"All good," he assured, carefully watching her. "I understand."
She pressed her palms along her sides to straighten her suit jacket. "What do you understand?"
"That whatever happened just now was unusual for you. It threw you off. I get it," he said, studying her with those annoyingly perceptive eyes.
"It didn't throw me off," she assured him. The words sounded flat, because they weren't entirely the truth.
"Okay," he said, moving so she could get by.
She didn't, however, move. "I feel like you're analyzing me and getting everything wrong."
"I'm not getting anything wrong."
Her lips pursed and she lifted her brows in what she hoped was a silent invitation for him to leave.
He didn't.
"You seem like the type who likes control. Prefers to manage everything so that you know where it goes. And you have no idea where to catalog… that. " He gestured to where he'd knelt to slip on her shoe.
"That?" she asked.
"The whole unexpected chemistry with strangers on sidewalks."
She bristled. Not because he was wrong, but because he wasn't. And that unsettled her more than anything. But she'd rather eat gum off the sidewalk than admit it. "I was removing gum from a shoe, not speed dating outside my office."
He smirked again, like he knew exactly how off-kilter he'd knocked her, and worse, how she didn't hate it. A muscle twitched in her jaw as she pressed her lips together. Their odd little back-and-forth hummed under her skin, like nerves reacting to a caffeine overdose. Jittery. Persistent.
"I don't remember Cinderella dealing with gum issues, but it would've made for an interesting twist on the fairy tale," he mused.
"Cinderella stories never end like they're supposed to, gum or no gum," she replied.
She needed to get upstairs. Any second now. Right after this conversation stopped being... this.
"Not a fan of the fairy tale endings with the wedding and the happily ever after?" he asked and, for a half-second, the twinkle faded. Like maybe he'd learned that lesson the hard way.
"Well, since fairy tale endings don't exist, no." Not only no, but hell no. She cringed inside, and it likely showed on her face, as well.
"You don't think so?" he asked, as though this was a problem. Which was stupid because he didn't know her and she didn't know him and, dammit, she had news to tell her boss inside.
Upstairs. Away from here.
She shook out her sleeves and forced a smile on her face. "Let's just say I prefer events where the biggest drama is the decision to serve chicken or fish, and no one ends up divorced afterward."
"A nice Chamber of Commerce event dinner?" Zach suggested.
"That would be fine. Or a funeral," she added, a mischievous glint in her eye as she began to walk toward the front entrance. "Those are always predictable."
Zach's lips twitched and he kept stride with her. "Morbid, but efficient. I think I get it now."
Oh no, he didn't attempt to figure her out in a three-sentence sound bite. "Stop trying to put me in a box like that when you don't even know me."
He stayed with her pace.
Piper was rarely at a loss for words. They flowed freely whether she wanted them to or not. But in that second, she could not find the syllables to say anything. Surely, they were there somewhere in her brain, but they were not making their way to her mouth.
Her heart kind of kicked at her to say something. But… it was like someone pushed pause on her ability to speak.
And there he was, still walking with her toward the door.
