3. Grant
3
GRANT
Grant
I looked at my phone again.
No reply.
Three minutes had passed since I sent those texts.
I drummed my fingers on the edge of my desk and battled with the indecision to call her, text her again, or just will her to appear.
Come on. Where are you?
As soon as I came back from Derek’s apartment, I dove into work and waited for Elise to show. Throughout the morning, she was stuck in mandatory company-wide training. HR stuff. Ethics. All that mumbo-jumbo that was required of all employees. She’d put off her training until the last minute, but today, of all days, when it seemed urgent that I see her immediately, she was holed up downstairs, likely trying to stay awake during the presentations about the same old policies and dithering lectures that she’d heard year in and out.
Perhaps this is a sign. Her unavailability is a sign that I shouldn’t count on her to pretend to be mine, a clue that this really is a stupid idea that’ll blow up.
If I didn’t tell Elise that I needed her to pose as my fiancée sooner rather than later, I might talk myself out of the whole damn idea.
Because you should. This is a stupid idea.
Yet, I clung to the ingenuity of it. Elise was always with me at the office, always here . The cliché saying of I’ll be there for you was an annoying jingle from a sitcom, but it held true with my trusty assistant. Elise never failed to be ready for whatever I needed done for work. No matter the client, the call, or the research, she was always on it with an insufferably peppy excitement that couldn’t be dimmed. Her sarcasm and witty quips weren’t necessary, but I could suffer past them for her expertise in making my life manageable at the office.
I’d never admit it, but I’d be lost without her—quirks and all.
It seemed so obvious to seek her out for this extra role. I was already expected to show up at Vince’s daughter’s wedding, having sent my RSVP months ago. What better place to let him see that I could be a dependable, settled man with a fiancée?
And what better woman…
I gulped, watching through the open door as she came back from her late lunch break. With her office located just across from mine, I had a front-row seat to spot her upon arrival. This short blonde had become embedded into my life so thoroughly, I had her routine memorized.
First, she hung her purse on the hook. It wasn’t a standard curved piece of metal. No. For Elise, only a ceramic daisy lifting up could constitute as a hook for her purse—an equally bohemian crocheted thing that looked like it belonged in a flea market.
Then, she set her phone—in a protective case with bright pops of orange and neon green—on the charger dock at the corner of her desk, her cluttered, messy, but somehow efficiently arranged surface of papers, coffee mugs, and other debris. How one person could systematically use a stack of Post-It notes in one week was beyond me. They littered her desktop, the back of her laptop, and they framed the doorway. Pink, yellow, blue, and orange, those squares dominated her eerily organized mind. Seeing such an explosion of junk and trinkets suggested she had no sense of order, but I had yet to witness her forgetting a single detail, losing a particular document, or missing a document that I needed.
Next, she pulled out her chair. The knitted baby-blue cardigan remained draped over the back right side of it while a dalmatian-themed plush throw shrouded the left.
She sat, putting her short, curvy body out of my line of sight. Behind the stacks of notebooks, paperbacks, magazines, and manila folders, she took her seat and stretched.
It was one move. A simple, solitary push of her arms up into the air.
And it was torture.
Every day. After each stretch, she sat and wheeled closer to type. The same damn move. Her arms thrust up, no doubt to relieve the tension in her shoulders and back. It was a long reach to ease the tightness in her muscles. It should’ve been such a basic, ordinary thing for someone confined to a desk to do.
Not her. Not Elise. Somehow, she made it look sensual. Like a dancer, like a feline, like a witch hexing me to stare.
I’d learned long ago that nothing was ordinary about my assistant. The worst of which was how she could proverbially bring me down to my knees with her stretch.
Her plump breasts lifted, threatening the edge of her dress neckline. Her arms flexed, showing off her slender muscles from whatever workout fad she was currently hooked on. Her golden curls tumbled back from her face, giving me the exquisite pleasure of witnessing her face so calm and relaxed. Just for a moment, I could steal a peek of Elise without a care. The barest hint of a self-satisfied smile tugged at her lips, and that was what got me every damn time. Her almost grin. So smug and small.
She killed me. With the hint of that expression, the suggestion of her being so contentedly happy…
“Need something?”
I flinched, lowering my gaze at her sassy voice.
Her eyes remained closed, but I had no doubt she felt my stare. I only wished that it was the last time. That this was the last freaking time she’d catch me noticing her and watching. She wasn’t teasing me, not deliberately, and I loathed that I was beholden to witnessing that stretch.
Every. Fucking. Time.
Something drew me to her. She was a mystery—always here and competent—but sometimes feeling so far away at the same time. Unreachable, I supposed, because I didn’t let any women close.
Enough. I cleared my throat and focused, all business. “Yes, I require confirmation of the messages I sent you.”
She sighed, opening her eyes at last as she slumped toward her desk. Without facing me across the hallway, as we talked through both of our doors wide open, she kept me waiting. Her face tipped down to her desk as she woke up her laptop. “You know I saw your messages. They mark as read the second I open them.”
You little… I exhaled through my nose, trapping in the stern words I wanted to toss at her. But she was right. I did see the fine print that labeled my texts as read.
“Very well then, I?—”
“Not very well.” She glanced up, pinning me with her blue eyes that seemed so alive and bright behind her glasses. “I requested that vacation time for a reason.”
I steepled my hands on my desk and tilted my head to the side. “You submitted that request for vacation time one week ago. Per the company policy, that’s far too short of a notice.”
Her pink lips parted, ready with an argument.
Not as short as the notice that I need you to fly to the Bahamas with me, but that’s life…
“You said Monday that you didn’t see how it could be an issue.”
“I didn’t officially approve the request, though, did I?” It sounded like a dick move. At that time, it wasn’t. I didn’t care if she took off Friday. Now that I needed her to be with me, it mattered, and I was glad I hadn’t clicked on the form to approve it.
“I have plans, Mr. Bowen.”
I gritted my teeth, annoyed and thrilled that she’d stoop to that last-name bullshit. I was Grant when I merely peeved her. I was Mr. Impossible in her contact list. But I was only reduced to Mr. Bowen when I really pushed her buttons.
Why? Why does it have to feel so good to know I’m getting her riled up and bothered?
I wondered what plans she wanted the time off for. “Change them.”
“Perhaps the people I have plans with can’t accept changes at the last minute.”
People? Like… a man?
It wasn’t any of my business. But I couldn’t help myself. “Hot date?”
She maintained her blank stare with aplomb.
I knew she wasn’t seeing anyone. If she was, she’d close her door to torture me with only seeing her through the window when she took calls on her lunchbreak. I hated those damning instances of watching her smile and flirt with someone. And then I’d be subject to the inevitable frowns that’d follow when the guy didn’t last.
The topic of her being on a date wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. A smidgen of guilt crept in. Maybe she had all kinds of things to do this weekend, and here I was, stomping on her plans.
I’d make it up to her later. Adding a mental note to give her a bonus for this weekend, I plowed on. “I require your company for meetings on Friday.” I stood, buttoning my jacket. “As well as Saturday.”
She gaped at me as she shot to her feet. “All weekend?”
I nodded. “Thursday, too. You’ll be compensated for overtime.”
“But—” She cringed, looking at her computer before she grabbed her tablet. “Shit. You’ve got to spring this on me two minutes before another Newman meeting,” she groused.
“I didn’t spring anything on you.” I waited for her to join me in the hallway. “I texted you a half hour ago.”
“On my lunch break. Which is a blissful hour when I don’t have to pretend my life revolves around you.” She shook her head, scrolling on her phone as we hustled to the conference room. “You expect me to stop and cancel my plans to work all weekend? Just like that?”
“Aw, come on.” Derek joined us, walking toward us from another branch in the hallways that led from his office suite. “Working on the weekends is no fun, bro.”
“See?” Elise gestured at him. “Oh, whoa.” She handed him her unopened water bottle. “You look dehydrated.”
“I’m fine,” he protested mildly. He looked better than he had with his hangover status of this morning, but still rough.
“You look like crap,” Elise said.
“Thanks,” Derek quipped dryly.
She shrugged. “Hey, you can count on me to always tell it like it is. You don’t want to go into any meeting looking half alive, do you?”
He rolled his eyes and took the water, walking with us. Despite the furious glower I sent him, he sipped and acted like he had not a care in the world.
“But he gets it,” Elise said. “Working on the weekend isn’t ideal.”
“ He knows how to party and potentially ruin the reputation of the whole company,” I shot back.
“Oh, he’s not. He just knows how to have a little fun now and then.” Elise gasped, then beamed, glancing around me to talk to my brother who shared her love of baseball. “Can you believe that last inning? Oh, my God, that game was intense.”
“Um.” Derek winced. “Last night kind of got away from me. I didn’t catch the end of the game.”
I snorted at his excuse.
“Grant.” He sighed, interpreting my response as another sign of my disappointment in him. “I’m sorry. I know it looks bad and all, but it’s a blip on the radar. This scandal will smooth over.”
Elise leaned into me as we entered the conference room. She held up her tablet to cover her mouth as she spoke in a stage whisper, “Do I even want to know?”
Oh, you’ll know soon enough. I shook my head, ushering her to sit.
“It’s not that bad,” Derek added as I took my seat.
“Hi, honey.” Samantha Warner smiled coyly at me from across the table. “How are you?”
Elise opened her eyes wide at my ex’s greeting. Then she blinked, not braving a look up at the pair of Newman executives seated at the other side of the dark mahogany table. Wow. She mouthed it, unable to hold back on a reaction to my ex’s endearment for me.
Honey? Really? I hadn’t been Samantha’s honey—or anything else—for three years. And it still felt like I couldn’t scrub her out of my life.
I ignored her, waiting for her coworker to wrap up a call so we could begin this meeting about the deal I’d make sure went through.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Derek told me, slanting with his left elbow on the table to partly give Samantha and the other man his back.
Elise played along, familiar with tag-teaming with my brother—always against me. She propped her right elbow on the table and set her chin in her hand, mirroring my brother’s posture on my other side. They caged me in, trapping me to their teases. I was used to Derek’s wheedling nature. But Elise? It took all my energy not to gaze up at her.
Her glasses popped up a bit with the tip of the frame touching her hand. Those long, blonde waves hung down like a curtain. I wanted to see if they were as soft as they looked. But it was her eyes, sparkling with mischief and annoyance, that I couldn’t stay strong against.
“He is overreacting,” Elise said. “He always is.”
“I am not,” I argued in the same whispers they used.
“You are,” Derek said.
“Something’s got you all worried and worked up if you’re asking me to work this weekend,” she said.
“ Work ?” Derek said, brows high. “I don’t think that’s how I’d put it.”
Elise furrowed her brow. “Huh? What’s going on this weekend?”
I had yet to explain the finer details of what I needed from Elise this weekend. I’d lay it out for her… just not here. Not yet. If I posed the idea of a fake engagement too soon, she’d have too much time to say hell no .
What was I thinking?
I swallowed, tugging at my tie to loosen what felt like a noose.
It’s a stupid idea. I never should’ve said anything, never should’ve put this in motion.
“What’s that?” Samantha said, leaning in to eavesdrop. “This weekend? I can’t wait for it, Grant,” she cooed, gazing at me with pure desire in her eyes.
I winced, leaning back in my chair for more distance from her. Her comment irked me, but it clarified that she’d be a guest at the wedding too. Dammit.
“What’s going on this weekend?” Elise looked from me, to Samantha, then Derek, who had the grace to look away. “More meetings with the Newman company?” she guessed.
Sort of…
She directed her stare at me as she gestured to the other side of the table. “We’re spending the weekend with her ?” she whispered.
No. But I need to spend it with you .