Grayson #2
“Hey!” Mark’s gravelly voice cuts the moment like a knife. Eliza and I drop each other, jerking apart like two teens caught kissing under the bleachers.
Jesus.
I twist to see Mark stalking past, wearing a scowl despite the cinnamon bun in his hand. Pretty much everyone here has warmed up to Eliza, except for him. He hasn’t offered to plot her murder since that first day, but his glowering avoidance whenever she’s around makes it damn obvious how he feels.
“You took too long. There’s only one left,” he hollers. It’s accusatory, like I’ve been picking flowers all morning instead of working.
Kenny exits the warehouse then, demonstrating exactly how thirty-five cinnamon rolls have managed to already get eaten down by twelve people. He’s stuffing one in his mouth and carrying two in his hands when he spots us, eyes flaring in urgency.
“Hey Boss!” His voice is muffled by cinnamon bun as he jogs over. “Amanda wanted me to tell you—the tour schedule just got crazy. Got a waitlist of, like, twenty groups.” He breaks for another bite of cinnamon roll. “She’s gonna need help coordinating.”
My brows slam together. “We never have a waitlist.”
He shrugs. “We do now.”
Our farm tours do well, but we price them high so they’re actually worth our time, which means we usually have a few unfilled slots each week.
Anson’s been wanting to fill them in—not just for the money, which is a decent supplement to our usual operations, but for the publicity, too.
If what Kenny says is true, this is the kind of news that can produce one of Anson’s rare smiles.
It also makes no sense. Our last magazine piece came out months ago. We haven’t had any recent big breaks that should cause a spike like this.
When I say that out loud, Kenny draws out a long “Ohhh” that flashes way too much of the soggy mush in his mouth. “Here, Boss.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone. “Forgot you don’t have socials.”
Socials? I glance at Eliza, who’s studying something in the distance, then lean in to see his screen.
The first thing I see is a pan over the Gold’s Oysters sign—a professional cut I’ve seen leading one of Eliza’s videos before. Except this time, it doesn’t fade into a bag of oysters or a panorama of the farm.
It cuts to a shot of me.
A close-up of my hands showing off a few mature oysters during a farm tour.
A distance shot of me hauling a bin of ice and oysters off a skiff.
A side angle of me pulling off my hat to wipe the sweat from my forehead.
Another closeup of my hands working to open an oyster, my sweatshirt sleeves shoved up to bare my forearms.
The whole time, clean, little white letters are splayed across the top of each frame: Reason no. 23 you should book that tour of Gold’s Oysters.
“Oh, shit, forgot the music,” Kenny mumbles. He presses the side of his phone, and the slow, easy melody of a James Taylor tune floats over the images. The song is way too fucking casual and innocent for what Eliza Attleburn has done.
It only gets worse when Kenny’s dirty thumb taps over the comments. “The women have gone wild for you, man. Amanda said she’s getting calls from bachelorette parties.”
Drooling emojis. Heart eyes. Some woman named Linda wants to take a tour of the oyster FARMER.
I tear myself away from the screen before I read whatever the fuck Rachel said that got her one-thousand-nineteen likes, and set my sights on the woman at the center of this all.
Her jaw is twitching like she’s trying to hold in laughter. She doesn’t look nearly as sheepish as she should, never mind apologetic.
No. Eliza Attleburn’s hazel eyes dance with conspiratorial light as she crosses her arms and stands there like she didn’t just turn me into a schedule-flooding thirst trap.
“Ken, I need a word with our Social Media Director.”
I don’t wait for a response. Stiff steps start taking me to the front office, because if I stand by that phone any longer, I don’t know what I’ll do. For once, Eliza’s silent as she tracks behind me, showing just how smart she is.
Or maybe that’s survival instinct.
The hum of the office’s air conditioning greets me when I swing the door open. I hold it for her before closing it with a softness I don’t feel.
“Let me explain,” she says calmly, hands up like she’s talking to a rabid dog.
I settle my hands on my hips and glare at her, molars grinding.
“Anson told me one of his goals was to fill our tours. Your visitors are mostly men, so we needed a way to attract a female demographic, too.”
My jaw is locked, letting her marinate in my pissed-off silence.
“This strategy clearly worked,” she tries.
When I remain quiet, she shifts on her feet and sighs. “They can’t even see your face. No one knows it’s you, and it’s just a few clips of you doing your job. The music was tame, and so was the caption. The fact that the women went feral has nothing to do with me.”
“You’re way too fucking smart to actually think that.” The words burst out of me, though I keep them low. The outrage in my tone does more than any volume would.
What it’s supposed to do, though, I’m not sure.
Because Eliza doesn’t balk or start apologizing.
I swear, her spine straightens instead as she leans back against the desk and crosses her arms. “I passed it by Anson, who loved it. And before you tell me it turned your farm into a gimmick, it hasn’t.
It was tasteful, fun, and showed a little personality that consumers appreciate. And, as I said, it worked.”
I can’t fucking argue that last point, and that just strings me tighter. “You knew I wasn’t going to like this.”
“I did.”
She doesn’t even try to deny it. And she doesn’t sound the least bit sorry.
My body thrums, and I take two big steps toward her. Crowding her. Close enough for that damn perfume to tickle my nose as she cranes to look at me.
“You knew I wasn’t going to like this,” I repeat, annunciating slowly, “and you did it anyway.”
“Just like you knew I wasn’t going to like you leaving without me last Monday.”
My frustration sputters for a moment. “I thought we were past that.”
Friday’s cookout had felt like a turning point. An end to the war. And yesterday’s ride-along had been easy. Fun, even. Hell, I’ve been looking forward to our next one, more than I should.
“We are now,” she clarifies. “But I published this post last week.”
After I’d ditched her.
No fucking way.
“This was, what? Revenge?”
“Revenge? Now that’d be unprofessional,” she croons innocently.
The bullshit is so obvious, there’s no need to call it out.
Eliza Attleburn, straight-and-narrow professional that she is, used her job to get revenge on me. That should piss me off even more, just like her playing coy.
But all my hot ire twists into something else that has me stepping in again, closer to that perfume, closer to that face tilted up at me in challenge. Closer to this smart, ballsy woman who meets me at every step.
“You’re real pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” The question rumbles out of my chest.
A dare.
When those smooth, pink lips curve into a smirk, I move in. My hands hit the oak desk on either side of her thighs, my face coming inches from hers.
Her smirk wobbles, nostrils flaring on a quick intake of breath. But she doesn’t lean away. She sets those shoulders tighter and leans in.
Fuck.
“I’m incredibly pleased with the results.” Her breath brushes across my skin as her eyes flick between mine, long pretty lashes deceptively innocent around the hot challenge in her gaze. Then, Eliza being Eliza, she takes it fucking one step further.
Her tongue slips out, licking her top lip and dragging my attention with it. “You should be pleased, too. Tours are good.”
It’s a visceral effort not to close the distance and stop that smart mouth with my own. Then all that desire shoots straight to my cock, which is eager to help with that effort.
The smooth skin of her thighs taunt my fingertips, splayed inches away at the edge of the desk. A desk that’s old and sturdy enough to fuck someone over, hard and good.
Fuck.
My brain is two fragile seconds away from thinking about flipping this pretty little dress up and seeing exactly what smart words her mouth is capable of with my fingers playing on her pussy and my cock driving into her.
Would she be into that? Her face is still an inch from mine, thrumming with enough heat to suggest she—
A car door slams outside, and those thoughts shatter like a sheet of ice. All at once, I’m aware of the wide-open windows. My team working out back. The giant parking lot right next to us.
I shove back from the desk and take an extra step to where it’s professionally acceptable to stand.
But the distance does nothing to cool the fire wisping through my veins.
My voice is gravelly when I say, “You’re right.
Tours are good for the farm.” I force myself to retreat to the door.
“But they’re good for your content, too.
So you’ll be coming with me, because I’m not suffering through a goddamn bachelorette party on my own. ”
I shove myself out into the muggy, hot air, waiting for shame or regret to sink in. Because now it’s plain as day that no matter what I told myself when I grabbed those waterproof patches, I’m not treating Eliza like another team member.
I don’t want to.
But the regret never comes.