The Bluff (Graham Brothers, #2)(36)

Winnie tilts her head, a small smile playing on her lips. “No. I still think they were hilarious.” She sobers, and the sincerity in her eyes makes my breath hitch. “I’m sorry for showing your family first and for showing you last night. I could tell you were tired and edgy, maybe tired of people? I knew it wasn’t the right moment to joke with you. I should have waited.”

Her perceptiveness, once again, slices right through me. I have to wonder if there’s anything about me Winnie doesn’t see. But because I don’t exactly want to confirm just how right she is, I simply nod. “Collin and I practically forced you.”

“Still. I could have said no. I should have waited until the next day and caught you at a different moment. Maybe then you would have found it funny.”

Maybe. Not at first, but once I realized they were fake sites, which I probably would have at a different time. One where my brain didn’t feel so full and my thoughts so overrun after a night with other people.

“You assume I have a sense of humor.”

Winnie smirks. “I think there’s one buried under there somewhere.”

“Don’t think you can try to excavate it. Or try to find some soft and gooey center. It doesn’t exist.”

“Or maybe it’s buried so deep you don’t even know it’s still there.”

“I’m not burying anything.”

“Oh, James,” Winnie says, her voice deceptively soft. “We’re all hiding something.”

What are you hiding? I almost demand. But I don’t want to know. Because asking the question would be like admitting I’m hiding things too. I am—of course, I am, who isn’t?—but we aren’t going there. Not today. Not ever.

Winnie is my employee. Nothing more. Never more.

Setting down her mug, Winnie gets to her feet, holding out her hand. I don’t move, and she rolls her eyes.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I’m happy to call my lawyer and have her draft this in writing. You can call your lawyer and we’ll be all official. Or we can just shake and trust each other.”

The idea of bringing Thayden, our family lawyer and somewhat friend, into this makes me shudder. The man finds endless amusement in our family’s business. From my dad buying a town to Pat entering a marriage of convenience turned real thing, he’d be all over this kind of contract. He’d zero right in on the part about the questions, and I’d never hear the end of it.

I stand. In her bare feet, Winnie is dwarfed by me. A zip of satisfaction shoots through me, likely some vestige of early man and the drive to protect, to be big and strong.

That’s all it is. Biology. Survival of the fittest. Nothing more.

I clasp Winnie’s hand, wishing I didn’t feel her touch move through my body the way the blush crept up her neck moments ago. Only our hands touch, but I feel Winnie everywhere.

This is a terrible idea.

I know it, and yet I shake on it anyway. I try not to focus on the way her hand, small but strong, disappears into mine, how it feels to stand so close, to have our palms brushing. If I don’t acknowledge the zip and hum of awareness buzzing through me, it does not exist.

“We have a deal,” I say, telling myself it’s professional, just professional, knowing as my lower back begins to sweat that my lies aren’t even convincing to myself.

It’s not until I’m driving home, skin still buzzing and mind a hot haze, that I realize I never actually apologized.





TEXT THREAD





James: Be ready at 7:30

Winnie: Hello to you too. How was your day?

Winnie: 7:30 as in twenty minutes from now, or 7:30 tomorrow morning?

James: Tomorrow.

Winnie: For???

James: The conference

Winnie: You decided I’m allowed to go???!!?

James: Check your email

Winnie: Wow! You got me a room and everything! Unless … are we sharing a room?

James: NO

James: You have your own room James: We are staying in separate rooms Winnie: Got it. You really, really don’t want to share a room with me. Not surprised, given how you avoided me today.

James: Not avoiding you. Just busy Winnie: Sure, boss. Sure. Too busy to answer my question. You saw it, right? I wrote it on a chalkboard window, salvaged from your very warehouse.

James: I seem to remember telling you to throw it away Winnie: That was before you fired me and rehired me. Doesn’t count.

Winnie: Oh! And I caught three cats today with the help of Big Mo. I swear he’s like the Pied Piper of feral cats. That’s almost all of them.

Winnie: The only one I can’t catch is the orange cat with only one eye. He taunts me.

James: Steak, medium rare.

Winnie: WHAT? You want to eat cats?!!?!!?

James: Don’t be ridiculous

James: You asked my favorite ice cream flavor Winnie: That was HOURS ago! And … your favorite ice cream flavor is steak? That’s about as gross as the idea of cat steaks.

James: You’re disgusting

Winnie: Um, YOU’RE disgusting. You like steak ice cream.

James: I don’t like ice cream. I prefer steak to ice cream.

Winnie: Blasphemy! Do you even have a soul?

James: Outlook not so good. Try again later Winnie: Magic 8-Ball! Nice!!!