Gray wasn’t the convict. He damn well wouldn’t be treated as one by association. Not again. He’d earned his position. Hell, he’d earned the partnership. His father had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with him. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not my job to be fair. I’m responsible for the good standing of this company. That’s what concerns me.” Martin looked at something just off-screen. “Today’s Friday. I’ll expect your report by Wednesday. HR tells me you’ve got more than four weeks of unused vacation. I’m ordering you to use some of it. Keep a low profile, and stay far away for two weeks. That should be enough time for the dust to settle.”
His screen went black.
As did Gray’s mood.
He grabbed his keys, wallet, phone. Looked at the clock. His private yoga session with the sexily spandex-clad Ella started in two minutes. Gray slammed the door shut behind him. Deliberately ran down the hidden, back stairs to avoid the spa. To avoid being seen by anyone in it. There was no way he could see Ella right now. No way he could pretend to be anything less than frustrated and fuming.
If she saw him in that frame of mind, she’d want to help. Want to know what upset him. Her tender compassion would make everything spill out. Everything.
Caught up in the maelstrom in his head, Gray was across the parking lot and running on asphalt before he realized it. He did realize that he was tired of being a corporate hit man. Sick to death of crushing people’s livelihoods, dreams, and sometimes entire towns. And for what? A company that turned its back on him because of his father’s crimes, just like his hometown had?
Yeah. He couldn’t tell Ella any of that. At least, it wasn’t the place to start the conversation. He’d have to come completely clean with her. Tell her the whole, unvarnished truth of why he was in town. What he did for a living. That he was an integral part of the evil, faceless corporation trying to take over Mayhew Manor.
Or at least, Gray had thought he was integral. Thought they valued him. Thought that even if Martin didn’t like him, the man at least respected the hard work he did for the corporation. The money he brought in, the way he did more than his fair share to add to the bottom line. But if none of that mattered? Maybe he should give in to temptation. Just quit. At least then he’d be able to avoid telling Ella...well, anything.
A horn honked. Son of a bitch. Gray lost his footing and stumbled into a bush. A large bush with needle-sharp thorns to help break his fall. He wrenched his back to avoid going any deeper into it and landed on his ass in the mud. Next to a frog. Or a toad. Something small, green and slimy-looking Gray was glad his hand hadn’t landed on.
The door slam coincided with a deep roar of laughter. “Nice moves,” said Ward as he came around the front of a shiny black truck.
“Did you honk at me?”
“Yeah.”
Gray looked down at his right arm, now streaked with thin red cuts to resemble a Picasso-esque version of a tic-tac-toe board. “Why the hell would you do that?”
He scratched at his beard with one hand. “To say hi.”
“Next time, use words. A word. A one-syllable word. Hi. Is that so damn hard?”
“What crawled up your ass?” Ward snarled.
“Half of this damn bush, apparently,” he yelled back. The frog ribbited at him, hopped right across his thighs and into the lush tumble of vegetation. The absurdity of the whole damn thing hit Gray and he laughed. He laughed so hard he wheezed. It didn’t take long before Ward joined him. Just in the laughing, not in the mud.
When Gray finally caught his breath, he said, “Sorry. For biting your head off.”
“Sorry I tried to be neighborly. Should’ve known a big-city type like yourself wouldn’t take kindly to it.” Still chuckling, Ward extended a hand to pull Gray up.
He grabbed on right below the frayed cuff of the red and black plaid flannel shirt. And said, “Bite me,” as he rose from the mud puddle with a squishing, squelching sound.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Stupid to run on a road and not pay attention. Lucky I didn’t run right into a deer or something.” Gray shook out each leg and ankle carefully, checking to be sure he hadn’t twisted anything with his idiocy.
“Want a lift back to the Manor?”
“No!” The word came out too fast, too harsh.
Sure enough, Ward’s eyebrows shot up. “Want a lift anywhere but the Manor?”
This was where guys excelled. They caught a whiff of a sticky situation and provided immediate action to get as far away from it as possible. No stupid talking things to death. “Yeah. That’d be good.”
Ward rummaged in the bed of the truck, and then threw a trash bag at him. “You’re a mess. Sit on that.”
Well, shit. Just when Gray thought he couldn’t feel any worse, any dumber. He climbed into the cab of the truck, wincing at every crinkle of the plastic beneath his ass like he was an incontinent geyser. This was definitely a low point.
“You and Ella have a fight?” Ward asked as he accelerated back onto the road.
“Not yet.”
Another few miles sped by. Neat rows of vineyards, bracketed by a squat winery and wide pasture land with horses, in an endless loop on one side. On the other stretched the lake, a deep Prussian blue he remembered from the single semester of art he’d taken as an elective in college. Staring at it soothed him. Just enough to take the edge off his temper. Enough to keep him from pounding his fist against the window.
“You piss Ella off, that’s your business.” Ward said it straight and simple, like he was recounting box scores. “You hurt her, I come after you.”
“Noted.” And more than fair. Gray would do the same. That is, if he had any long-term friends to go to bat for. Guess if his mom ever started dating again he could roll out a similar threat. Although he’d be so happy for his mom he’d be more inclined to buy the guy the biggest steak on the planet.
“Is this bad enough I should beat you up pre-emptively?”
Gray shifted, rustling the plastic. Thought about it. About how much it would hurt Ella to know he’d lied to her. How angry she’d be to discover his real reason for being here. Then an even scarier thought hammered into him. What if she thought it was all a sham? That he’d gotten close to her, that he’d bared himself like never before, just to insinuate himself into her life? That she was a task on his to-do list to assemble his report?
“Might be a good idea,” he said in a low monotone.
Another few miles of beautiful sameness sped by. Ward reached back between the seats then handed Gray a six-pack of soda. Grateful, he snapped two out of the rings, opened them, and set one in the cup holder for Ward. The fizz of the carbonation was the only thing that broke the silence for another five minutes.
Then, when they stopped at a winery entrance to let a party bus slowly back out into traffic, Ward thumped his hands against the steering wheel. “You’re gonna have to tell me.”
“What?”
“What you were running from. Or how you’re about to fuck things up with Ella. Take your pick.”
Gray watched an already-wasted-before-noon woman flash him a hit of tangerine bra from the party bus, then sink back into her seat, laughing maniacally. “I pick anything but those two topics. I’d rather talk about ways to get rid of skunk stink. Or even describe the Technicolor misery of when I got food poisoning from a street vendor taco in Mexico.”
“Well, I pick anything but those two topics. Talk about god-awful. You must be conversation constipation at dinner parties.”
“Only if people try to peek at my emotional tighty-whities.” Gray gave the woman a polite thumbs-up as they drove away. He hoped she’d make it to lunch without throwing up. And doubted she’d last that long if they hit even one more winery.
“Come on. Spit it out,” Ward coaxed. “You’ll f
eel better. Then we’ll go paste some labels and not talk about anything while we sample a Bloody Mary mixer I’ve been testing.”
“It’d be easier to talk if I drank the Bloody Mary first.”
“Yeah, but its ten more minutes to get to the distillery.”
Stupid thirty-five-mile lake that took forever to get around. Too bad they weren’t in a boat. Or on a Jet Ski. Probably need a wet suit, too, with the water still so cold. And god, he was grasping at every mental straw possible to avoid answering Ward’s question. Pathetic. Grab some sac and just say it, Gray ordered himself.
“I want to quit my job.”
“So do it.”
Wiseass. “If it was that simple, do you think I’d be racing my demons along the roadside?”
“You can start over.” Ward slurped from his soda. “More than once, if it doesn’t work out.”
Gray appreciated Ward’s help. He also wanted to grab him by the collar and scream at him. Since nothing about this situation was Ward’s fault, he settled for saying, “It’s complicated.”
“Do they treat you like crap?”
The whole promotion-for-a-falsified-report thing hadn’t sat well with him. Being hidden away from the Board for the sake of sharing nothing more than some DNA felt even worse. R&M had turned their back on him. And now that Martin had uncorked his true disgust for Gray, it was all too easy to assume there were darker days ahead. Given more time, would he manufacture a reason to fire Gray? “Increasingly, yeah.”
“Do you hate it?”
Yes. No. Why were these seemingly simple questions such stumpers? “Parts of it.”
“Then push the eject button and get the hell out of there.” Ward shot him a sideways glower. “You know, wherever and whatever this mystery job of yours is. Special agent, special forces latrine cleaner, fucking glue factory assembly worker—just quit.”
Gray slid his hand up and down the seatbelt. From shoulder to hip and back up. He’d gone this far. Maybe, by some miracle, Ward could help him brainstorm a way out. If he knew the whole score. Well, not the whole score. Gray was in no rush to feel Ward’s fist inevitably connect with his jaw once he learned of Gray’s true purpose at Mayhew Manor.
“I support my mom. Have for years. This job pays well enough that it isn’t too big a stretch anymore. If I quit, start at the bottom again, the money will disappear. I won’t make my mother scrape by again. Not ever. No matter what I have to suck up.”
Ward grunted.
Gray waited.
“Look, I’m not good with family stuff. Not exactly a poster child for Sunday dinners and catch in the yard, if you know what I mean.”
The only place Gray’s father played catch was in the prison exercise yard. “Do I ever.”
“But I’ve got to figure that if your mom knew you were this unhappy, she’d be miserable. And then you’re both screwed up. So find a way out.”
This was Ward’s big solution to Gray’s problems? “It’s easy to tell someone to come up with a plan. Actually doing the rubbing of the brain cells together to create one’s a different matter.”
“Hey, I’d help. But that’d require some additional info. Like you admitting that you’re the guy who goes around checking to see if anyone ripped of that Do Not Remove tag on their pillows.” Ward paused. “Am I at least close with that guess?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Cause if that was your job, I’d really want to tear into you. There’s no reason for those stupid tags. Probably a government conspiracy.”
“You rip them all off, don’t you?”
“You gonna turn me in?”
Gray laughed. And for no discernible reason, felt better. Lighter. Still in an unwinnable situation. Still wanting a girl he couldn’t keep. But better.
Chapter Fifteen
Ella paced the length of the shop area of the spa. She started at the scrolling ironwork doors, walked a straight line past the candles, the reception desk, all the way to the racks of their signature fleece and satin spa bathrobes. And then back again. With every circuit, she mentally constructed an outfit for tonight’s date with Gray. With every return circuit, she rejected them. Too boring, too basic, too normal. That was the problem with not dating for three years. No just-sexy-enough clothes.
“You know we closed five minutes ago,” noted Brooke.
“Oh.” Ella twitched at her long white skirt. Looked down at her teal sneakers. Sneakers! Talk about the least sexy shoe in her closet. Even though she had about twenty pairs, none of them came close to screaming won’t you please rip all my clothes off. Which was really the look she was going for tonight. “Why are you still here?”
“Because it’s both fascinating and a little hypnotic watching you drive yourself crazy. That is what you’re doing, isn’t it? I don’t know what about, but you’re clearly going more than a bit mental. It looks like you’re patrolling the perimeter of a secret encampment.”
That stopped her in her tracks. Brooke’s vivid imagination often complicated her day. Every time she watched a horror movie, she’d keep a butcher knife in her purse the next day, “just to be on the safe side.” “Seriously? I can’t just be tense? In your mind, I have to be patrolling an encampment?”
“A secret one,” Brooke said with an earnest nod. “Isn’t that better than assuming my boss is cracking up?”
“How about none of the above?” Ella dropped onto a stool and wheeled herself around behind the desk.
“Well, when I’m the one wearing grooves into the floor, you can make up the story.”
“There’s no story. I’m...distracted. That’s all. Nervous. No, not nervous.” She bit her lip. “Filled with anticipation. Eager. Okay, a little nervous.”
“Whoa.” Brooke held up her hand, palm out. A silver bracelet with a big chunk of quartz slipped down her arm. “What is going on with you?”
“I’ve got a date with Gray tonight. I think.” She didn’t mind telling Brooke. As long as Brooke didn’t reach for her phone and text everyone she knew with the news. In addition to weaning the town from their expectation that she’d seek help for everything from them, Ella’s dating life was now officially off the table as a discussion topic. Boundaries—with cement guards—had been drawn. It felt...good. Made her feel strong. Independent. And satisfied.
“Another one? Great.” The inner tips of Brooke’s eyebrows drew together. “Wait. Why are you unclear on this?”
She was trying really, really hard not to focus on this neon warning sign. Mulling her wardrobe helped for a while. But talking about it would rip off the bandage she’d placed over this raw gash of insecurity. “He stood me up for yoga this morning.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “Ella, I skip yoga with you more often than I ever show up. You’re really good. Super bendy and calm. That’s intimidating to everyone in the class. I’m amazed you ever got him to do it with you at all.”
“No, this wasn’t the class you and I take in the gym here. It was private. An, um, stretching date. We’ve done it for a few days now.” Gray hadn’t just been a good sport. He’d really applied himself, worked on his tantric breathing. “So since he stood me up this morning, shouldn’t I be worried if he’ll show tonight?”
Brooke bit her lip, considering. “No. I mean, yes, a little bit, but mostly no. He’s on vacation. Nobody sticks to their workout routine on vacation. Not even if it involves staring at the spandexed ass of a pretty woman on a mat for an hour. Put it out of your mind.”
Yeah. She’d tried convincing herself of the same thing. Which brought Ella to her current manic state. “If I do that, I’ll start pacing again. Trying to figure out what to wear. Nothing I’ve got is right any more.”
“Why don’t you call Piper or Casey? I’m sure they’d loan you something.”
She toed the stool back and forth. “I do
n’t want help.”
“Ella, this is what women do. They get together before dates and pull all their clothes out of the closet and giggle together. You know this.”
“Not this time. I have to do this on my own. I have to prove to Gray, to myself, to everybody, that I can do it on my own.”
“Honey, you’ve been getting dressed on your own for years. Because if you’d ever asked for help, I would’ve told you to torch all your sneakers.” Brooke wiggled her foot in its easily four-inch red platform wedge. “Fashion should always trump comfort.”
“Says the woman who sits at a desk all day, while I stand over a massage table for hours on end.” Ella shook her head. “I want everything to do with Gray to be my choice, and mine alone. It’s got to be completely up to me.”
Brooke threw up her hands with an exasperated sigh. “Okay. I get it. But can I at least offer to drive to the mall in Corning with you and go shopping sometime soon?”
It shouldn’t matter. Gray would be gone in a matter of days. And Ella hadn’t come up with a single way to convince him to stay. To convince him to turn his back on friends and a lifestyle and a career for something utterly new, untested and uncertain. So maybe she did need to start looking toward the future. Toward whatever incredibly awesome and funny and sweet and charming and hot man she’d date next. Even though the chances of another complete package like that walking in the doors of the Manor were so slim, they could only be expressed in negative integers.
Brooke was just being a good friend. So Ella dug deep to produce a jaunty smile. “Sure. Shopping sounds great. Put it on the calendar.”
“Great. Candle check?” Brooke asked as she shouldered her immense bag. At the end of every day, they double-checked all the rooms to be sure the candles were snuffed. Sometimes triple-checked, just to be safe. And with the web of distraction snared around Ella’s brain this afternoon, it was a wise precaution.
“I’ll take care of it. You head out.”
With a wave, Ella headed down the hall. Back into the treatment room where she’d seen her last client. The room which, although she’d changed the sheets, was still lit by the flickering glow of a dozen candles. Nor had she bothered to put away the scented oils or turn off the music. Geez, where was her head? She paused, hands white-knuckling the edge of the small sink. No hiding from the answer. Every single one of Ella’s brain cells had been fixated on Gray. His body. His rumbling, baritone laugh. The way he never looked at her with pity. The way he wouldn’t let her see herself as anything less than whole and beautiful.
Up to Me (Shore Secrets) Page 25