Chapter 1 - The Man in the Passenger-Side Reflection
“Emma.”
“What?”
“It’s a house. Not a courtroom.”
I looked past him at the stone mansion, the iron gates, and the fountain apparently large enough to require its own maintenance department.
“Easy for you to say. You grew up here.”
Grant Mercer switched off the engine.
Rain tapped against the roof. For a moment, neither of us moved.
My blind date was my CEO.
The man whose signature appeared at the bottom of every company announcement. The man people stood straighter around. The man I had once watched end a forty-minute presentation with one devastating question.
And I was wearing a dress with a safety pin holding the hem together.
Grant looked toward the house.
“We can leave.”
I shook my head.
“My father asked me to try letting people into my life.”
“I doubt he meant this.”
“Neither did I.”
His mouth moved slightly.
There was the almost-smile again.
It made the situation worse.
I could have handled a rude billionaire. I had prepared years of opinions about rude billionaires. A man who remembered my name, drove through a storm, and occasionally looked as trapped as I felt was much harder to dismiss.
“Before we go inside,” he said, “you should know this has nothing to do with your employment.”
I looked at him.
“Good. Because I’d hate to discover dinner required a performance review.”
“Your performance reviews would probably be less frightening than my mother.”
“You haven’t met Dana.”
His expression changed.
“Whitmore?”
I regretted speaking immediately.
“She’s a senior manager in my division.”
“I know who she is.”
“Then we both know she wouldn’t appreciate being compared to anyone’s mother.”
He studied me for a second.
Then he opened his door.
I followed him across the wet driveway beneath an umbrella he held carefully between us.
The front door opened before we reached it.
A woman in an emerald sweater stood in the doorway, smiling with the dangerous confidence of someone whose plan had worked.
“Grant. Emma. You found each other.”
Grant stopped.
“Mother.”
“Yes, darling?”
“You have approximately ten seconds.”
Behind her, my mother appeared.
She took one look at my face and pressed her lips together.
That was when I knew.
They had known.
Both of them.
“You knew he was my boss,” I said.
My mother folded her hands.
“Technically, he’s everyone’s boss.”
I stared at her.
Grant made a sound beside me that might have been disbelief escaping through his teeth.
“Inside,” his mother said. “You’re getting wet.”
“Evelyn,” he replied, “that is currently the smallest problem.”
Still, we entered.
My father sat near the fireplace with a blanket across his knees. He looked thinner than he had before his heart attack, but his smile was warm and unmistakably relieved.
“Kiddo.”
I went straight to him.
“Are you all right?”
“Better now that you’re here.”
I hugged him carefully.
Then he looked over my shoulder.
“Grant.”
“Mr. Carter.”
“Robert, please.”
Something passed between them.
Not recognition.
Embarrassment.
Dad leaned closer to me.
“For the record, I learned the employment part about twenty minutes ago.”
“At least one of us had a warning.”
“I’m beginning to think your mother and Evelyn should never be allowed unsupervised telephone access.”
Across the room, Grant was having a conversation with his mother using almost no volume and a remarkable amount of tension.
My mother approached me.
“Honey, we only thought—”
“That I might say no if I had the information?”
Her face changed.
I had never spoken to her that directly.
“Emma.”
“I’m not angry that you wanted me to meet someone. I’m angry that you decided I shouldn’t get to choose with the facts.”
Grant stopped speaking.
Evelyn looked toward us.
For several seconds, the only sound was rain against the windows.
Then my father cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said, “I think we should start the evening by admitting the women we love have committed a very organized mistake.”
A laugh escaped me.
Grant looked at him.
Then, impossibly, he laughed too.
Not the restrained movement I had mistaken for a smile.
A real laugh.
It transformed his face.
Evelyn sighed.
“All right. We apologize.”
My mother nodded.
“We should have told you.”
“Yes,” Grant and I said together.
We looked at each other.
That made my father smile.
I pointed at him.
“Don’t.”
He raised both hands.
“I said nothing.”
Dinner smelled wonderful.
My feet hurt.
My career suddenly felt as though it had wandered onto a suspension bridge.
May you like
But when Grant pulled out a chair beside his father’s empty place and quietly asked whether I wanted water or wine, I discovered the most inconvenient thing of all.
I didn’t want to leave yet.
