Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
I’d given presentations to the ultra-rich and explained complicated data and statistics to men whose true expertise was sinking a putt on the most luxurious courses in the world, but I’d never gone into work more nervous than I did the next day.
Some deep part of me was sure I’d arrive at the office and find Grant cold and aloof—or victorious because he’d done what he’d set out to do on our date—what he’d set out to do from the get-go: prove Matchify was a fraud.
Last night in the kitchen hadn’t felt like it was all part of a ploy, but at this point, I’d lost confidence in my ability to judge other people’s true feelings. I could barely understand my own.
I pressed the elevator button in the parking lot and took the opportunity to try to achieve a calmer presence while I waited.
If Brooke were here, she would’ve told me to do some box breathing.
Given the way my hands were trembling and my heart was stamping a permanent, indelible tattoo of anxiety on my chest, I would’ve been happy to try hexagon or parallelogram breathing if it would help.
I counted to four while I inhaled, repeated the slow counting as I held the breath, then gradually released it.
“Good morning.”
The breathing box busted open as Grant came up next to me, and I forgot how to refill it.
“Good morning.” My voice sounded weird and squeaky, but Grant didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were on the elevator as a third person joined us waiting. It was a woman I recognized from the law office a few floors below Matchify.
I smiled politely at her.
She didn’t notice. Her eyes were on Grant.
Not just on him. All over him.
Hot possessiveness flashed through me, burning me from the inside out as the doors opened.
Grant let both of us go in ahead of him.
“Thank you,” the woman said with a distinctly come-hither lilt.
I pressed the button for Matchify’s floor, then jabbed the number for the woman’s offices.
“Thanks,” she said absently, her eyes still on Grant like an animal considering how to best approach unexpected prey. “Are you new here?”
Whatever had been left of my beautiful box of calm breath, this woman was stomping all over it. If I had to guess, she was about to offer to show Grant around next.
“Not exactly.” Grant took his place in the elevator near me. “I’ve been working with Vivian.” He squared me with his gaze, his sustained focus making his innocuous reply take on a hint of implicit meaning.
I forced myself to meet his eye.
“Oh,” the woman replied, shaken but not deterred. “Well, I’ve never met you before, so, welcome.”
“Thank you.” Grant’s eyes never wavered from mine. He could’ve attacked me with his lips, and it wouldn’t have felt like as much PDA as the way he was looking at me. I wanted to smack him and kiss him simultaneously.
It flooded me with relief. Those eyes still wanted me.
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.
The woman hesitated a fraction of a second, like she was giving one last blow to the embers of a hope to be noticed by Grant.
“See you later,” she said.
“See you later,” Grant replied without looking at her.
She pursed her lips and left.
The doors shut again, leaving Grant and me alone.
“Did you sleep well?” Grant asked.
“Like a baby,” I said. By which I meant I’d woken almost hourly, usually from some semi-hallucinatory episode of dozing in which Grant was still at my apartment. “You?”
The elevator slowed.
“It took me a while to get to sleep.” His gaze dropped to my lips for a fraction of a second. “I had a lot on my mind.”
It was just a glance, but I could almost feel his hand on my waist again, his fingertips on the skin beneath my shirt.
He smiled knowingly, like we were sharing the same thought.
A mechanical sound brought our heads around, and I realized the doors had opened and were closing again.
I smashed the door open button and noted Jenna, Katie, and Brooke all staring at us.
Suspecting the skin on my face matched my hair color, I stepped out of the elevator. “Good morning.”
Katie’s gaze flicked to Grant, then back to me. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Vivian?”
“Of course,” I said calmly.
I got the feeling it hadn’t been a coincidence that she and Brooke had been right there when I arrived; they’d been waiting for me.
“Need me too?” Grant asked with false innocence.
Katie smiled in amusement. “Not this time.”
I followed Katie and Brooke into the Jim & Pam Room, feeling like I was stepping into an intervention.
“You didn’t answer my texts,” Katie said as she closed the door.
“Or mine,” Brooke said.
“I didn’t really want to type out a novel,” I argued, resituating my glasses.
Katie put a hand on her hip and looked at me.
“What?” I willed my face not to heat up and give me away. Being a redhead was the worst sometimes.
“Spill,” Katie said.
I’d been too caught up with what had happened between Grant and me to give much thought to what Katie would think of my complete and utter mission failure last night. She’d coached me, and I’d gone rogue.
“Vivian,” Katie said after my silence continued. “Did Grant stay over?”
“What?! No! We only kissed.”
“You kissed?” Katie and Brooke said simultaneously, like this was a more egregious revelation than him staying over.
I looked between them, thoroughly confused at the shock on their faces. “You thought he stayed over, but you’re appalled that we kissed?”
“I only asked if he stayed over to get you to start talking.” Katie jabbed her finger toward an Affection Puff. “Sit down, young lady.”
I thought about refusing on account of my busy schedule, but Pandora’s box was open, and I had a simultaneous need to explain myself and have them shake me by the shoulders to reactivate any sense I might have left in my Grant-blooded body, so I did as I was told.
“Start at the beginning,” Katie instructed.
After blowing out a big breath, I gave them a brief rundown of my date with Grant.
“Well, that’s adorable,” Brooke said when I got to the part where Grant brought me dinner.
After he’d left, I’d eaten every last bit of the tikka masala, stopping short of licking the takeout bag—but just barely—because somehow messy tikka masala brought by Grant Wilder tasted better than regular tikka masala.
Katie shushed Brooke mercilessly, her attention rapt on me.
“And then,” I said, unsure how to explain exactly what happened next, “we…kissed.”
They stared.
“Lemme get this straight,” Katie said. “He brought you tikka masala, half of which fed his pants instead of you, and your reaction was to kiss him? Remind me never to bring you Indian food.”
“I didn’t kiss him,” I argued. “He kissed me. And it wasn’t like he handed me the takeout bag and then kissed me. There was an…interval.”
“An interval,” Brooke repeated blankly.
“I hate math words,” Katie muttered, sitting back in her beanbag like she was ready to check out of the conversation.
“What do you mean by an interval?” Brooke asked.
“We talked first,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Then just say that next time,” Katie said. “I’m still waiting to hear how you went from a tikka masala explosion to being lip-locked.”
“He…told me he was falling for me and that he’d gone out with Jill to distract himself from me, but it didn’t work. And then he kissed me.”
“And you kissed him back,” Katie said, refusing to let me offload full responsibility onto Grant.
“Yeah.”
Katie’s mouth pulled into a huge smile. “That’s my girl.”
I stared at her. “I thought you didn’t want anything to happen between Grant and me.”
“Oh, no. I definitely like him for you.”
“Me too,” Brooke said.
“What?” I shut my eyes, wondering if there was some way I could have possibly mistaken the gist of Katie’s pre-date pep talk. “No. Katie, you were very clear that I was supposed to make Grant leave the date wanting me while I did the metaphorical equivalent of buffing my nails.”
“Yeah, so?” Katie said like she saw no issue with her current stance on Grant versus the one from sixteen hours ago.
“If you liked him for me this whole time,” I said, “you might’ve mentioned that.”
“Hohhhh, no.” Katie waved her hand in front of her, warding off what I was saying. “I’ve been the person who tells her friends the truth about their dating choices before, and that will not be repeated, thank you very much! I keep my mouth shut and go along with things now.”
The reference to her falling out with Nick was unmistakable. She’d expressed her concerns about his now-wife before their marriage, and she’d paid for it dearly.
Brooke looked at Katie through narrowed eyes. “Do you keep your mouth shut, though?”
“If you knew what stays up here”—she pointed to her head—“you’d be amazed at my filtering capabilities.”
Brooke didn’t look convinced. “So, when you told me yesterday that you’d rather fake your own death than go on a second date with someone who doesn’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re, that was you filtering yourself?”
“So,” I interrupted, “you both want me to date Grant?”
They nodded in sync.
I looked at Katie. “And how do I know this isn’t you just going along with things again?”
“Because now I know Brooke shares my opinion”—she set her hand atop Brooke’s and shot her an exaggeratedly tender look—“so, if this backfires, she’s going down with me.”
“So sweet,” Brooke said, fluttering her lashes dramatically.
“And what about Matchify?” I asked.
“What about it?” Katie acted like I’d introduced Donald Duck to the conversation.
I raised my brows. “You know, Matchify? The company we work at?” I gestured around us. “The one that’s built on the premise of data-based compatibility? Grant and I failed that test. Hard.”
Brooke grimaced, but Katie shrugged. “Love conquers all?”
“Very inspiring, but I’d love for it to not conquer the company we built together.” I let out a big sigh and pushed myself up from the Affection Puff. “I’m going to my office.”
“With Grant,” Brooke said.
“To work,” I said firmly.
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Katie winked at Brooke.
“Bye.” I closed the door to Jim & Pam and headed to my office, feeling more confused and nervous than ever. Was I making too big of a deal out of the compatibility score?
No. This wasn’t just the company I’d built or my livelihood. It was the very ideology that shaped my life. If I betrayed it, where did that leave me? Where did it leave Matchify? I couldn’t stand at the head of a company I didn’t believe in.
I opened my office door, and Grant’s head turned. His mouth spread into a smile—the type you reserve for one particular person. I still couldn’t fathom I was that person for Grant.
“Urgent meeting?” The knowing glint in his eye told me he guessed exactly what Katie and Brooke had pulled me aside to discuss.
It was so flipping cocky of him. And so flipping accurate.
“Yeah,” I said calmly. “There’s a problem with the—”
“Uh-huh,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m sure there is.”
“I’ve got a lot of work to get done today,” I said, refusing to meet his twinkling eyes.
He leaned back in his chair and watched me. “Is that your polite way of telling me to put a sock in it?”
I took my seat and opened my inbox. It was a mess. “I love how perceptive you are.”
“What else do you love about me?”
I shot him a look over the top of my glasses. “I think we covered it all.”
He twirled the pencil in his hands and grinned.
I suppressed a responsive smile and turned back to my work, but the number of times Grant and I met eyes across the desk over the course of the next few hours was criminal. It was a head and heart rush, like I’d stood up too quickly and run a hundred-meter dash all at once.
It meant trouble for me, and it meant trouble for Matchify.
The worst part was how badly part of me wanted that trouble.
Or maybe the worst part was when I caught eyes with him and found him looking at me not with his characteristic twinkle but with a little V in his brow. It disappeared almost immediately, but it had been there long enough to make my stomach lurch and my mind fill with little whispers.
It’s already happening. He’s realizing he doesn’t want you.