Those shoes are gone. In the garbage, along with the welcome mat and a pair of my favorite socks. Today I’m wearing Vans, the shoes I usually Dom in. There’s some cognitive dissonance happening. Wearing the flat, soft-soled Vans at work feels like a contradiction in terms. My body’s confused.
I look up at where Rae’s standing by the whiteboard, grinning at someone’s question about a new hire, her thick curls up in that clip, her neck delicate and vulnerable without the tumble of hair to shield it. The various chords of dissonance melt together like different colored waxes on skin.
Aw, hell. Don’t think about it. Not wax, dripping slowly onto her back. Not the way that nape would feel if I bit her there or how she’d look kneeling on the floor between my splayed legs, begging me for one taste of my—
“Does that work, Grant?”
“Sorry, what?” I blink back to the meeting and hate that it takes actual willpower to turn to Dorothy instead of focusing on Rae’s naked nape. Shit, have I been staring?
“You wanted to talk to Jade about gaining access to employee computers? Passwords? I suggested you could chat this afternoon.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Okay.” Jade gives me a look that contains zero friendliness. “Any reason you need to get into—”
“It’s for the audit. Let’s schedule an exact time.”
“Well, as IT manager, I should be in on—”
“Just a routine thing, dear,” Dorothy breaks in. “Did I hear someone mention cupcakes?” She looks around as if baked goods might have magically popped into the room in the last few seconds.
Fair enough. There is something sort of fairylike about Rae. If anyone could make a plate of cupcakes appear with the wiggle of her nose, it’s her.
Right now she’s regaling Sugar’s leadership team with details about the succulents—the word frankly sounds dirty when she says it—she spent this morning piping on top of each cake.
What does she not do for these people?
Wait. Does she pay for the ingredients out of her own pocket?
She’d better not. With a staff of just under two dozen, that’s a lot of flour and butter and whatever else goes into cakes.
Our eyes meet, and her face goes immediately from animated to… What is that expression? Glaring and mean.
People stream out of the room. A couple give me dirty looks. I guess I cramped their style yesterday when I requested that food no longer be allowed in meetings. Or maybe it’s the whole mystery auditor thing. They never like that.
Across the room, Rae mouths something at me. I shake my head.
Again, she opens her mouth and says whatever it is, slower this time.Howard?Yo, Howard?
You coward?
I mouth an exaggeratedWhat?and watch as she rises in a poof of mustard-yellow skirt and caramel top, gathers her things, traipses over to me, and then bends into my space to stage-whisper, “I saidglower. You’re glowering, General. That’s against the rules.” Then she sails out.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Grant
AN HOUR LATER,I walk into the pumpkin-spice-scented office and do a double take.
Rae’s turned her desk around so that, instead of facing me the way Dorothy and I had initially set the office up, she’s giving me her back.
Aside from a quick break in her typing and a subtle stiffening of her spine, she doesn’t acknowledge my presence. She just sits there, her eyes on the screen, sipping at some fancy-looking coffee and clicking away at her mouse while very subtly bopping to whatever’s piping through her enormous, sticker-covered pink headphones.
Ignoring each other. That works.
I settle at my desk, put in my earbuds, and get back to work.
Which would be fine if I could concentrate, but Rae’s almost more distracting with her back to me than her front. She wiggles. Squirms. Wait, is she flat-out dancing now?
