“There’s one individual, a guy she interviewed yesterday. He was interesting, to say the least. Worked as a mechanic but gave off mob vibes. The business might have been a front. Anyway, he didn’t take kindly to Sophie snapping a couple of photos. He demanded her SD card.”
Ms. Birdie’s brow furrowed. “I’m not surprised. That’s why I insisted she have security during certain interviews. This world is full of unique individuals who would love to do harm to someone so sweet. I suggest we tighten security around Sophie, effective immediately. I want you on this 24/7 until we sort this out.”
“Understood,” Stone replied, even though the command felt like a double-edged sword. More time around Sophie meant wrestling with this unexpected, unprofessional attraction, yet it also meant keeping her safe, which, he had to admit, had become more personal than usual.
“Excellent. I spoke to Clarabelle, and she assured me your injury has healed and your schedule is cleared. But I wanted to run it by you in person since I can’t say how long around-the-clock protection will be required. I mean, in a perfect world, we’ll catch the culprit before the day is over.”
When had Ms. Birdie reached Clarabelle? She’d not been returning his calls. “I’ll protect her no matter how long it takes. Once I commit to a job, I’m all in.”
“That’s not what I heard from the Glam Team. Alberto said he’d heard you’d completely ditched their makeover attempts.”
When in the hell had Alberto seen him to snitch on him? “That was a mistake on my part. Considering this threat, from now on, I’ll be the perfect cinnamon roll boyfriend. Other than the wig.”
“Excellent. Now, if you don’t mind, would you break the news to Sophie? I’m afraid I’m due at a board meeting and won’t be able to stop by and talk to her on my way out.”
“I’ll head that way as soon as you and I are done,” Stone said. “It will give us a chance to work out the logistics of our being in forced proximity for the time being.” The idea of such continual nearness disturbed him on a couple of levels. One, it would be harder to hide his secret from her if they were continuallytogether. Two…well, that kiss had been anything but benign. It had left him wanting much, much more.
“And for now, we’re not sharing this turn of events with Frankie,” Ms. Birdie added.
He picked up on a thread of weariness in Ms. Birdie’s tone. “Any special reason why?”
“Let’s just say she’s under a lot of pressure from a personal matter, and Isabella and I believe it’s best to keep as much of the stress from the job as possible off her radar for the near future.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Stone said. “I hope everything will be okay.”
“As do we, dear. As do we.” Ms. Birdie stood. “Now, I hate to rush you off, but my schedule leaves little room for chitchat.”
As he left Ms. Birdie’s office and walked toward Sophie’s, Stone took stock of his feelings. Something he’d never done until Clarabelle had come back into his life and given him the skills for his other career. A career that often required encouraging others to ponder their feelings.
While Stone still pretty much sucked at that part of the job, he was improving. Which brought him back to his current emotions.What do I feel right now?
Part of him dreaded the close proximity he and Sophie would be sharing for the near future, while another part—a part that kept presenting itself as valid—was thrilled.
But mostly, he was pissed that someone had threatened Sophie E. Clark.
Chapter 15
Sophie stood in her compact office, poring over the large planning board that dominated one wall. She was reworking the strategy for the remaining nine columns. It wasn’t that she believed the plan required an overhaul, but this morning, Ms. Birdie had sent her an urgent message asking her to present another outline of her plan, this time with a tighter focus—one that allowed for all the interviews to be completed in one month.
Sophie couldn’t help but think the one-month thing had something to do with Stone. Had he formally requested to be done babysitting her? On the bright side, if she completed all the interviews within the month, the candidates could all participate in the bachelor auction that was coming up soon.
On the other bright side, being done in a month meant kicking her grumpy shadow out of her life once and for all. Only, there was a slight problem. And it absolutely wasn’t that she couldn’t stop thinking of the kiss. Because she could…if she wanted to. She just hadn’t wanted to, yet.
The problem was Sophie wasn’t good with details. She was more of a big-picture person.
She liked the freedom to dream of new possibilities over being committed to just one path. Not possible if she had to pick her men in the next couple of days and line up interviews ASAP.
Sophie pushed her worries away. Things would work out the way they were meant to—they always did. Right now, all she needed to worry about was preparing a detailed list of the full names of those who had nominated a guy for her consideration and giving it to Ms. Birdie.
The magazine’s owner had given Sophie an edict that if the person nominating another did so under the pseudonym anonymous, Sophie was to toss the nomination.
This sucked big time because there were some excellent nominations that fell in that unfortunate category.
Especially for the sketchy background nominations where ninety-nine percent of the nominations fell under the category anonymous. This also presented Sophie with another problem. Frankie had insisted that Mr. Sketchy—whoever he turned out to be since Antonio was a hard no—be featured in next month’s edition ofNaked Runway.
Currently, Sophie was mapping out qualified leads on color-coded index cards, each hue representing a different type of book boyfriend. Strands of colorful yarn connected the cards, creating a vibrant spiderweb that would eventually help her chart her and Stone’s day-to-day journeys across Manhattan over the next month.
A sudden knock at the door spun her around, half-expecting to find a delivery person burdened with the life-size cardboard cutouts of her book heroes. Each figure was a crafted replica of how the members of the Book Boyfriend Connoisseurs Club imagined the protagonists from the featured books would look. She was particularly excited to lay her eyes on the life-size Miles from Emily Henry’sFunny Story.That character had been living in her daydreams ever since chatting about him with Stone.
