Grady was my boss, first of all. But he didn't give me butterflies, either.
Butterflies had whisper-thin wings and delicate feet. The way they pitter-pattered inside you when you were getting to know someone was exciting. But to me, butterflies were subtle and subdued.
Somewhere in the middle of lukewarm coffee, falling over boxes, and broken muffins inside a crumpled Donner Bakery bag, Grady Buchanan jumped with those long legs straight over butterflies and into territory I didn't quite know how to name.
I dipped my finger into the blush and spread a small amount over my cheekbones. That and mascara was all I had time for with my twenty-two minutes. Winding another scarf—pink plaid today—around my head and tying it at the base of my skull, I wished I could pinpoint when he'd done it.
And how.
That was when I finally met my own gaze and had to be truthful with myself.
The moment I heard myself explaining my mother to him, it hit me over the head like a truth dropped straight from the heavens.
I felt safe with him. And safety meant all sorts of different things to different people.
To me, I'd found safety in my family, something most of Green Valley didn't understand because they didn't always understand us.
For a very long time, I'd felt secure in my job at the Chamber. Until I didn't.
Grady, without even realizing it at the time, had made me feel safe enough to jump from one place to the next. What had always been my safe place became a launching pad. And in a short amount of time, he'd shown me time and time again that he had my back.
With a glance at my watch, I knew there'd be a knock on my front door at any moment. Dressed for a long day, I'd opted for a comfortable pair of dark pants, a soft chambray shirt, and bright pink flats. Looking at the shoes, I smiled, because without heels, Grady would tower over me.
I tidied up my bathroom counter and went into my kitchen. The window over the sink had a view of my driveway, so I'd be able to see him approach. Because the air was cold, but I knew his car wouldn't be, I'd set my coat in the bag I'd packed with some snacks and two large travel carafes of coffee. At least the alarm on my coffee pot worked just fine because missing that would've had disastrous effects on the day.
Despite how it started, the rest of the day held promise. We'd spend hours in the car, hours at the conference together. Away from prying eyes of the town. Away from everything, and I found myself far more excited about that than I should have been.
The sun was barely making its way into the sky, just the tiniest hint that a new day was starting.
Headlights sliced through the soft bluish-gray light in my driveway, and I took a deep breath.
There could be an entire zoo of animals marching through my body because of Grady, but he was still my boss, and he was still Tucker's friend.
"Calm yourself down right now, Magnolia Marie," I whispered.
Instead of waiting for him to come to the door like I might normally have, I grabbed my purse, the bag of snacks, and locked up the front behind me before he could take more than one step out of his car.
"Morning," he said, arms braced in the opening of his door and the top of the vehicle. From the way it traveled up his throat, out of his mouth, and made its way to me, that was the first word he'd spoken since he rolled over in his own bed. Because that normally deep voice was deeper, huskier, and Jesus be a hedge around me, it pulled up goosebumps over my entire body.
No, no, indeed, there were no butterflies in the vicinity.
I had elephants trampling all over my poor body.
"Good morning." I returned his greeting and was quite proud of myself when my voice came out even and polite.
"If you have coffee in that bag, I will double your salary."
As I sat in the passenger seat and braced the bag between my feet on the floor, I gave him a tiny smile. "I should get that in writing before I open it."
The dome light in his car sent harsh shadows on his handsome face, and I found myself studying him a bit longer than I normally might've. He hadn't shaved, and the golden-brown stubble lining his strong jaw looked like it would feel prickly against my palm. His hair was slightly disheveled, and my fingers itched to smooth it into place. All in all, Grady Buchanan looked rumpled and tired, and it did crazy, stomping-elephant, thinking-immoral things to my insides.
It made me think about the muscles in his back and arms when I saw him change his shirt, and the way his hips moved when he paced the office.
And none of those thoughts were a good idea.
With a flourish, I handed him the first travel cup. "Black with a little bit of sugar."
He groaned as he took his first sip. "Oh, you are my favorite person in the entire world, Magnolia."
"And you are entirely too easy to please, Grady," I teased.
His eyes met mine over the rim of the coffee, and goodness, did they glow something unholy as he looked at me. Or maybe that was the way the light hit his face.
That must have been it because when he put the coffee in the cupholder and hooked his seat belt, that glow was gone from his eyes and replaced with his typical happy smile. "I figured we could stop about halfway for some breakfast if that sounds good to you."
My coffee went into the cupholder next to his. "Perfect."
His grin was infectious when he looked over at me. "Glad to hear it because you're gonna have to tell me where we should stop."
"There are some good restaurants in Cookeville," I told him. "I have a few marked in my Yelp app."
Grady backed the car out of my driveway and pulled out onto the road that would lead out of town. "Yeah, I assumed there'd be something right off the highway, and we could wing it."
"Absolutely not," I said. "We do not wing it when it comes to restaurant choices. God made review systems for a reason."
For a moment, I was sucked under a tidal wave of embarrassment at how that sounded. It was the sort of thing that my cousins might have rolled their eyes over or called me prissy. But his answering laugh was so delighted, so thoroughly amused by me, that I relaxed into the seat.
"My trust in you is endless, Miss MacIntyre," he said, casually hooking his wrist over the top of the steering wheel as he drove.
Could he have known what those words might do to me?
I'd found a holding pattern in the past few years of my life, where it felt more like everyone in my life simply tolerated the way I operated. Yes, I was particular, and yes, I liked to know how things would work ahead of time, and yes ... my father was a touch overprotective.
Tolerance was different than trust, though. They weren't even in the same universe. I was sick of living in one while desperately wishing for the other.
With the music playing softly in the background, Grady and I fell into companionable silence as we sipped our coffee and drove with the rising sun behind us. Despite the fact we'd waded into surprisingly deep conversations in a fairly short period of time, the first hour or so of the drive stayed in that quiet state. As we approached Cookeville, somewhere in the middle of Green Valley and Nashville, I'd closed my eyes for a few minutes, lulled by the swaying of the car, the rumble of the tires, and the sound of Grady humming quietly along to the music.
He didn't have a terrible voice. It was really quite nice, I thought as I dozed.
"Well, thank you," he said.
My eyes snapped open. "Did I say that out loud?"
Grady chuckled. "Yes."
Every cell in my body wanted me to cover my face with my hands. Mortification was not a good look for me, and I just knew it was covering me like a big ole blanket. So, I kept my face even, staring out of the front of the windshield as he took an exit for Cookeville.
How did one corral such feelings? The kind that made me blurt things out loud without a second thought. Or ponder his singing voice in the first place.
Maybe the problem was that this didn't feel like a day out with a coworker. He pulled the car into a parking lot for a café that I'd be
en to before. It felt like a date, and that was definitely an issue because I was quite sure that Grady didn't look at it like that. Everything he'd done was perfectly professional. Perfectly polite.
He held the door open for me, but he would've done the same for anyone.
As we spoke to the server, he gestured for me to order first. The fact that a few elderly couples inside the building stared openly at us, the colored woman and the white man—something I was used to after being with Tucker for so long—simply served to reinforce that fact.
We were there together, together together, even if that wasn't his intention. Judging by his reaction to my admission about driving at night by myself, maybe Grady didn't even notice those things. Or maybe he didn't notice because to him ... this was nothing more than just breakfast with the woman who worked for him.
Our conversation at that table helped temper the foundation-shaking stomps inside me.
"Tell me what you liked about working for the Chamber," he said.
He gained so many points with me by not making it about Daddy, or my family, or anything like that. Which was why it was easy to tell him. Our breakfast break was longer than it probably should have been, but as he inhaled his pancakes in about half the time it took me to eat my omelet, we talked a lot about the state of business in Green Valley. About what worked and what didn't for the people who were trying to make their living in a place still fairly tucked away from the rest of the bigger cities in the state.
"You love that town a lot," he said as we left the restaurant.
As he slowed his long-legged stride to match mine, I took notice of the fact that my head cleared somewhere around his bicep.
"I do," I told him. "It's not perfect, but it's home, you know?"
Grady smiled at me over top of the car as we both opened our doors to climb back in. "Not yet, but I'm getting there."
"What made you decide to move?" I asked as he took off again, starting the last hour to hour and a half of our drive.
He thought for a second before answering. "Do you ever look around and think, if I stay in this place for a second longer and don't find something new and exciting, I might go insane?"
"Never," I answered with utmost sincerity.
Grady laughed. "Insane might be a strong word. But I just hit the point when I realized just because I was good at my job didn't mean it was the right thing for me to do. I needed something that got me excited when I woke up in the morning. Somewhere I wanted to go every day, where I might not know how the day was going to end, or where it might take me." He glanced over at me. "This is the only life I have, you know? I don't want to waste it doing something that only pays the bills."
I sighed. "You're very brave, Grady. If I don't plan every possible outcome for my day, I feel like a top that's about to spin off a cliff."
He kept his eyes on the road, quiet for a few moments after I said that. "Bravery comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, though. You left a job you were good at and that you loved because you knew it was the right thing to do. Don't tell me that's not brave." He grinned. "Because while I know it's not good Southern manners to argue with a lady, I'll tell you you're wrong every day of the week."
I bit down on my pleased smile and turned toward the window as the scenery flew by. "You're right, it's not good manners."
In response, he laughed quietly. "Well, you've got all day to fix what's wrong with me, Magnolia. That should be a good start."
Elephants. Big, fat, graceless elephants. I could hear them trumpeting in my ear now.
As soon as he said what he said, and I thought what I thought, I now was dreading the day's end.
Chapter 13
Magnolia
Being inside a convention center for outdoor enthusiasts with someone like Grady was like visiting a candy shop as someone who hated sugar.
His joy, his excitement was so effusive that I almost felt the stirrings of it myself, just from being near him. Within limits.
"That's incredible," he breathed. "Wouldn't that be awesome?"
"Oh, my Lord," I muttered, "that looks like my nightmare."
His laughter filled the space around us, drawing the attention of convention-goers looking at the same weird tent/car attachment that had Grady drooling.
He tried to explain it to me, God bless him. With passionate language and grandiose motions with those big hands of his, he told me how efficient it was to be able to attach a tent to the top of a vehicle so that you had a place to sleep, and all I could feel was abject horror that anyone would choose to do so.
Grady laughed again at my grim facial expression. Gently, he nudged my shoulder with his. "I think you'd love it if you gave it a try."
"I think if my employment was conditional upon that contraption, you'd find yourself without an office administrator."
"Well, we can't have that," he murmured around his grin. "Just think of how boring the office would be if the decorations were left up to me."
Happiness fairly burst out of me at his easily spoken words, because instead of shaming me or guilting me for not loving something that he so clearly did, he found a way to make me feel at ease with who I was.
We wandered through a couple more booths, and I took down information on my phone when he pointed out things he liked, such as gear or marketing items.
He stopped to admire a bright hammock strung between two fake trees in the middle of a massive corner booth. The orange and blue fabric was eye-catching, and I had a moment when I imagined it hanging over the green grass of my backyard, a wonderful place to lay in the shade of a tree and read on a summer afternoon.
"I could nap in that thing right now," he said, testing the way it was connected to one end.
"Don't you dare try to crawl inside, Grady Buchanan."
His smile was wide on that handsome face of his. "What's the worst that could happen?"
"You'd like a list?" I started ticking off items on my fingers. "You fall and break a bone. You rip the hammock, and they chase us out of here. The trees fall on top of us, and at best, you destroy their booth, and at worst, someone gets a concussion and/or a brain bleed from one of these landing on their head."
Grady didn't look at me, but he chuckled, low and quiet. "You're like my own personal warning label. I need to tuck you into my pocket so you can warn me of any impending doom lurking around the corner."
"I'd exhaust myself keeping up with you," I teased. "Though it'd be fun to try, I suppose."
Even to my own ears, I heard the flirty note in my voice. Grady's movements slowed, but he never moved his gaze off the hammock. A good thing too because I felt my face grow warm from how easily that had come out. It was one thing to think elephant-feeling thoughts and notice muscles and smiles, but to outright flirt with my boss ...? That was a horse of a different color.
Grady set his bags on the floor, and I groaned when I realized he meant to climb in.
"Grady," I hissed. "You're too tall."
"If a camping hammock can't hold a guy who's six-three, they're making it wrong," he said. With a quick glance at the booth workers, engaged in conversation elsewhere, he turned to slide inside. From the booth next door, someone shouted when they won a game. Grady sat too quickly, and the entire hammock spun, dumping him unceremoniously onto the concrete floor.
I laughed behind my hand at how he sprawled out on the floor, his hands clutched to his chest.
He grinned up at me. So completely non-self-conscious he was, lying there after his spill. How did anyone spend time with this man and not walk away completely and thoroughly charmed? "That didn't work out how I planned."
"I'd wager not." I held out my hand to his, and for a second, all he did was stare at it.
His palm was rough and warm when it clasped mine, and for just a moment, a tingle raced stealthily up my arm at the way his long fingers curled around my skin. I braced my feet and helped him stand. And maybe I imagined it, but color crept up his neck now that hadn't been there when he'd fallen.
"Do you enjoy being right about that kind of stuff?" he asked, gathering his bags off the floor.
"Immensely."
His answering laughter warmed me to my core.
We wandered through a few more booths, and I had to remind myself often that this was work. That I should be paying attention to other things besides him.
Grady nudged me, pointing at a massive fifth-wheel trailer parked along the back. It was sleek and beautiful, black with tan trim and glossy wheels. "Let me guess, you'd camp in that."
"I most definitely would," I told him. "Though I'm not sure you could qualify that as camping."
"On that, we agree." He poked his head in through the door to glance at the inside. "It's bigger than where I'm living right now."
The next booth had me stopping with a smile. "I'd camp in that too. It's adorable."
He grimaced. "Camping isn't supposed to be adorable. It's camping."
The silver egg-shaped trailer caught the reflection of the bright lights overhead. I opened the door and stepped inside. "See, it's perfect. A bed, a toilet, air conditioning, and enough cabinet space for me to actually cook some meals in that perfectly adorable little kitchen." My hands trailed along the edge of a small blue and white pillow. "And if there's room for décor, then I can handle it for my sleeping arrangements."
Grady had to duck his head to stand inside, and for a moment before I moved, I almost sank backward into the warmth of his broad chest against my back. "The Airstream is a classic, for sure." He leaned in, whispering by my ear. "But it's still not camping."
I fought against the urge to shiver.
What was he doing to me? We'd moved from elephants to back-leaning to shivering.
I blinked, trying desperately to find something to pull my brain from each one of those things. A small white pad of paper was sitting on the butcher block counter. "Should we try to win it?"
Grady laughed. "Win the Airstream Bambi? Why not."
We both filled out a card, tucking it into the box for entries on our way out. Like I had when he got up off the ground, Grady held out his hand for me when I reached the exit to the camper. I could've made my way down the steps perfectly fine, and I think he knew it.
Steal My Magnolia (Love at First Sight Book 3) Page 11