Grant, cool as a cucumber, inspects me carefully and tugs my dress down another inch before grabbing a folder off my desk to hide his crotch on his way to unlock the door.
Dorothy looks in at us from the lobby. “Time to head home, kids. Nobody wants you here all night.”
I can’t look at him. “Oh, just getting my things together.”
“Good. Good.” Dorothy looks at him. “And you? Did you even go home at all this weekend?”
Surprised, I glance his way. “You worked all weekend?”
“Most of it,” he says with a sidelong smirk. “Went out for a quick drink Friday night.”
A quick drink? Is that a euphemism for what happened between us at the club?
“Well, good.” Dorothy does a funny little cha-cha in the doorway. “You two should have drinks or something. On me. Just to, you know, release this aura of tension in here.” My cheeks flaming hot, I focus on the bunches of bracelets jingling from her jazz hands. “Go ahead. Put it on the company. Business dinner. Oh! Take her to La Pierre, Grant. You two should blow up the old expense account and—”
“Probably not the best idea right now, Dorothy.”
She pauses, deflates. “Oh, right. Sometimes I forget about… everything.” Her gaze pinballs from Grant to me and back again. “You two doing okay?”
“We’re fine.”
“You sure?” She turns to me for confirmation.
I nod quickly. “Oh, yeah. Excellent. And we are just… so…” Words. Words. Can’t think of a single one. Oh, here they are… “Fine with cohabitating in this confined space. Together. Close. I mean, not so close, but close enough to you know… greatness.” Shut up, Rae. Shut it. Now.
I look to Grant for help with my verbal diarrhea, but he’s just watching me with a puzzled expression, and apparently my brain and mouth are in collusion against me because I’m now saying something about satisfying relations, and holy shit, he literally killed my brain cells with his mouth.
“I’m leaving,” I finally manage to get out. Thank god.
Grant growls, “We’re all leaving,” and literally—shit you not—shuts off the overhead light with the three of us in the office.
After a quiet handful of seconds, during which I wonder if I can locate my bag and coat with just the light from the lobby and the streetlamp’s orange glow, Grant slaps his computer shut, picks it up, and nudges me toward the door.
“My… things.”
“Here.” He hands me my coat, which I take with numb hands. I snag my bag from the drawer and head out. “Everybody gone for the night?”
“Yep. I checked on you when I saw the light under your door.”
Nodding, he ushers us out the back door and then down the exterior stairs. I wave and take off down the alley, almost at a run.
It’s only once I’m safely locked in my car, headed home intraffic, that I let any of it affect me, and when it does, I’m hit with an absolute tsunami of hilarity.
I have to pull over to laugh. And laugh. I don’t know how long it takes. Maybe two minutes? Five? Whatever the case, I finally get myself together enough to wipe the tears from my eyes, let my head fall back against the headrest, and think about it all.
Oh, the embarrassment. I don’t know how to fix this with Dorothy. Maybe there’s no fixing it. Or maybe she didn’t notice anything wrong? She can be out of it sometimes.
And then there was the rest of it. The nucleus, as it were, of tonight’s experience. The reason for the season, or whatever you want to call what happened in that office. At my—no,onmy—desk. Between my legs.
And all the places he kissed me.
Truly, it can’t have been that amazing, right?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Rae
GRANT’S SEATED AT HISdesk when I race into our office late the next morning. He’s perfectly put together, while I look like I’ve been rolling in Cheerios. Which isn’t all that far from the truth, to be honest.
