“You’re walking?” he asked, the low pitch of his voice ruffling the feathers of those birds in her stomach that liked to take flight around him.
“That was my plan,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. Left for two blocks, then right for three, and a quick left across the street to Archambeau’s famed Onyx Caramello double doors that bathed the lobby in a golden glow. “It’s only about fifteen minutes.”
He looked down at her shoes, his mouth scrunching up as he took in the barely there heel as if it were a six-inch stiletto. “Want a ride?”
“I don’t want to put you out of the way,” she said, adding some steel to her sweetness because she did not need to be taken care of.
He shifted his gaze from her face to the back of the guy’s head in front of them. “It’s not.”
Yeah, that was a tale taller than the water tower back home. Beckett Cosmetics’s offices and research laboratory were twenty blocks in the opposite direction.
“I appreciate the offer,” she said, dropping her phone into her bag. She’d memorized the route. She could do this without any new-to-the-city blunders. “But Harbor City is my town now, so I have to learn to navigate it.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
They followed the stream of people walking off the elevator, their strides matching even though he was a good foot taller than she was, which meant he’d probably slowed down for her, or her imagination was just finding patterns where none existed. They walked out of the building and into the bright sunshine of a spring morning that reflected off the windows on the modern skyscrapers lining the street for blocks and blocks. Main Street back home it was not.
She fished her sunglasses out of her handbag and put them on, hoping the shades and the determined tilt of her chin helped her blend in with the throngs of locals speed-walking to work.
“Have a great day,” she said before turning left and heading out on her way like the heroine in a movie about to take the city by storm alone and without help.
She made it three long—for her—strides before Griff fell into step beside her.
“I thought you were driving to work,” she said.
“Changed my mind,” he said, holding out his arm, bent at the elbow, so she could hold onto his forearm as she navigated the heel-destroying iron grate embedded in the sidewalk.
Had he changed his mind from her being a disaster to being a damsel in distress? He better not have. They’d come to an agreement last night. She was coming to his rescue by being his Last Man Standing date. She was the knight, and he was the princess.
Unable to let it go, she pressed him. “Why did you decide to walk?”
The only answer she got was a shrug as he matched her stride for stride for five and a half city blocks with enough iron grates in them to make the walk more of an obstacle course. It had been a short trip, but her heart was thumping against her ribs as if she’d just run a marathon, which had to be first-day jitters and definitely not because of the man standing silently next to her, because if it wasn’t, then she really was in trouble.
She stopped in front of the distinctive golden stone doors and inhaled a deep breath through her nose. It didn’t help. Her nerves were jangling and rattling like a handful of wrenches in a metal toolbox getting bounced around in the back of the truck going down a gravel road dotted with potholes.
“Leigh’s tough but fair, and she’s gathered a great team—I’d hire them all away if I could get them to agree to leave.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the sidewalk, the tips of his ears going cherry. “They’re lucky to have you.”
It took a second from his half-mumbled words to sink in, and then all the words in the world got clogged in her throat. She bit the inside of her cheek to buy the time for everything to sort itself out enough to find the manners Meemaw had drilled into her. “Thank you.”
He glanced up, his gaze locked on hers, rock steady. “It’s true.”
Spirits a little lighter than they’d been the first time she’d looked at the Archambeau doors, Kinsey gave in to impulse and leaned up so she could wrap her arms around Griff in a quick hug. Well, she’d meant it to be quick. Once she got there, her cheek against his shoulder as he stood there as frozen as the bag of peas that were in the back of Meemaw’s fridge in case of an emergency burn, she realized she’d made a mistake. A thank-you squeeze from her was obviously the last thing he’d wanted.
Shit on a shingle.
Embarrassment ate its way up from the base of her throat and had her blazing in the spring sun. She couldn’t let go fast enough.
“So, um, I’ll just go in now.” She yanked the door open, no longer stressed about walking inside but instead seeing it as the escape hatch it was. “Bye. See you tonight for dinner.”
The last she saw of Griff Beckett was him standing there in his perfectly tailored navy-blue suit, a bright tattoo peeking out from under the cuff of his crisp white shirt, confusion forming a deep V between his bright-blue eyes as what seemed like half of Harbor City walked around him, hurrying to get to work.
Oh God. Hadn’t Nash told him their first date was tonight?
Chapter Fifteen
Kinsey
The lobby of Archambeau Cosmetics was decorated in glass, golds and greens, the aesthetic reflecting the company’s commitment to both cutting-edge treatments and natural products. It’s what had first drawn Kinsey to the company. Well, that and the woman at the helm of the company—the one heading straight toward Kinsey.
“You must be Kinsey Dalton,” Leigh Shaw said. “Good to meet you. I’m Leigh.”
For the second time in the same morning, Kinsey lost her Southern.
Manners? Gone. Her mouth was hanging open, and her eyes were bugging out.
Ability to talk to anyone? Might as well have never existed.
Staring at Leigh Shaw, the CEO who’d won the then-failing Archambeau Cosmetics in a nasty divorce and then had turned it into one of the most cutting-edge cosmetics companies in the world in less than five years, it was all Kinsey could do to remember that words existed. The woman was a legend. Six feet tall with perfect dark-black skin, gorgeous brown eyes, and a breathtaking presence that demanded a person’s attention, there was no doubting she wasn’t to be fucked with in the boardroom any more than she had been on the catwalk.
“If you don’t breathe, HR will yell at me,” Leigh said, tucking a strand of silver hair behind her ear and peering closer. “Blink if you’re still inhaling and exhaling.”
Biscuits and gravy, snap out of it, Kinsey Anne Dalton!
“Sorry.” Kinsey stuck out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Shaw.”