“How’d your date go?” I retorted, buying time because I wasn’t sure what to tell Ace about how my first day had gone. I’d made a little headway in the books, although I was a long way from solving the problems there. But I knew that Ace wasn’t asking me about how the work had actually been. He wanted to know how Mallory had been.
I wondered if Ace still thought there was a chance that Mallory and I might get together. If so, he was crazy. She could barely stand to have lunch with me. Besides, there was Booker to consider. Anyone that I let into my life was going to be in Booker’s life as well, if they stuck around. And I wasn’t looking for one night stands.
Though I really had enjoyed getting lunch with Mallory the previous day. She might have been a little prickly, but it was nice to know she was at least trying to get over our initial meetings and the bad impressions I had made. And it showed a lot, I think, that at the end of the day, she was willing to trust me to lock up the place.
But she wasn’t the warm, motherly kind of influence that I sometimes imagined for Booker. She had accepted the fact that I had a son without batting an eyelash, which was more than I could say for a lot of the people that Ace had tried to set me up with, but at the end of the day, I didn’t think she was the kind of person who wanted to be a mother. She was busy with the business, and I was sure she was the kind of woman who didn’t like to compromise. She did what she wanted with her life, unencumbered by a family or anything else.
Which was fine. To each their own.
But Ace wasn’t going to let his question about my work go unanswered. “Date was fine. I probably won’t call her again, but it was a good night,” Ace said easily. “But come on, how was your day? You know I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
I shrugged. “It was fine, I guess,” I said. “Long, but I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to figure out where the problem is in the books. It’s just tedious more than anything.” Ace gave me a look, and I knew he wasn’t impressed by my attempts to ignore his underlying question about how things with Mallory had been. “She’s not as bad as I thought she would be. She basically leaves me alone in there, so it’s not like I have to deal with her that much.”
Ace looked like he wanted to say something in response, but finally, he just shook his head. “Well, that’s good,” he said.
I thought about telling him about the lunch yesterday. But Mallory had said it was something she did with every new employee. It wasn’t like I was at all special. And besides, I didn’t want to hear the kinds of comments that Ace would probably make if he knew that I’d had lunch with her. He would act like it had been some sort of date or something. But it had just been lunch.
Besides, I wasn’t interested in dating Mallory. She was pretty, sure. And there was something about her confidence and know-how that made my blood stir. But at the end of the day, she just wasn’t what I was looking for.
No way to explain that to Ace, though. He would want to know why not. He would want to know exactly the kind of person I was looking for. And then he would set me up on another blind date with another random stranger that he had met in passing somewhere. I wasn’t going to give him any more ammunition.
Fortunately, Booker interrupted the rest of the interrogation to talk about all the things he was going to do at school that day. He seemed to have forgotten that just a little while ago, he’d been asking to skip school to go skating instead. I hid a grin of amusement as I listened to him talk about his science class.
A little while later, I was back at the vineyard. I had to admit, I was a little nervous. What if Mallory had decided she didn’t want me there after all? I didn’t really think she would do that, but then again, it was the second day in a row that I wasn’t there right at nine as she had asked. I figured I should be safe on that, though, since I’d worked later than anyone else the night before.
But that brought up another worry. I’d locked up the night before just like she told me to, but what if I’d done something wrong? I didn’t know what I could possibly have messed up, but I couldn’t help thinking that maybe locking up was some sort of test. One that I might have failed somehow, unknowingly.
When I got to my desk, though, there was a mug of coffee waiting for me, along with a message scrawled on a sticky note. Thanks for locking up! Now stop reading this note and get to work.
I grinned when I saw the postscript. P.S. If this coffee is cold, it’s your own fault for not showing up at nine. It might have been a passive-aggressive kind of reminder that she’d told me to be there at nine and I hadn’t been, but coupled with the thanks and the smiley face, I had a feeling it wasn’t meant that way.
Besides, Mallory seemed pretty direct. I doubted she would have done that just for the sake of being passive-aggressive. If she had a problem with me showing up closer to ten than nine, she would have said something to my face.
The coffee wasn’t too cold, either, making me wonder if she had brought it by not too long before I arrived. Meaning, she knew I was going to be late. I wondered if maybe she wanted to chat. I grinned a little, surprised at the change in her already. Of course, this was probably another of those things like lunch the day before—it was just how she treated all of her employees.
But I appreciated it all the same.
I took a seat at my desk and pulled out yesterday’s notebook, plus the ledger book that I had been going through at the end of the night. Then, I jumped right back into things. I worked all day, forgetting to even stop for lunch, and nearly jumped out of my skin when Mallory tapped on the door at the end of the day.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re pretty invested in this, given that it isn’t your company,” she said slowly.
I blinked at her and then shrugged. “Isn’t that what you’re paying me for?” I asked. I gestured at the papers strewn across the desk. “This is how I get the results that I do.”
“Fair enough,” Mallory said, nodding her head. She cocked her head to the side as she took a hesitant step into the office like she was still afraid to disturb me. “Have you moved at all today?”
“Across the room,” I joked. I shrugged again and then stretched, feeling my back and shoulders pop. I swiveled my chair back and forth a couple of times. “I get like this with projects pretty regularly. Ace likes to joke that the world could end, and I wouldn’t even notice if I was working on balancing someone’s books.”
“That doesn’t sound very healthy,” Mallory said, actually sounding concerned about me. She shook her head. “You know, everyone else has already gone home for the day.”
“Are you kicking me out?” I joked. “Or just asking me to lock up again?”
Mallory sighed and shrugged. “I wish I could kick you out,” she said. “I don’t want you overworking yourself. But at the same time, I really appreciate what you’re doing here.”
“Yeah, by the way, thank you for the coffee this morning,” I said, suddenly remembering that part of my day. I had meant to stop by her office at some point and thank her before that, but who knew where my day had gone.
I looked down at the scribbled notes in front of me and made a face. Well, I knew exactly where my day had gone. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t believe it had gone by so quickly.
“You’re not as bad as I thought you were going to be,” Mallory said suddenly, and I grinned slowly at her.
“You know, I said almost the same thing to my brother.” Was that the faintest blush across her cheeks? Interesting.
Mallory stepped closer to me, looking down at my work. She raised an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be legible?” she asked.
I shrugged, deciding not to take it as a slight. “I’m the only person who needs to be able to read it, at least for now,” I told her. “Anyway, half the time, I’m not even looking at what I’m writing, I’m focused on whatever I’m looking at in the books.”
“Find anything yet?” she asked, and I could tell she was holding her breath. She didn’t want to know the truth. She
knew that I couldn’t have solved everything in just two days, but she also knew that time was of the utmost importance on this one.
I felt kind of bad as I said, “Unfortunately, everything looks correct at the moment. But I’ll keep looking. It’s only been a couple of days.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Mallory said, sighing. “I just can’t believe there was a problem in the first place. And I can’t believe that it took until we were going to be audited by the IRS for Charlie to realize there was a problem in the first place.”
“I’ll figure it out,” I promised her, even though there was no way I could know for sure if I would be able to solve things before it was time for the company to be audited. I sure hoped that I could help her out, though.
But I wasn’t about to examine the reasons why.
Mallory was staring at me, and I suddenly realized how close she was. Practically leaning over my shoulder as she looked down at the papers in front of me, trying to get a better view. I tried not to focus on that either.
“Maybe we should get dinner?” Mallory suggested, and I stared up at her for a moment, wondering if I’d heard her right.
“You do that with all the new employees around here?” I teased, hinting at her words after yesterday’s lunch. And this time, there was definitely a blush staining her cheeks as she looked away from me.
She shrugged, a small grin playing across her features. “No,” she said, honestly.
I thought about it for a moment. Well, I knew I needed to eat. And I was hungry, I realized. Which wasn’t really a surprise given that I had missed lunch. It was time to call it a night here, and I’d had a good time getting lunch with her yesterday.
But at the same time, I had been here at the winery the entire day. And most of the day before, too. I knew that Ace had no problem spending time with Booker, and I knew my son loved spending time with his uncle. This was frequently the way that things went when I was in the middle of a project. It was part of why I tried to space out my projects, so I wasn’t always working. In those times between projects, I tried to make up for all the times when I wasn’t around for Booker.
That sort of schedule always worked well for us. And with what I was earning on this project, though less than I’d hoped for, I knew I wouldn’t have to work again for a while. I could afford to take a few evenings away from Booker.
But did I really want to take those evenings away all so I could go to dinner with Mallory?
“Thought you didn’t want to date me,” I said, only partly joking. “Thought you couldn’t see this going anywhere. And especially not now that I’m working here.”
Mallory stared at me for a moment. I thought she would protest and say this wasn’t a date. But she had already admitted, after all, that this wasn’t something she did with just any of her new employees.
Finally, she sighed. “I know I already said I was sorry for the way that I acted that night,” she said.
“You did,” I agreed, nodding at her. “But are you suggesting that we should have another first date?”
“I wouldn’t have slept with you, even if things had gone well,” Mallory blurted out, and then looked mortified at having said it.
I couldn’t help but grin at that. “Are you sure about that?” I asked. We were so close to one another by now that I could practically feel the heat off her body. I stood up, well inside her personal space. I watched as her eyes flicked down towards my lips and then back up to meet mine. She seemed flustered, so unlike the cool and collected woman who had met me at the restaurant and then again in her office.
I didn’t know what had changed between the two of us, but it felt like something fundamental. And as I stepped closer to her, closing the distance between us, she didn’t move away. If anything, I was sure that her body swayed even closer to mine.
The tension that had sparked between us ever since that first meeting orchestrated by my brother suddenly swelled in a shocking crescendo, and I found I couldn’t keep my hands off her any longer.
Pulling her close, I kissed her insistently, and she moaned, opening her mouth to me. I kissed her until she was breathless, exploring her mouth, getting to know her as intimately as I could. I could tell that she wanted this, but there was still a part of me that expected her to push me away at any minute. She didn’t, though. Instead, as I continued to kiss her, it was as though her body melted against mine, her arms wrapping around me, her warm curves pressed up against me.
She bent into me like there had never been any question of this, her mouth sweet and the fires of her strong personality quenched, at least for now.
But when I pulled away, she was far from meek. She looked up at me with a challenge in her eyes. “Everyone else has already gone home for the evening,” she repeated, and I knew exactly what she was suggesting.
For a moment, I wanted to protest. To tell her that maybe I should take her out for dinner first, at least. We had gotten off on the wrong foot before. But at the same time, I knew that even if we were now able to reconcile our differences, she wasn’t the kind of person that I envisioned dating. She wasn’t the kind of person that I wanted to bring into Booker’s and my life, at least not long-term.
I had never been looking for a one-night stand. But with Mallory still pressed up against me, it was all too tantalizing to resist. I growled as I grabbed her legs, hefting her up and onto my desk, heedless of the way my notes from earlier in the day crinkled beneath her ass. I stepped back into the space between her knees and pressed my mouth against hers again, deepening the kiss this time.
There were so many things wrong about this, I knew. Not least of which was the fact that at least for the moment, she was my boss. But for now, I didn’t care.
I kissed her wildly, as my fingers slowly stripped her naked.
Chapter 16
Mallory
When I got to the vineyard on Tuesday morning, it wasn’t a surprise to find that Hayden wasn’t there yet. I expected him to be late. But I couldn’t help feeling curiously excited to see him. I wasn’t sure just what it was. Last Thursday, I had been sure that even though I needed Hayden’s help, I couldn’t stand the guy. There was something about knowing just how hard he was working to find the errors in our books, though.
He was a hard worker. I had to give him that. Couple that with the fact that he apparently managed to do it all while being the father of a six-year-old? That was even more admirable.
I’d had the strangest dream on Monday night. I could only remember vague snatches of it now, but I remembered that it had been about Hayden, and about his son Booker. It had been a dream about family. Not that I was foolishly girly enough to start picturing a family with Hayden already. I barely knew the guy, and even more than that, I barely liked the guy at all.
But at the same time, there was something about knowing that he had a family that made me start thinking about a family of my own.
It was something that I had long wanted. It was one of the biggest differences between me and my best friend. I had always wanted to make a home, to have children. But I had never met the right guy, and I was starting to wonder if I ever would. Oh, I knew that Mom was sure that I would find someone one day. But I had to think that part of that was just wishful thinking. She wanted grandchildren as much as I wanted children.
In fact, I had to pretend to Mom that I didn’t want children as badly as I really did. Give her any hint that I had ever considered starting a family and she would have run with it. I grinned, thinking about Ace setting us up. Mom might even start setting me up on blind dates with random strangers if she knew just how badly I wanted a family. I suddenly understood where Ace had been coming from, a lot more than I had before.
Of course, I didn’t have time to start a family right now. There was so much going on with the business, and my personal life on top of that. Even if it hadn’t been for the IRS audit looming over us, there still was plenty to occupy me. But with the addition of having to go through all of the books, with tha
t stress on top of everything else, there was more than enough. I didn’t have time for dates.
Part of it was Mom, too. I spent time at her house every few days, at least, whether she really wanted me there or not. I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. I could tell how lonely she was. Dating someone would have gotten in the way of that.
So, as much as Mom wanted me to find love and start a family while she was still around to see it happen, there was just too much going on. I didn’t have time for a relationship.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Hayden, though. Maybe I should get to know him a little better. He wasn’t as I’d expected him to be, especially after that disaster of a blind date.
Of course, I would get to know him better while he continued to work for the winery. And I didn’t think he was going to fix our books overnight. We’d have at least a little time to get to know one another. If it developed into something more from there, then it would. And if it didn’t, well, he wasn’t the right guy for me anyway, I was sure. Just a temporary distraction of sorts.
Nonetheless, I spent my drive to work on Tuesday morning, thinking about the fact that Hayden was always late and wondering if that had anything to do with the fact that he was a single parent. I knew he said that Booker was in school while he was working here at the winery. He had to get his son up and ready for school every morning. He’d have to feed him a good breakfast and bring him to his classroom. Only then could he prepare himself for the work day and drive here to the winery. Was it any wonder he was late?
So, as I stopped off to get coffee on my way in, I paused, staring up at the menu before finally deciding just to get him a plain coffee. If he didn’t like it, what did it matter? It was just intended to be a nice gesture—that was all. Another peace offering, like taking him to lunch the previous day.
I didn’t know why I still felt the need to apologize, again, for the way I had judged him that first time we met, and again when he had come into the office. I wasn’t the kind of person to dwell on the past, and I wasn’t the type of person who felt the need to apologize for who they were. But there was something about Hayden that made me want to make things right with him.
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