Page 104 of Getting Down to Business

“Now that we both agree you’re crazy, do you want to go out tonight to celebrate?”

“No, thanks. I have a lot of work to do.” With that she left his office. Her earlier frustrations were now turned inward. Why did she have to assume all men had some other agenda? That they had a hidden life.

She shook it off and went to her own office to get started.

A few hours later, she received a call from Doug.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Alyssa. I was just given the Leedom account. I understand you’re managing that account. Would you be able to send me a copy of the file so I can review it?”

“You’re taking over the account?”

“Grayson offered a trade and I couldn’t turn it down. I hope that’s not a problem.” She wondered if Gray had taken on the notorious Knott account in exchange for Doug taking the Leedom account.

“No problem.”

“Good.”

Doug didn’t sound like his normal fun-loving self. She might have thought this was his business persona, but she’d seen him in too many meetings.

“Okay. I’ll send it right over.”

“Thanks.” He hung up without another word.

Alyssa didn’t put the phone down; instead, she keyed in Gray’s extension.

“If you’re going to yell at me, I’m going to hang up,” he threatened.

“Why did you do that? I didn’t ask you to give up the account.” She made sure not to yell.

“It was the right thing to do. I don’t ever want it to become an issue or for your promotion to be questioned. Especially by you.”

“Thank you.”

“I get that you don’t trust me, so until you do, I’m going to do my best to convince you I’m safe.”

“Did you trade Doug for a crappy account?” she worried.

“I can’t talk about my client’s profile. And since you’re not on the account, I’m going to have to officially say, ‘none of your beeswax.’”

She laughed at his official announcement, and then let out a sigh. From his reaction, she was positive he’d gotten the bad end of the deal with Doug, just so she would be more comfortable.

“Thank you, Gray.”

“No problem. Now get to work.”

Her client seemed to like what she’d done so far, but she still needed to tweak the project into perfection. She packed up her laptop to work from home. She didn’t mind putting in the extra time to find a way to save her client money.

Gray made her put her laptop away by eight so they could have dinner together and snuggle on the sofa.

Since her outburst, she’d been thinking about her relationship with Gray—because it was obvious it was now a relationship. They were too close. It was apparent he cared about her. She knew she cared about him. Way more than she ever wanted to.

In fact, she was pretty sure she was in love with him.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d had rules to save herself from this.

Sure it felt great to see his face light up when he saw her, but how long would that last? How long before the pain? At any moment, she might learn some horrible truth that would break her heart and send her life into a tailspin.