Charlie sighed, reading his expression. “I’m guessing that picking up where we left off is off the table.”
“Yes, considering I’m your new boss.”
6
Dammit.
He was her new boss.
She had really not seen that coming.
Charlie’s thoughts were interrupted as Tori joined them.
“Hi! I see you guys have met. Sorry, I’m running a little late,” Tori said.
She was smiling at them brightly. Her long brown hair fell softly around her shoulders, and her cheeks were pink from rushing in the heat. Or maybe it was just a natural glow. She was also clearly pregnant. She was over halfway to her September due date. She looked amazing.
“Hi!” Charlie said, enfolding Tori in a hug.
Charlie loved her cousin Josh. He’d always teased her, just like the others, but he was a good guy, and she was so happy that he was so happy. She’d visited Autre a few times since Tori had moved to Louisiana from Iowa, and she really liked the other woman. She and Josh were absolutely adorable together, and everyone in the family was already head-over-heels for their baby.
“Has Griffin given you the tour?” Tori asked after they embraced.
Charlie glanced at the man she’d been surprisingly excited to see. She’d been thinking about him for two months. She’d been wearing his shirt around her apartment for two months. She’d had to wash it because of the goat smell, which had been too bad because it had washed a lot of his smell off too. Still, she liked wearing it and thinking of him.
Seeing him again had been one of the bright spots in her decision to come to Autre after her Paris plans fell apart. As was not living in Shreveport with her parents. Who had been telling her that she needed to learn to take a deep breath and not always react on pure emotion ever since she was six and threw orange Jell-O at Molly Hartman because Molly was being mean to the new kid in their class.
Curtis and Renee Landry were very disappointed in the Porsche incident and didn’t really care to know why she’d done it. She’d said she wasn’t sorry and refused to even attempt to apologize to her boss—or the woman’s asshole son—and the, “Well, Charlotte, this is the real world, and you can’t always just do whatever you want,” from her dad had been the catalyst for her calling her grandmother and asking if she could crash in Autre until she got a new job.
She hated disappointing her dad. She admired him, and his entrepreneurship was the reason she wanted to help businesses grow. But while she’d inherited his drive and outgoing personality, she did not possess his calm, just roll-with-it attitude.
Of course, Ellie had said yes and had texted Charlie’s dad to tell him to pull the stick out of his ass. See, Ellie hadn’t even needed to know why Charlie had done what she’d done to Alan’s Porsche. She’d just trusted that Charlie had a good reason.
It was funny to Charlie that her father had always been considered a bit of the black sheep of the family because he was level-headed and sophisticated and polished.
That was why Autre had always felt like such a different world. She’d loved her summers here where, as long as you weren’t hurting anyone else, anything went. You could stay out until sunrise, go barefoot all day, skinny-dip in the bayou—or jump in with all your clothes on—eat sweets for breakfast, and any and all other decadent things. She’d gotten drunk for the first time, had her first kiss, had sex for the first time, said the words “Fuck you” for the first time, and had gotten her first and only tattoo during her summers in Autre. The bayou had always been wild in her experience, and she loved it. She could say and do and be whatever she wanted when she was here.
She needed some of that right now.
Her job in marketing was fun and fulfilling. Mostly. But she’d been spending a lot of time over the past couple of years with people who wore suits every day and drank Super Food smoothies for breakfast, and hadn’t gone barefoot probably since they were kids, and had very likely never skinny-dipped.
And it showed.
She needed a break. And the bayou was the perfect place for it.
“Griffin has… shown me some things,” she finally answered Tori.
His gaze snapped to hers, and she couldn’t help but smile at how startled he looked.
“But he didn’t know I was going to be here today, so he hasn’t had a chance to go over many details,” she said, looking back to Tori.
“He knew you were going to be here.” Tori looked at Griffin. “We told you about hiring Charlie as the new assistant.”
He nodded. “No one mentioned who she was, exactly. I didn’t expect Charlie to be the woman I didn’t want to dance with at your wedding.”
Charlie snorted, his comment catching her off guard. She wasn’t sure if he’d meant to be funny just then, but he was. She grinned at him. “Hard to get rid of me.”
He just lifted a brow. “Startlingly.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. She looked back to Tori. Her cousin-in-law seemed concerned.
“Is there a problem?” Tori asked.
Yeah, there might be a problem. Charlie really wanted to pick up where they’d left off, and Griffin now seemed set against that. Except that he did want to. Which made Charlie want to convince him it was a very good idea.
“No. Of course not,” Griffin told Tori, even giving her a little smile. “If you want to hire Charlotte, then that’s fine.”
Tori frowned. “But we’re partners now. I can’t hire someone you don’t want to work with. Especially because I’ll be here less, and it will just be the two of you a lot of the time.”
Charlie just crossed her arms and tipped her head, waiting for Griffin to respond to that. She was fine with it just being the two of them.
He, on the other hand, straightened his spine and cleared his throat. “It’s not that I don’t want to work with her. It will be fine.”
“But you said no to dancing with her at the wedding?” Tori asked. “Why?”
Griffin was stoically not looking at Charlie now. She also found that amusing.
“I don’t dance,” Griffin finally said. “It wasn’t anything to do with her personally.”
“Oh.” Tori didn’t seem totally convinced.
“It’s fine.” Charlie reached out to pat Tori’s arm. “Give me a couple of days, and he’ll be so glad I’m here that he won’t even believe he was once able to tell me no.” She cast him a sly glance.
He still did not meet her eyes. Because he knew very well that he hadn’t said no to her for long.
This was going to be fun.
“Dr. Foster! Brownie needs you!”
The little boy’s voice cut into their conversation, and they all turned to look at him.
“Andre,” his dad admonished. “You don’t interrupt adults talking.”
“You do when your dog needs help,” Griffin said, stepping past Tori and crouching in front of the little boy. “You do whatever you have to do to take care of the animals that need you.”
Charlie felt a little flip in her stomach as Griffin reached out and touched the boy’s upper arm.
“We do need to get Brownie inside,” Griffin agreed. “I’m sorry we were talking about silly things when you needed me.”