Chapter 10 #2
Cold air brushes my cheeks as he opens the back door. The pool stretches ahead under the winter sky, steam curling faintly from the surface.
“Is it heated?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Of course it is.”
He glances at me. “You say that like it’s offensive.”
“It is offensive. I’m from the tax bracket where outdoor water in January is called a slipping hazard.”
His mouth curves for real that time, quick and gone, but enough to make my stomach somersault. He steps toward a control panel mounted near the door. “There’s a retractable cover for safety. Penelope knows not to come out here alone, but I don’t rely on that.”
Of course he doesn’t.
“If for any reason I forget to put the cover on after my laps, this is how you do it.”
He presses a button, and suddenly sharp, loud mechanical whir rips through the air way louder than I’m expecting. I flinch hard before I realize what it is and grab the nearest solid thing.
Which is, unfortunately for me, Grayson.
Both hands clutch at his sweater. My body slots into his chest like I’m a damn child scared of thunder.
Heat.
Muscle.
The clean, musky scent of him.
His arms come around me on instinct, steadying, catching, and for one horrifying second, I’m fully plastered against my boss.
I suck in a breath. “Shit. Oh my god—”
I start to pull back, mortified, but his hand closes around my upper arm just enough to stop me in my tracks.
I look up.
His face is close. Way, way too close. His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there, and the whole world narrows to the sound of his exhale and the way he’s looking at me.
He hesitates.
And then his mouth is on mine.
It’s not rough, but it isn’t tentative either. His lips are warm and soft and devastatingly sure for the half-second it lasts. I don’t even have time to comprehend it.
And I just… freeze, completely. It’s not because I don’t want it. I want it so much my brain turns to fucking mush.
But every instinct in me locks up at once — shock, panic, the job, the house, Penelope, the fact that I have spent days acting like I’m definitely not staring at this man’s hands and mouth and shoulders every chance I get.
By the time I even begin to catch up, he’s already pulling away, his expression changing faster than I can try to process.
He shuts down.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, taking a step back immediately.
The words hit me like ice water. No. No, no, no. Say something, Carly.
Nothing comes out.
His jaw twitches as he watches me, the sound of the pool cover clicking shut behind him. “That won’t happen again.”
I still can’t get my brain to work. My mouth opens and closes like a fucking fish.
He gives one short nod like a man finalizing a business decision. “I’d prefer to keep this professional,” he says, the words heavy and absolute.
The sentence lands like a slap. All the warmth drains right out of me. Oh. Oh, fantastic.
So he kisses me, I react like a malfunctioning electric toy, and now I get to be informed that he’d prefer professionalism, as if I’m the one who launched myself at his face.
I fold my arms because if I don’t, I might actually burst into flames from humiliation. “Yeah. Of course.”
His eyes flick to mine, and for the first time since I met him, I can’t read him at all.
“Good,” he says.
I nod once because speaking would probably make me either cry or vomit. “Anything else?” I ask, and I hate how flat my voice sounds.
A muscle jumps in his neck. “No. That’s the house.”
Great. Amazing tour. Five stars. Included luxury amenities, emotional whiplash, and one spontaneous mouth-to-mouth humiliation.
The walk back inside is a blur of polished floors and suffocating silence.
Grayson keeps a careful distance, and I hate how obvious the space between us feels now, like I have to pretend that what happened didn’t, like my lips aren’t still burning, like I didn’t just get kissed by my terrifyingly attractive boss and then politely informed that professionalism is his preference.
By the time my bedroom door closes behind me at last, I want to crawl directly into the bed and never get out of it. My sad little belongings now sit scattered around it in a way that somehow makes them look even smaller.
I set my bags on the bed and stand there for a second, staring at the boxes like maybe one of them contains a replacement brain that doesn’t remember what happened by the pool.
I drop onto the bed and slip my phone out of my pocket.
This is probably how I’ll hit an even harder rock bottom. Fired from being a nanny on day one for being weird after accidentally throwing myself at my boss in a moment of weakness, and then fired from Sparkks Sports because of inappropriate behavior outside of work.
I scroll through my apps and open a property search app. My thumb hovers over the search bar. I’ve done this a million times since Aaron kicked me out, but I could check again. Should check again.
Boulder rentals. One bed. One bath. White goods included.
I start scrolling.
Everything is either offensively expensive, suspiciously damp-looking, or somehow both. One place appears to have a shower directly in the kitchen. Another proudly advertises cozy dimensions, which is landlord code for you can probably cook dinner from your bed.
Still, I keep looking.
Because what else am I supposed to do? Wait here for Grayson Sparkks to knock on my door and tell me he’s made a terrible error in judgment, thank me for my time, and tell me to please collect my lamp and the scraps of my pride and vacate the secondary master suite?
Outside my bedroom door, the house is silent, and somewhere in it is Grayson, probably regretting every single decision that led to me ending up here.