“Correlation does not equal causation,” she said, falling back on her training.
Gavin let out a sarcastic harrumph of a chuckle. “I strongly suggest you find new living arrangements that don’t include the family owners of our biggest competition. Good Lord, what would be next? Dating their head of R&D?”
There was a sharp rap on the door. Kinsey looked back over her shoulder and recognized Tanisha from HR.
“Good to see you again, Tanisha, but we’re already done here.” Having shot Kinsey a tight smile that was more of a snarl, he asked, “Aren’t we?”
Frustration bubbled inside her, but Kinsey covered it with a cast-iron pot lid that had been seasoned with two and a half decades’ worth of surviving and thriving despite patriarchal bullshit. Leigh had told her it would only be a matter of time. She’d put her trust in the woman who’d fought to create and keep the company she loved.
“Yes, absolutely,” Kinsey said as she got up and then headed for the door.
Tanisha raised an eyebrow in a silent question, but Kinsey had already chosen her path. If it felt like everyone was watching her as she walked through the lab, it was because they were. No doubt Gavin had already planted the seed of doubt about her. More than likely, there wasn’t a leak at all, but even the rumor of it was an awfully convenient way to push out one of Leigh’s hires.
The morning went about as well as could be expected after that, but her shoulders had finally inched down from her ears and she’d stopped feeling the itch of everyone’s gazes on her when one of the receptionists buzzed through on the intercom at her station.
“Kinsey, there’s a Griff Beckett on line one for you.”
Everyone within earshot stopped what they were doing and turned as one unit to look at her. Dread, cold and icy, crept across her skin.
Just fucking great.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Griff
“Sorry again about the whole calling-at-work thing,” Griff said, gripping the steering wheel tight as they headed across the Harbor Bridge to Waterbury and the Paint and Sip date Dixon and Nash had cooked up with Fiona’s help.
Calling Kinsey at work had been an impulse that he probably should have ignored, but he’d gone with his gut, something he probably—no, scratch that, definitely—shouldn’t have done, considering his track record with women. The stiffness in her voice when she’d picked up had told him immediately that he’d overstepped.
Some guys could get away with that shit. For example, Nash could have smoothed it over with a well-timed joke, and Dixon would have used the power of his personality to move the situation forward.
Not Griff.
He’d been all elbows and knees, everything rushing through his head at full throttle and him without the ability to catch any of it. Whatever ground he’d gained with that kiss last night had given way like quicksand. So he’d fallen back on silence and grunts after telling Kinsey he was making sure she wasn’t going to ditch the date.
No denying it, he was a stone-cold charmer.
Kinsey made a little grimace face that shouldn’t be cute but was. It was sorta like seeing a rainbow try to be a thunder cloud. He’d no more started to smile at the idea of her not having to pretend to be all sunshine and lollipops around him when his dad’s voice roared to life in his head.
You should never offer anyone else personality advice, given you only know how to be gruff or asleep.
“Not a big deal, the timing was just messy.”
Look at you, mucking it all up again, boy.
Griff shoved his dad’s voice down deep, blocking it even as he knew it was only a matter of time before the old man popped up again, either in Griff’s head or in real life. He had to go up to Roberts Pointe soon to see good ol’ Pops, which meant his subconscious was pretty much all Dad all the time. It fucking sucked, but if he went to the family home at least once every two or three months, then Dad left Morgan alone. He could suck it up so she wouldn’t have to deal with their dad’s bullshit.
Kinsey put her hand on his forearm, her touch gentle. “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, gunning it through the intersection right as the green light he had been too distracted to notice turned yellow. “I’m fine. I’m always fine.”
“Seriously, don’t worry about the call.” She let go of his arm and fidgeted with the strap of her purse. “Work’s just tense. It was good to hear your voice.”
Yanked back from the edge of complete mental fuckery with thoughts about his dad, Griff let out the breath he’d been holding and forced his grip on the steering wheel to loosen. Maybe it was being around Kinsey, maybe it was her saying she liked hearing his voice, but the right side of his mouth turned up as a warm feeling settled in his chest.
“Is that a smile?” she teased, her own grin practically ear to ear. “An actual smile from Griff Beckett?”
There was no use in trying to straighten his mouth, not that he was sure he could. “Nah, just a twitch.”
“And a joke, too.” Kinsey chuckled and then continued dialing up her Southern accent. “Why, Mr. Beckett, I do think you might actually have a good time tonight.”
“Fun is overrated.”
Is this your version of flirting?
Sadly, yes.
“Really?” She pivoted in her seat so she was practically facing him, the other cars on the parkway going by behind her.
The move pressed the seat belt tighter against her as it lay between her tits. Damn. She was wearing jean shorts and a white T-shirt with a V-neck. He couldn’t stop sneaking peeks from the corner of his eye and being really fucking jealous of a piece of safety gear. He white-knuckled the steering wheel again but for a totally different reason this time.
She wet her lips and toyed with the nylon strip. “Is that why you get pummeled in the ring for a hobby?”
“I give as good as I get, and it helps me relax.”
“What else do you do for fun?” she asked.
Her soft voice brushed across every nerve ending in his body. A million dirty thoughts and images of her naked, telling him with that sweet mouth of hers exactly how she wanted him to make her come slammed into his brain at once. He almost veered onto the shoulder of the road as he exited the parkway and onto the expressway that would dump them out in Waterbury’s business district. Using years of practice in not saying what was going through his head, he let out a noncommittal grunt.
“Griff,” she said, his name sounding like a stroke, a tug, a squeeze to his ears. “Tell me.”
It took just about everything he had not to pull over onto the side of the road and show her, but instead he shrugged, changed lanes, passed a minivan with a kid in the back flipping off every car as it went by, and grunted again.