“You mean what would a rich entrepreneur want with a lowly secretary?”
“Stop it,” he said sharply, sounding very unlike his usual calm self. “Quit talking about yourself as if you’re toilet paper.”
“Perhaps if you quit treating me like an irritant I wouldn’t be so defensive!”
“This has nothing to do with me,” Gray said. “I made one single misassumption about you in a dark elevator. It was a mistake. I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t eaten all day, I hate confined spaces, and frankly, I really wasn’t at my best that night in Vegas, okay? But ever since learning that you weren’t a prostitute I have treated you with nothing but respect. And yet you continue to goad me and verbally sabotage yourself every chance you get. Why is that, Ms. Dalton?”
He took the tiniest step forward and she swallowed hard, resisting the urge to move away from him.
Her brain was struggling to think of a retort, so she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t call me Ms. Dalton.”
“Why, is it too respectable for a screwup like yourself?”
Sophie flinched, knowing his sarcasm was only playing off her own words, but it still stung. “It has nothing to do with respectability,” she snapped. “I just want you to think of me as a person. I want to hear you say ‘Sophie.’”
Oops. That had not come out right. Now he was going to think she was partial to hearing her name from his lips. At the thought of his lips, her gaze fell to his mouth. What was wrong with her? The wine was messing with her head.
But he still hadn’t moved away. And he didn’t exactly look repulsed.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Sophie, then.”
As if the moment needed to be any more charged, the lights in the office turned off as they were programed to do every few minutes in the evening unless their sensors detected movement.
It would only take the slightest step to trigger the lights back on, but they stood still for a moment longer in the darkened office. The air felt thick with conflicted electricity, but Sophie wasn’t sure what was at the root of the weirdness.
Just minutes ago they’d been talking about Brynn, and now…
Now she wanted to kiss her boss. Badly.
She could just imagine his horror if she leaned into him. Here he was trying to intimidate her, and she wanted to jump his bones.
Except…Gray seemed to be doing a little leaning of his own. And was it her imagination, or were his lips a lot closer than before? All she had to do was move a couple of inches and…
No.
Sophie sidestepped quickly to move around him just as she saw his arm reach for her. They stared at each other as the fluorescent lights flickered back on.
“Yikes, that would have been awkward to explain to HR, right?” she asked brightly. “Us standing alone in the dark, you about ready to strangle me for being a silly little twit.”
“I’d never hurt a woman.”
“Jeez. Calm down, I was kidding. Where should I put these notebooks?”
“Just leave them on the desk. I think we’re probably done for the evening.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
“Meaning I appreciate your willingness to help, but I can’t take up any more of your weekend time. It was already inappropriate to let you order pizza. Which, of course, you can expense, by the way. The wine too.”
“Another HR strike against us,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “Company money going toward booze for two.”
He ignored her.
She moved past him and set the books on his desk. “Fine, I’ll leave these for Monday, but only if you promise to do the same.”
“I still have a couple things to wrap up,” he said, not moving from the doorway.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Go home. Go watch baseball or drink beer or whatever it is you do for fun. Throw darts at children. Boil bunnies…”
She glanced over at Gray as she began piling up their plates and froze. His mouth looked different. Lopsided just slightly. Almost as if…
Grayson Wyatt was smiling. Sophie’s world tilted just slightly.
I must really need to get laid, she thought. All it took was some dark lights and a pathetic excuse for a smile and she was ready to hump the one man on earth who could barely stand her company. Definitely time to get out of there.
“Well, okay, then, I’ll take off, if you’re sure you’re okay with me ditching you,” she said flippantly. “You know me, any chance to put off work sounds great.”
His smile faded, and the gray eyes turned back to dull slate. “I’ll see you on Monday, then,” he said.
“Monday,” she agreed with a forced smile.
Sophie quietly gathered up her gym bag and took one glance back at Gray, who was staring out the window. She ached to go to him.
Instead, she walked away.
CHAPTER TEN