Chapter Thirty-One
Winona
“Alone at last.” We flop down onto the parlor sofa, a couple of feet apart from each other. The housekeeper, Marta, has already collected Xena and returned with her to the carriage house. Marta is clearly a dog person, rubbing Xena’s butt in just the right place and talking to her in baby talk. Xena looks happy and healthy. If anything, she’s a little too healthy. Someone’s been getting all the snacks.
I try not to think about how Blake barely looked at Xena. He didn’t look hostile, or angry, or afraid of her, he just avoided her. Must love dogs…
I slouch down against the cushions and swivel to face Blake, and we both start talking at the same time.
“Listen, I want to– ”
“Here’s the thing–”
He laughs. “Let me start. Age before beauty.”
“Pearls before swine.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I know you only disappeared for four days, which isn’t that long, but it was the way you did it that really burned my biscuits. If you’d said, ‘I need to go to France to recruit new designers and I won’t have time to call this week,’ I’d have been sad and I’d have missed you, but I would have understood. Instead, after giving me that big speech where you begged to be my boyfriend and swore you’d put me in your schedule, you did the exact opposite. You sent me a rack of clothes and transferred me back to the personal shoppers’ department, like, okay, thanks for the sex, here’s your payoff, now let me move you as far away from me as possible without actually putting your desk out on the sidewalk. And then you totally ghosted me. Didn’t reply to a single call or text or email. At first I was genuinely worried and then I was really hacked off.”
The words came barreling out of my mouth in one long, furious run-on sentence until I finally have to stop to take a breath. Blake’s eyebrows climb higher and higher as I rant.
“Holy shit.” He sucks in a breath, shaking his head from side to side. “That is not at all… Wow… I could not possibly have more thoroughly messed up the message I was trying to send. I sent you those outfits because I’d been picking them out for you for weeks, and I knew each piece was one you’d love. I had them delivered to your apartment because I’m kind of a show-off and I wanted your friends to know that I…that I’m a good guy, I guess. That I take care of you. And I transferred you back to personal shopping because with the commissions, you’d be making more money than you would as my assistant. Since you won’t let me give you any money. Will you…? No, of course not,” he says as I vigorously shake my head.
“Or, now that I think of it, I could triple your salary as my assistant… Oh, come on!” he protests as I again shake my head. “Throw me a bone here!”
“No, that’s charity too. A hundred fifty thousand a year, rides to and from work, and all the free lunches you send my way, is already extremely generous for an assistant with no prior experience. Are you telling me you could justify four hundred fifty thousand dollars a year salary if you were in a board meeting?”
“I wouldn’t have to,” he mutters.
“You kind of would. Since it would be the company money.”
He looks mortally offended. “I would never misuse company money. Despite what the press has said about my family.”
“The only way you wouldn’t be misusing company funds, then, would be if you were paying me out of your own pocket. That isn’t a salary, that’s a very expensive gift, which I have already turned down.”
“Oh hey! Look!” He points dramatically behind me. “A Weeping Angel!”
I refuse to turn around. “Lame-o attempt at changing the subject! Everyone knows you’re not supposed to look at Weeping Angels! I’m hereby revoking your nerd credentials.”
“It’s gone now anyway,” he says loftily. “You missed your big chance.”
“Yeah, to be sent back a hundred years into the past while a Weeping Angel eats my time-energy,” I scoff. “Amateur.”
But I’m starting to soften.
“Why couldn’t you have just told me what you were doing?” I groan in frustration. “If you’d told me about why you were sending me back down to the personal shoppers’ department, I would have understood. And if you’d said how you’d personally picked out every outfit for me, I’d have totally melted. There could have been office sex. Phone sex. Skype sex. Just plain old sex sex.”
“Sex,” he says wistfully. “With you.” His eyes go dark with longing, his voice caresses every word. I just want to melt into a puddle of goo under the heat of his gaze.
He heaves a sigh. “I should have told you. Can we have a do-over?” he pleads. “No more disappearing. And for the love of God, if Sloane ever claims I am communicating with her in any way other than serving her a restraining order, she’s lying.”
“Yeah, I should have known better.” I narrow my eyes at him. “I know, I should have called you and asked you about what she told me! Oh wait…”
He nods his head. “You’re right.”
He was a jerk this past week. He really hurt me. But I’d bet my mother’s pecan pie recipe that his apology is sincere. He’s sitting there looking so adorable, with his big puppy-dog eyes and his mussed hair. It would take a heart of stone not to melt in the face of all this pleading and hotness and genuine contrition, and did I mention the hotness? That can’t be emphasized enough.
And he opened himself up to me, told me secrets about him that nobody outside of his immediate family knows. Nobody else but me. It makes me feel special, trusted…valued. It’s not a small thing for a proud man like him to let someone in.
I’m not quite done yet, though. I cup my hand to my ear. “I didn’t hear you. Could you yell it at the top of your lungs, please? ‘Winona Jeffers is right.’ Afterwards, I would like you to write it on your forehead. In permanent ink, so you have to stare at it in the mirror every morning.”
He grins ruefully. “You hold a mean grudge.”
“You’d do well to remember that.” I try to look fierce, but my mouth keeps wanting to smile. We’ve had such an amazing day, and his family is hashtag CoupleGoals, and Tamara makes my ovaries want to explode with baby fever, and I’m alone with Blake.
Blake reaches out and knocks on my forehead. “What’s going on in there?”
“I was just thinking what a great day we had and how fun your family is. I’m so happy Tamara had a nice birthday. How creepy was that doll, though?” I shudder.
“Pretty damn.” He shakes his head. “I mean, her eyes follow you. The hell? And her smile looks demented. Her mouth moves, which means she can bite. I’m going to be checking my window at night to make sure her face isn’t pressed against it.”
“Damn you!” I squeal. “A biting doll with an artificial intelligence chip? Pressed against your bedroom window at night? Why would you put that in my head?”
“It is a pretty horrifying prospect.” He shakes his head in mock dismay. “But you’ve seen The Twilight Zone. You know what happens next. That doll has her eye on us, and we need to stick together. It’s the only way to be sure we’re safe. You watch my back, I’ll watch yours. You shouldn’t sleep alone.”