Stop by my office before you leave.
My Wife
You’re not the boss of me.
Infuriating woman. The day she doesn’t fight back is the day I need to be worried it’s truly over.
Leaving Mary’s office on the ground floor, I take the elevator back up to Grant’s office. Gabby’s office door is closed when I walk by on my way to Grant’s, and I hope that means she’s already gone home after that shit show of a meeting. She did great, whereas I would’ve liked to kick Mark in the balls and stab Ricardo in the throat.
It’s worse than I thought, and I’ve seen a lot of shit in this business.
Grant’s door on the far end of the hall is closed as well, giving me a minute to gather myself before our next sparring match. Seeing him from a distance at games was no match for seeing him up close, and it may take me another full year to recover from it.
“Best get it over with, Taylor,” I whisper to myself. With a slightly shaky hand, I reach up and knock on the wood door.
“Come in,” Grant calls out from inside. Even muffled, his voice has my pulse racing.
With one more deep breath, I push the door open. His office spans the entire width of the building, overlooking both the stadium on one side and the downtown Nashville skyline on the other.
He looks up from the massive executive desk facing the door with the downtown view at his back and a soft smile tugs at his lips. “Ms. Baker.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes at his attempted formality, the teasing lilt giving him away.
“You wanted me to come by when I got finished with Mary?”
“How did it go?”
Making myself comfortable, I move to the bar cart in the corner behind the round table and pour myself two fingers of bourbon.
“By all means help yourself.” He stands from his desk, shucking off the jacket of his three-piece suit and draping it over the back of the chair before rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. Those tan forearms on display have me tossing back the dark liquor in one shot. The burn in the back of my throat does nothing to extinguish the burn for him—if anything it intensifies it. Not a great sign.
“Are you going to pour me one?” Grant crowds me from behind as I refill the glass. The barest hint of rosewood and amber in his cologne infiltrates my senses. I close my eyes, reeling from the memory of buying it for him when we started dating.
“I may be your wife, but I’m not your servant.”
“Oh, so you do remember?” He takes the crystal canister from me, his fingers brushing against mine in the process. The tingling sensation jolts me away from him.
Ignoring his question and redirecting our conversation to the point of this meeting, I say, “It went fine. Mary knows what she’s doing, but I get the impression she’s not used to this particular brand of media attention.”
“In your opinion, how concerned should I be about the public perception of Bennett and the team?”
Is he really asking?
Sitting in the wingback chair against the window that overlooks the stadium, I cross my legs and take him in, silence filling the space between us. He leans a hip against the bar cart, sipping his bourbon out of the glass that I’m pretty sure I gifted him after my first big promotion. Grant is a Davenport, but it’s stillhard to reconcile the man in front of me wearing a tailored suit with the man who could barely find a button down on our wedding day.
Breaking the silence and reading my mind, he says, “Yes, I’m really asking.”
“Honestly, I think it’s big news right now because there’s not much to talk about. Chase has a reputation for being a troublemaker, so of course that sparks a whole conversation on whether or not it was a bad move to bring him up. Was it too soon? Did he need more development in the minors? Is he a hothead with no reform? Yada yada.”
“The answer to those questions is no. I stand by the decision to call him up. We need his glove at shortstop if we have any chance of staying at the top of the division.”
“I agree with you. He’s a valuable asset to the team. Mike, Preston, and Miller feel the same way. If he was a bad egg, your captains wouldn’t have adopted him into the fold.” Preston and Miller are notoriously inclusive team co-captains, but they don’t open their inner circle to teammates easily. The fact that they invited Chase into their bromance tells me it has less to do with Chase and Gabby having a one-night stand that only Miller and I know about and more to do with the potential they see in him to be the future of the team. Grant must see it too or he wouldn’t have made the decision to call him up.
“Bennett has made an impression in the short time he’s been on the team. It just so happens he made a terrible choice where cameras could capture the whole thing. We’ve all been there.”
“What matters right now is how we spin it. Luckily, half the internet thinks this was a hilarious prank and he should get off with a warning.”
“We?” Grant quirks an eyebrow while taking a sip of his bourbon. The movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallows has me re-crossing my legs to ward off the pulse that’s found its way to my core.
