Sophia Gable was too gentle for him, soft and young. She looked as though she would care about anyone who gave her half a chance, and would expect them to care for her in return. Such women were made for marriage—an institution Grey respected when it worked, but would never enter into.
Why hadn’t he dismissed her completely from his awareness, then? Why did the curiosity, the interest, remain?
‘I appreciate your trust in me.’ She misread the meaning behind his words. Luminous eyes smiled at him. ‘My middle sister Chrissy broke two toes once, when we decided to rearrange the furniture in our apartment and she didn’t have her glasses on.’
A chuckle escaped. ‘That was a few years ago, but boy, did Bella, the eldest, get uptight. We all live separately now, but we had some fun times.’
For a moment he thought she looked just the tiniest bit sad, but she went on to work on his ankle, and to prattle about her life in Melbourne, and the thought faded.
A picture of a close-knit family emerged. Two elder sisters, one with a stepdaughter, the other with a nine-month-old baby named Anastasia. The husbands of those sisters. An elderly grandfather they all seemed to have taken to their hearts.
How would it feel to have a family like that? Grey couldn’t begin to imagine. He realised her chatter had died away and she had released his ankle.
‘Are you done already?’ The woman had talked to distract him while she’d put him through the requisite number of stretches. It had worked, and they’d been perfectly undisturbed the whole time. He even felt something close to relaxed—almost sleepy, actually.
Doc Cooper would be pleased.
Grey shuffled the sarcastic thought aside. He had goals to focus on. ‘It’s a wonder the phone hasn’t rung several times by now.’
‘It probably has. I put it on silent ring and sent it to the answering service before I left to make our lunch.’ She didn’t lift her head as she replaced and laced the exoform brace.
His relaxed mood frayed. ‘I need to know of all incoming phone calls the moment they occur. I have a company to control.’ He leaned forward and gave her the benefit of his displeased expression. ‘There could have been something urgent.’ One project in particular had issues right now and could cost him upward of three million dollars if it crashed and burned.
Her gaze locked with his, caught in the glare of his anger. ‘I’m sorry. I thought lunch time would be a break from all of that. I’ll check the messages now.’
The woman sounded disappointed in herself and her mouth looked vulnerable, as it had when she’d watched and waited to see if he liked her bizarrely flavoured soup. It might have grown on him, he supposed, but how could he know for certain? His taste buds had imploded after the first two sips.
Another urge overcame Grey now. For a scant moment in time, he thought of kissing her uncertainties away. Maybe he revealed something of that thought as he looked at her because her gaze flared from curiosity to interest.
Of its own volition, Grey’s body leaned towards hers. She copied his action before she stopped abruptly.
‘I’ll turn the coffee on to brew before I check the messages. I prepared it earlier so it’s only a matter of flicking a switch.’ She removed herself from beside him, didn’t stop until she stood half a room away.
With her hands clasped in front of her she cleared her throat. ‘I assume you’d like coffee?’
‘One cup.’ Damn the doctor’s orders. ‘Not too strong, plenty of milk.’ Grey forced aside other wants—unacceptable wants that had nothing to do with coffee. It must be the country air addling his brain. Not that he’d breathed any of it except for this morning when he’d waited those few minutes on the veranda for Sophia to arrive.
Well, country air or simply the closeness of a woman—he had reacted on instinct, no thought involved. Now he had to engage his brain to override those instincts. Sophia Gable was not someone he should mess with.
‘You could take a nap instead of going straight back to work.’ She fidgeted from one foot to the other, burned into action, perhaps, by his glare.
‘I’m keeping off the foot as much as I can.’ Yes, he’d felt better, but, considering his injuries, that was to be expected. ‘And I’ll turn in at a decent hour tonight.’ Those were the only concessions he would give, and ‘decent hour’ was a relative term.
She sighed. ‘Coffee it is, then.’
Soph did indeed sigh, and repeated the sigh as she hesitated before she left the room. She didn’t want to irritate her employer, truly she didn’t. Rather, she wanted to help him, to be of assistance, to contribute appropriately to the working relationship. He didn’t make that easy. Nor did the way she reacted when in close proximity to him.
‘Are you resting well at night?’ She tried not to picture him in that big bed in the master suite and, yes, she had peeped into the room when she’d first arrived. So sue her.
Grey shook his head, whether as a statement of his lack of rest or resistance to her questions, she couldn’t have said. ‘Perhaps we should concentrate on you, Sophia, and your tendency to make arbitrary decisions about my care without consulting me.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m not accustomed to that kind of behaviour in my employees.’
‘I won’t do the phone thing again.’ Why did she get all shivery when he put on his growly voice? She pushed the question aside. Maybe it was simply chilly today or something.
And he was annoyed with her. She should think about that. ‘You see, I thought you wanted me to take care of all those things, but that you didn’t want either of us to acknowledge my efforts openly.’
When he didn’t appear to understand, she went on. ‘I thought your pride was stung and, although that would actually be silly, I would still be willing to work with it but you would have to reciprocate. I must be able to take proper care of you.’
Her voice tightened at the end of that statement, because it mattered, blast him. She wanted to succeed at the job. And yes, fine, maybe she also needed to feel useful and know she was giving back, not just receiving. It was called a community consciousness, and lots of people had it.
Certainly it was nothing to do with him personally, or with the fact that he attracted her just a little.
She turned her focus back to what mattered, and cut him a glare to make it clear she meant business right now. ‘The alternative is that I do nothing at all for you. That’s not acceptable to me.’
‘I’m not embarrassed by my injuries.’ Even as he said it, a faint tinge of colour came into his cheeks.
Soph raised her gaze farther and got caught in deep-green eyes that seemed to hold surprise, a hint of unease, and something else.
‘I’ll play back the phone messages while you make the coffee. If anything’s gone amok, I’ll just have to fix it.’ Most of his anger was gone now.
She was glad that he was prepared to let the matter go.
The deep mellow tone of his voice raised goose flesh on her skin despite the distance between them, despite her lofty resolutions.
