He glanced up at her for a brief moment. “If we were new to each other, I would, of course, invite you in to sit down and fake interest in your life and what your hobbies were. But since we’re past all that—”
“Really?” she interrupted. “Are we? The only thing I know about you is that you’re trying to get into my sister’s pants. And the only thing you seem to know about me is that I turn tricks on Saturday nights.”
Gray finally gave her his full attention, but not until he’d made a show of rubbing his eyes like she was an exhausting toddler. “You’re right, Ms. Dalton. I’m behaving badly. Please sit down.”
“I think I’ll set my purse down at my desk first,” she said, turning on her brand-new patent-leather blue pump and flouncing out of his office.
But her initial surge of satisfaction about defying him faded almost immediately.
He really didn’t like her.
The full magnitude of her situation settled around her like a storm cloud. It had seemed like such a harmless game on Sunday night, but now that she was actually here, she was realizing that she’d have to earn her paycheck.
And that meant pleasing Mr. High and Mighty.
“But not in the sexual way,” she muttered to herself snidely, remembering Las Vegas all too vividly. “Because he’s not the type to ‘pay for sexual attention.’”
Sophie identified her desk by the WELCOME, SOPHIE card next to one of those fancy corporate gift baskets. She’d bet her new shoes that it wasn’t Gray himself who’d initiated the gesture. Flicking open the card, her suspicions were confirmed. It was signed “the team at Brayburn Luxuries” in a distinctly feminine scrawl. He probably wasn’t even aware of its existence.
Setting her imitation designer purse down, she surveyed her workplace. Sophie let out a little squeal as she took in the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows behind her desk.
All of the Seattle landmarks sparkled up at her from the high-rise windows. Well, okay, not so much “sparkled,” considering the fog, but still. There was the Space Needle, endless water, big-ass mountains. She could have been looking at a poster for Sleepless in Seattle. Minus the adorable image of lovelorn Tom Hanks and perky Meg Ryan before she’d gone all edgy and weird.
Her desk phone rang and Sophie plopped into her chair to answer it. “Hello?”
“Is that how you’re going to answer the office phone line?”
Sophie swiveled around in her chair to stare through the glass walls to Gray’s office. He was staring back. She really hated that he was wearing another of those dark charcoal suits. Men in modern, sexy suits were a major weakness of hers.
“Are you seriously calling me?” she asked. “From ten feet away?”
“Very astute, Ms. Dalton. Perhaps by the time we leave today, you will have managed to remember that you’re not answering the phone at your sorority house, and you will have aspired to actually follow the directions of your employer.”
“Do you have any friends, Mr. Wyatt?”
“Friends?”
“It’s a tricky concept for someone like you, I’m sure. They’re essentially people who place themselves in your company voluntarily.”
Silence.
She watched through the glass as he broke eye contact and stared at a stack of papers on his desk. His expression was mostly unreadable, but for a brief moment, Sophie had the sensation that he was almost human.
“See if you can manage to be in my office within the next two minutes, Ms. Dalton. Surely even you can handle that.”
Nope, definitely not human.
Sophie hung up and tapped her home-manicured nails against her fancy new desk.
The morning was not going as planned. He was supposed to be cool and indifferent, and she was to be polite and professional until she’d figured out a plan of attack.
Instead he looked ready to explode, and she hadn’t even been trying to annoy him.
And already she was itching to see what was beneath that icy surface. That was so not part of the plan.
Sophie assessed her two options:
Stick it out and figure out how to work with Mr. Holier Than Thou, or…
Quit.
Quitting was the obvious choice.
The whole point of this respectable-job thing was to be, well…respected. That was pretty much out the window considering the one person who was now supposed to save her ego was the very same person who’d crushed it in the first place.
Even the luxury of working in a place where nobody spilled beer on you or “accidentally” brushed your boobs wasn’t worth working for a man who’d seen you wearing little more than a bandanna tied around your waist.
Especially one whom you also had to face at family functions.
And the drive-him-out-of-his-mind revenge plan still held appeal, but she wasn’t sure how to do that and be a competent employee at the same time. Her two goals were working against each other.
Something you should have thought about before getting into this mess, she chided herself.
So quitting it was.
Or…
Sophie contemplated a third option.