Only with You (17 page)

“Yup, that pretty much sums it up,” she said glumly.

“Hey,” he said softly, nudging his knee against hers.

She raised her eyes to his, ignoring the flip of her belly.

“You’re not inferior to anyone. You have skills that nobody else in your family has. Hell, the way you handled the Blackwells? I’ve never seen anyone wrap someone around their finger so efficiently. That kind of skill is worth something.
You’re
worth something.”

The last sentence came out in a mumble, and he tensed his jaw, probably from the uncomfortable sensation of saying something nice. Sophie wanted to give him a hard time about the uncharacteristic softness, but she felt too warm and melty to ruin the moment. This kind of affirmation coming from anyone would have given her a flutter.

But coming from Gray? She felt like grinning.

What would it be like to lean into him for just a moment? To beg for more reassurances. To hear that he liked her. That he respected her, just as she
was
, not for what she could be.

Before she knew it she was leaning, and from the way he was staring at her mouth, she wasn’t the only one who felt the pull of whatever was going on there. He moved imperceptibly closer and Sophie held her breath, not daring to let herself think. Not about work, not about Brynn, not about Vegas.

Kiss me
, she thought.

Gray drew back so quickly he nearly knocked his plate off the counter.

“Anyway, I just wanted you to know,” he said gruffly, grabbing their plates and standing.

Sophie shook her head and tried to shake off whatever had just flashed between them. She took a deep breath and ordered herself not to be disappointed.

You are not to make out with your boss, you are not to make out with your boss…

She repeated the mantra in her head as he dumped their barely touched salads down the garbage disposal with a fierce scowl. She had the insane urge to press her lips against the crease between his eyebrows.

How had the night turned so quickly from dreaded family dinner to downright sexy?

The taciturn, irritable version of Gray never made her feel off-balance. But this flirty, sweet version made her wary.
This
Gray could too easily slip past her guard, and the last thing she needed was to fall for someone who would never approve of her. Throwing a few morale boosters her way was one thing, but someone like Gray would never be in a serious relationship with someone as unfocused as her. Hell, Brian had been a freaking nomad, and even
he
thought she was floating aimlessly through life.

The thought depressed her more than it should. Most of the time she couldn’t stand Gray, and now she was thinking about a relationship?

They needed to abort this cozy chatter before she did something crazy. Like grab the lapels of his crisp white shirt and kiss him senseless. And every instinct in her body told her that getting personal with Grayson Wyatt could only lead to heartbreak.

“Can I help with the main course?” she asked too loudly.

He glanced up, looking relieved that she wasn’t going to continue their bonding moment. He’d probably reached his quota of emotional availability for the year.

“You can chop the parsley,” he replied. “You can’t possibly mess that up.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said, sliding off the bar stool. “Do you have an extra cutting board?”

He slid the garlic he was mincing to the right side of his cutting board and gestured to the space he’d just cleared. “Grab a knife. Parsley’s in the produce drawer of the fridge.”

Unsurprisingly, his fridge was both well stocked and well organized. She took her time browsing through the assortment of fancy cheeses and meats and wide array of produce. It had more variety than her local grocery store, she marveled as she checked out some expensive-looking ham.

“Quit fondling my meat, and just get the damn parsley.”

“Cliché sexual references, boss? I didn’t think that was your style,” she said as she grabbed the parsley and a knife and settled beside him at the cutting board.

Despite her intention to keep things completely professional between them, she couldn’t help but notice the domestic coziness of them sharing a cutting board. He seemed to think the same, because his eyes slid to hers and he gave her a shy smile.

She followed the motion of his hands as he adeptly minced several garlic cloves. He looked so at home with his cooking utensils. It was strange to think that the same hands deftly handling the chef knife were the ones she’d seen typing, holding a phone, or shooing her out of his office.

Awkwardly, Sophie began chopping the parsley. She’d never thought much about her chopping technique before. She’d watched plenty of Food Network and could whip up the occasional spaghetti or stir-fry without embarrassing herself. But after watching him go all Julia Child on her, she felt strangely inept.

Her eyes slid again to his hands, trying to mimic what he was doing. Noticing that he used shorter, more efficient chopping movements, she tried the same—

“Ouch!” she exclaimed. “Son of a…”

She’d never exactly been keen on blood, and the sight of red fluid covering her hand had her swaying.

“What the hell?” Gray said, grabbing her by the wrist. “You’ve cut yourself!”

“Wow, nothing slips by you.” she said dazedly, staring down at her bloody hand. It was hard to see around the
Braveheart
-worthy puddle of blood, but it looked like a major gash was running along her index and middle fingers right below the knuckle.

“You’re going to need stitches,” Gray muttered.

“Just get me a Band-Aid,” she said, humiliation beginning to sink in around the queasiness. “It’s only a little nick.”

But Gray had grasped her wrist and wrapped a towel around her fingers. “Into the car, now. We’re going to the ER.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? Just get me another glass of wine and another towel or something. Maybe some tape.” Her hand began to throb. “Actually, make that wine a whiskey. But I’m not going to the hospital because I cut myself chopping
parsley
.”

“I can see your bone, Sophie,” he said as he ushered her out of the apartment, down a stairwell, and into the garage. Throbbing finger or no, she wasn’t so out of it that she didn’t notice the careful way he tucked all of her limbs into his black BMW or the way he quickly ran his hand over her hair.

Then again, that could have been the woozy at work.

“Just great. I’m even a failure at cutting herbs,” she muttered, throwing her head back against the headrest and clutching the towel more closely around her fingers. The blood had soaked through the folded dish towel and she was beginning to realize the sheer stupidity of what she’d done. She couldn’t even blame the wine. Sure, she’d had a glass, but most of her intoxication had been from watching the man next to her.

Distraction by lust. It happened to the best of women, right?

Through the haze of pain and humiliation, she realized that Gray drove just like he did everything else. Quickly, quietly, and with no unnecessary movements.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, glancing over at her.

“I’m feeling really great, Gray. For the first time ever I was getting the impression that maybe you didn’t hate me, and then I go and ruin the night by nearly slicing off the fingers of my dominant hand. So yeah, I’m great. Maybe later we can go shoot puppies at close range.”

“I never hated you,” he said quietly.

And then he reached over and briefly set his hand on her knee before he jerked it back to the steering wheel.

Despite the fact that her hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel, and that she was about to spend her Friday night in a hospital waiting room, she couldn’t hide a giddy little smile.

S
omehow Gray had never imagined that his personal version of hell would include an emergency room waiting area, the frantic parents of his secretary, and her scarily stressed-out sister, who
also
happened to be an ex-girlfriend. Will Thatcher had shown up as well, although he at least seemed calm.

Resisting the urge to press his fingers against his temples, he turned to Will, the only one of the group not either wringing their hands or scowling at him. “Would you please explain to me how it is that you all ended up here for a very minor finger injury?”

Will shrugged good-naturedly as he dug into his second bag of peanut M&M’s. “Soph’s dad used to run this emergency room. There’s no way you could have snuck beloved Dr. Dalton’s youngest daughter through here without the whole fam finding out. M&M?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Tell us again how this happened?” Sophie’s mom asked, shredding her thumbnail to pieces with her teeth.

“Calm down, Marnie. Dr. Hoyne said it was nothing a few stitches wouldn’t fix,” Sophie’s dad said while rubbing his wife’s back.

Marnie hissed. “Oh, and what does Richard Hoyne know!”

“True, med school teaches those docs
nothing
these days,” Will said.

“I heard that, William,” Marnie said.

“Dr. Hoyne is a fine ER doctor. I trained him myself,” Chris said soothingly.

“So she’s not going to lose her fingers?”

Oh Jesus
. Gray pinched the bridge of his nose. Of all women, the one who had to go and slice her finger was an employee. And of all the
employees
, he had to end up with the one whose dad was a retired doctor and had apparently handpicked the entire emergency room staff.

“I just don’t understand how this happened,” Marnie asked.

“I didn’t realize I owed you a report,” Gray snapped, losing his temper.

“Don’t get snippy with Mama Dalton,” Will said. “You’re the one cavorting around with your secretary on a Friday night, chopping off her fingers.”

“Yeah, how is it that you ended up spending Friday night with my sister?” Brynn asked, stopping her pacing for the first time since arriving.

“Oh, here we go,” Will said, noisily crunching his M&M’s.

Gray avoided Brynn’s accusing look. He hadn’t expected to see his ex-girlfriend again, and definitely lacked the quick thinking to smooth over the situation.

What the hell am I doing here?
Just when Gray was about to make a cowardly exit, the doctor finally came out. Frankly, Gray couldn’t understand why they’d all been banished to the waiting room in the first place. It wasn’t like privacy was needed to sew up a couple of fingers.

“Hi, everyone, thanks for waiting,” the doctor said somberly, as though he’d just finished rebuilding Sophie’s spleen from scratch.

Dr. Hoyne shook Sophie’s dad’s hand. “I have some good news. Sophie’s going to be just fine.”

“Oh good, we were
so
worried,” Will said, earning a punch from Brynn.

“Will she have any permanent nerve damage?” Marnie asked, her hand pressed against her lips.

Seeing the genuine maternal concern, Gray felt some of his irritation fade. Yes, in the grand scheme of medical emergencies, this was barely a blip on the radar. But to the Daltons, one of their own was wounded.

Hell, Gray felt like one of
his
own was wounded. Not that Sophie was his, even if it had felt that way for a few strange moments in his condo.

However, surrounded by her family and friends, who
really
knew her, he suddenly felt out of place. At the end of the day, he was just her boss. And no matter how blatantly the attention-starved little minx had flirted with him, he wouldn’t be the one she wanted to see right now.

“Which one of you is Mr. Wyatt?” the doctor asked Will and Gray.

Will pointed to Gray and grinned as if he were a sixth grader passing the blame for some pulling a girl’s hair.

“Great, come with me,” the doctor said. “Sophie’s asking to see you.”

Silence settled over the group.

And just like that, Gray no longer felt out of place. He felt like grinning. Sophie wanted to see
him
. Even after he’d flirted with her, made her help him cook, and then barely spoken to her while they waited for her name to be called, she was asking for him.

Of course, she probably hadn’t realized yet that she had an entire get-well committee on hand. Swallowing awkwardly, he followed the doctor down the sterile hallway.

All boyish hopes that Sophie might anxiously be waiting on the hospital bed for Gray to check on her faded when he heard her laugh all the way down the hall. Instead of finding a wounded bird holding a broken wing, he found a preening peacock, sitting hip to hip with an elderly man, giggling over what appeared to be an ancient photo album.

“Oh, Gray!” she said, her face glowing and smiling, instead of somber and in pain. “Meet my new friend, Mr. Bronson. He was just showing me pictures of when he and his wife went to the circus in Paris and the baby elephant escaped.”

Gray couldn’t figure out if he wanted to smile or just walk away in exasperation. He’d spent the past twenty minutes enduring glares from her overbearing family, and she was in here discussing baby circus animals with a man who looked like Santa Claus.

Her gaze fell on the doorway behind him and her smile faltered slightly.

“Mom? Dad? What…Wow, everyone’s here. What’s going on?”

“We came to see if you were all right, of course!” Marnie said, dashing to her daughter’s side and grabbing for her wrist. “Oh gosh, what a huge bandage.”

“Mom, seriously, it’s just a few stitches on each finger. I’ll be completely back to normal before my next dump.”

Everybody except Mr. Bronson winced. The old man patted her knee. “It’s good to be regular, dear.”

Sophie’s welcoming smile was long gone, and she fixed Gray with a glare. “Really? You called my entire family because of a little cut finger?”

“Oh no, that was me, dear,” said the plump redheaded nurse who had just entered the room. “I just sent your parents a text message to say how pretty you’d gotten over the years! I wasn’t thinking that they’d probably freak out that an emergency room nurse was seeing their daughter. Sorry, everyone. I just didn’t think…”

“Obviously,” Gray muttered.

“Don’t worry about it, Anna,” Sophie said with a reassuring smile. “I’m sure my family and friends feel silly for rushing down here.”

“On the contrary, Soph. I, for one, was
terrified
. I actually stopped at the hospital chapel on the way up here,” Will said as he dug through a basket of lollipops intended for six-year-olds.

“Knock it off, Will. Don’t mock the chapel. And don’t belittle Sophie’s injury,” Brynn snapped.

“Says the big sister who was more focused on ogling her ex than worrying about Sophie,” Will muttered under his breath.

Gray stiffened awkwardly. This was a conversation he didn’t want to have…ever. Sure, he owed Brynn an explanation, but not
here
.

Sophie apparently agreed, because she scowled fiercely at her family.

“Dad, you can’t go abusing your hospital connections just to spy on your kids. I’m sure Anna or Dr. Hoyne could have told you over the phone that it was just a finger scratch and not head trauma.”

Both parents looked away guiltily.

“And Brynn,” Sophie said pleadingly, “
please
quit looking at me like I just shot your cat. Nothing happened between Gray and me; we were just together for work reasons.”

Brynn sputtered, obviously not enjoying being called out. “I wasn’t worried about that, I was just surprised…”

“And bitchy,” Will said around a neon green lollipop. Did the man never stop eating?

“And
you
,” Sophie said, turning on Will. “Thank you for coming down, but come on. You didn’t know better? You couldn’t have run interference?” She glanced meaningfully at Brynn.

Will shrugged, unperturbed as ever. “Brynn called me saying that there’d been an accident and that she was worried about you.”

“
Brynn
called you?” Marnie asked.

“And you actually came?” asked Dr. Dalton.

For the first time since Gray had met him, Will seemed to falter. “I came for Sophie, obviously. I was worried.”

Awkward silence settled over the group.

Gray wondered what his next move should be. Did he try to explain to the family why their daughter was at his home on a Friday night? Out of habit, he looked to Sophie for guidance. She was forever giving him hints on appropriate social behavior.

But not this time. She was too busy staring at the bandages on her fingers like she could heal them with her eyes.

Gray cleared his throat nervously. “Ms. Dalton, if you’re feeling better, I think I’ll let you spend time with your family. I’ll see you on Monday. Unless, of course, you need a ride home,” he finished politely.

Sophie’s head snapped up, her wide eyes blinking up at him.

“
Ms. Dalton?
” Will said. “What a stiff.”

Gray wanted to snap that he wasn’t deaf, but confrontation wasn’t really his style. Neither was playing nursemaid, and he silently begged Sophie to excuse him from this awkward mess.

“Sure, I can get a ride home from my parents,” Sophie finally replied, sounding uncharacteristically formal. “Thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to drive me over here. I apologize for the”—she shook her injured hand in a little wave—“inconvenience. Hopefully it won’t adversely affect my typing skills on Monday.”

That made his head snap around and he met her gaze. “For God’s sake, you know it’s not your work I care about—”

Will cleared his throat.

“I should go,” Gray said finally.

Hating himself for his curtness, but feeling completely out of his element, he walked quietly out the door and nodded an awkward farewell before escaping into the blissful anonymity of the hospital hallway.

Traces of conversation followed him as he headed for the parking lot.

“Good Lord, did the man just bow to us?” Will asked.

“Interestingly, William, some men understand the basic concepts of being a gentleman,” Brynn said.

“How, by screwing his secretary?” Will asked.

“Now, I’m sure it wasn’t like that. He doesn’t seem the type to be interested in our Sophie,” Marnie said. “They said they were working.”

“On what, French cooking lessons? Or French something else?”

“Can we please go now? Please?” The faint request came from Sophie, and the pleading quality of her voice almost had him turning around. She sounded nothing like herself.

But he kept walking. He didn’t know the first thing about playing hero.

“Gray, wait up a sec.” His heart sped up for a brief second when he thought it might be Sophie coming after him.

He watched her approach, waiting for some sort of sting of regret that he’d let this beautiful woman walk away from him. At the very least, he expected some sort of physical regret that he hadn’t even tried to get her into bed.

But as he watched Brynn come toward him, he felt nothing. A removed appreciation, maybe. She was still lovely, and he could see them being friends. But any lingering hope that they might get back together faded for good. There was nothing here but friendship potential.

“Can I get a ride home?” she asked. “I know it’s out of the way, but I don’t want my parents to have to drive me and Sophie, and Will…that’s just not happening.”

He was a little surprised by the request, but didn’t really mind. “Sure. My car’s parked just out front.”

She smiled in thanks and tucked her arm companionably in his. Gray waited for the alarm bells to go off in his paranoid mind, but nothing happened.

Brynn seemed more thoughtful than flirtatious, and he relaxed slightly.

While they waited for the elevator, Gray had the uncomfortable sensation of being watched, and he warily glanced back toward Sophie’s room.

Two very wounded eyes were blinking back at him, and he felt a stab of panic that he was seeing her here with Brynn. But before he could explain that this wasn’t what it looked like, her parents swooped around her, leading her in the opposite direction.

She didn’t look back.

Sophie gave the printer a soft kick. So much for her “minor” finger injuries not interfering with her work. The stitches from her parsley incident had been minimal, but the splint holding the two injured fingers immobile made even the simplest actions awkward.

Everything took her twice as long, from curling her hair, to typing up expense reports, to going to the damn bathroom.

Sophie’s patience had been fraying all week, and today she’d reached the breaking point. Hence the printer-kicking. She’d hoped to get out of work early today to stop by a friend’s birthday dinner, but instead it was seven o’clock and she was still stuck in the office. There was a pile of sales reports that needed to be printed before tomorrow’s board meeting, and, naturally, the printer with the built-in hole punch was out of ink.

Her choices were to try and figure out how to change the toner herself or use a different printer and do the hole-punching by hand.

Neither option would get her out of the office in the next hour with her crippled fingers.

On top of it all, she was spoiling for a fight and she knew exactly who she wanted to pick it with. Except the object of her frustration wasn’t exactly the type to lower himself to a good old-fashioned yelling fest.

He was more the ice-out-the-enemy type of fighter.

Something he’d been doing very well all week.

It had been six days since The Episode, and other than giving her curt work-related requests, Gray hadn’t spoken to her. He’d barely looked at her.

Either he was being a complete chickenshit, or whatever fuzzy feelings Sophie had felt that night at his house had been completely one-sided.

She glared down at the red, blinking error light. Stupid printer. Stupid job. Stupid Gray.

Stupid Sophie.
That was the real crux of her anger. She was mad at herself for letting herself think that she might matter. Mad that she’d been ready to go back to his home after the emergency room and have a nice homemade crepe, and instead he’d left her there to go home with her dad while he walked away with his ex-girlfriend.