She was here.
“Hey, Ian, I gotta go. But I’ll be there on Sunday. Can I bring anything?”
“A girlfriend? That would earn me extra brownie points with the wife.”
“Absolutely no way in hell,” Gray replied, his eyes scanning the glass wall for the source of the laughter.
Ian sighed. “Fine. Just bring some wine?”
“Done. See you then.” Gray hung up the phone and froze when he finally spotted her.
Apparently the manipulative monster had already made a new friend. One of the sales associates whose name Gray couldn’t remember.
Sophie caught his glare through the glass and her smile slipped as the sales guy…Brent? Brendan?…pointed her toward Gray’s office.
Gray rose slowly from his office chair as she came trotting toward his open office door.
Do not lose your cool, he ordered himself.
He’d already done that in a jammed elevator. And again in the Daltons’ bathroom. So far he was two for two in losing his mind around Sophie. Something he planned to put a stop to. Now.
Gray did a double take as he caught a good look at the woman standing in his doorway. There was no sign of the Sophie he’d seen in the elevator or the Sophie he’d met on Sunday. There were no hooker boots, obvious makeup, or scrappy little top that hoisted her breasts clear up to her chin. Not that he’d noticed.
But also gone were the ancient jeans that had fit just a tad too snugly around her tight backside. Gone was the defiant, ditzy persona she’d maintained around her parents.
This Sophie looked…well, exactly as a new CEO’s assistant should look. Her light green skirt fell respectably to her knees, and her white blouse was conservative. He couldn’t even criticize her high heels, even if they did seem too sexy. Because, to be fair, he’d seen a dozen women wearing similar styles on his walk to work.
The only indications that this was the same woman were the blonde Playboy hair and bright blue eyes.
Simply put, she was perfectly respectable.
Sophie hadn’t made a single misstep in this conversion from hooker to tomboy to office assistant. He should have been pleased. Instead he felt…off-balance.
Off-balance from her conservative attire, off-balance from her placid smile. And definitely off-balance from the fact that his fingers were itching to unbutton those respectable buttons and see the real Sophie.
He was in serious trouble.
*
You can do this, Sophie reminded herself for the hundredth time that morning.
But looking into Grayson Wyatt’s glowering gaze, she wasn’t so sure. For starters, his gray suit was like a punch in the gut. It was identical to the one she’d admired in Las Vegas. Back when she’d wanted to jump his bones.
Back before she’d learned he was a jerk.
She was smarter now. Now she knew exactly what he was. An uptight, judgmental, socially impaired prick.
Whose eyes still made her…tingly. Crap.
She tried to think of something cutting and witty to say, but her brain seemed to be malfunctioning. Although she wasn’t sure if it was nerves from the unfamiliar setting or nerves from him.
In happier news, he didn’t seem to be handling her presence any better than she was handling his. He looked slightly constipated.
“Hi,” she said, wincing at the weak opening. “Witty” apparently was not in her cards this morning.
He gave a curt nod but made no effort to welcome her into the office.
“What’s with the glare?” she asked.
“What did you expect, welcome balloons?”
Sophie’s patience frayed. She stomped closer to his desk. “Did you ever think to call? I assumed you were going to back out on our deal until that woman from human resources called and asked me to send over a formal application.”
“I never back out on a deal, Ms. Dalton.”
“But you wanted to,” she accused.
“Of course I wanted to.”
Sophie felt a little stab of regret at the certainty in his tone. His irritation at their situation didn’t come as a surprise. And it wasn’t like she wanted to work for this man. She’d only agreed to it with the intention of making his life miserable. And obviously what made him miserable was her.
But somewhere beneath her Old Testament–style revenge fantasies, a little part of Sophie wanted to make Gray change his mind about her. Impress him. She wanted to prove that she could do a good job and make him eat his horrible words in the elevator and in her parents’ powder room.
“You may as well go set your bag down,” he said with a resigned sigh. “I don’t need you at the moment.”
Sophie’s jaw dropped slightly at the curt command and sheer irritability coming off of him in waves. “Are you kidding me? It’s both of our first day on the job, and we’re not even going to…you know, talk?”