together, we’ll make it work. I don’t have a lot to offer right now; I might be the CEO of a sinking ship.”
“Grayson, I don’t care about that,” I say. And it’s the truth. The boss thing has never been about money, and especially not with Grayson. It’s always been about him and who he is.
“So, are you?” he asks. “Are you in this with me?”
“I am,” I say.
“Good,” he says, sounding almost relieved. “I’m going to kiss you now, and I don’t care if we’re at work.”
“Okay,” I say, just before his lips land on mine. We go from zero to sixty in an instant, as I wrap my arms around him, and he explores my mouth with his. His hands are at my back now, and he pulls me into him, holding me close.
We are making out in my office, and honestly, this might be the hottest moment of my life.
Someone taps on my door, breaking the spell I was just under, kissing Grayson like my life depended on it in my office. “Give me a minute,” I say.
“Okay, but I wanted to remind you of your meeting with Sebastian,” Britain says through the door.
“Crap,” I say, my voice a whisper.
Grayson chuckles. “This is going to be hard,” he whispers back.
“We’ll make it work,” I say, leaning in and kissing him. “But you have to go. I need a second.” Mostly to calm my beating heart and wait for the swelling in my lips to go down.
He smiles. “I’ll go talk to him for a minute, give you some time.”
“Thank you,” I say. He leans in and kisses me lightly.
“Are you working late tonight?” he asks, his hand on the door handle.
“Of course,” I say. “I’ve got this boss, you see. He’s got us working practically around the clock.”
“What a tool,” he says, and we both smile. He makes to open the door but then turns back toward me. “Let’s order dinner and eat in my office later.”
I smile. I love that Grayson isn’t just a man of words. “Love to.”
He pulls me in for a kiss one more time before opening my door and walking out.
Mila
TWO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER
“I CAN’T THANK YOU ALL enough,” Grayson says as he stands at the end of the long table in an Italian restaurant in the West Village of Manhattan, most of the leadership team sitting around it. “It took a lot of work, but we did it. And I don’t know if it could have gone any better than it did.”
I look around the table. Everyone is here except for Simone and Sebastian, who stayed back to manage things at the office. Even Shane came along, sitting next to Nadia, his arm around the back of her chair. He’ll be our first investor in AppInnovate, now that GlobeTrotter has been declared this year’s “App to Download” at the summit. We were immediately inundated with investors, and Shane made it known he wanted to be first.
Grayson will be able to pay back his family, sooner than he’d thought, and I could see it in his eyes when he realized that burden was lifting. He’s already been repairing his relationship with his family, in little steps, because honestly there hasn’t been much time for that. But I’ve been with him every step of the way. We even went over to his parents’ house for dinner last week. His mom cried when she saw him. He cried, too. Then I cried. It was a big crying fest.
The last months have been stressful, to say the least. We’ve all been working round the clock trying to make this happen. User testing brought out more issues and flaws within the UI, but somehow, we made it work.
When Grayson was on the App Growth Summit stage, telling everyone about the app and all its capabilities, I looked around me at my coworkers, and we were all smiling from ear to ear, because we’d done it. We’d made it happen. The icing on the cake was being the featured app at the summit. It’s huge, really. I think things are about to get very exciting for AppInnovate.
Also exciting, but definitely not expected, was Grayson walking off the stage, coming over to me, and kissing me on the mouth in front of all my coworkers, surprising everyone, including me. Well, everyone except Nadia, of course. She wasn’t expecting the kiss, but she’s known about our relationship from the start. We did our best to not tell the others, and somehow, we managed it. Not that we didn’t want them to know—this was never going to be an indefinitely-secret thing—but we didn’t want to add office gossip in what was already a complicated time, having to navigate this new relationship while trying to save GlobeTrotter. We didn’t need everyone up in our business. I got plenty of that from Nadia, who wanted to know every little detail.
