Page 11 of Heartstrings & Hijinks

“Of course. Unless you’d prefer to go on your own, which I respect. Then perhaps a Saturday date?”

“No, Friday is perfect. Six o’clock.” He hesitated. “Are we sure I’m not dead or in some sort of drug-induced coma?”

I chuckled. “You are not dead, Evan.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Please get some rest today and make sure you eat plenty of good foods and stay hydrated. I made arrangements to have a dinner delivered to you. I can text you what I ordered, and if it isn’t to your liking, then we can cancel it and order something else. If you need to take Monday off—”

“I should be fine.”

“Great. Then I’ll see you later.”

With great reluctance, I let him exit the car, and I kept my eye on him until he was safe inside the building. Later I would check on him, but it was important that I didn’t come on too strong, too fast. After all, a lot had happened in the past twelve hours.

Things were looking up.

I could be patient. I’d spend the next week preparing for our date and also adding a new detail to my fantasies about Evan—lace panties.

Chapter 7

Evan

The week came and went entirely too quickly. Besides having to talk to the police and put in my official statement regarding the whole incident from last Friday, I was pretty well free and clear of that whole mess. I still just shook my head at myself for having downed a drink with an unknown substance in it and then had the insane idea of calling “Hot Gregory.”

I had since changed his contact information in my phone to “Gregory” with his job title, and I changed my brother Greg to say “Brother.”

Would I someday change Gregory to Boyfriend? That remained to be seen.

Thankfully, with how busy work was at the moment, I could focus solely on work rather than stressing completely about this whole date situation. I had brushed up on the HR policy for inter-office relationships, though, just in case. I trusted Gregory when he said it wouldn’t be an issue. He owned the company, after all. Still, I didn’t want people to think I was looking for some sort of special treatment.

In a nutshell, everything was fine as long as I didn’t directly report to Gregory—and I didn’t. I really didn’t want to have to find a new job if this all went south. Not that I didn’t trust Gregory to be professional, but that didn’t mean I could stand being around him every day with an unrequited crush. Especially if we got far enough that I got to see a different side of him, more of what I had seen in him this weekend. How would I ever recover if I truly got to know him and we didn’t work out?

Working near him wasn’t easy right now. I was already halfway in love with the grumpy jerk.

“What is up with Gregory today?” Sawyer asked when he burst into my office—or rather, the office I was working from. I didn’t have an office to call my own. Our office building was more open-concept. Anyone could reserve whatever room or workspace they wanted to be in, there were no assigned seats.

I stilled, looking around to see who might overhear us. “Why? What have you heard?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Okay, that’s a bit of a weird reaction.”

“Is he in a pissy mood? Is he cranky? Is this like the time the dry cleaners lost his favorite suit, and we all had to suffer his wrath for three days?”

That was an unfair statement about what had actually happened. They hadn’t just lost his favorite suit; it was the suit he was supposed to wear for a wedding that weekend to match all the other groomsmen, including the monogrammed tie the groom had gifted Gregory. He had a right to be upset about that. As far as I had seen, he hadn’t been rude to anyone else—just quiet, reserved, and more clipped than usual.

I hadn’t noticed anything unusual about him this week. Then again, I had been avoiding being near him since I couldn’t trust myself not to gawk at him like a teenager.

Though each day I put on a special pair of panties because they made me feel confident and sexy. And I liked to fantasize about Gregory seeing me at the office and just knowing that I was wearing something special for him.

“Opposite,” Sawyer said. “He seemed kind of in a good mood. He said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ several times in the meeting I was in, and he encouraged everyone to take off early today and enjoy the weekend.”

Oh, that did bode well for our date. I grinned. Was he looking forward to it, the same as I was?

Sawyer’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know? You’ve been awfully quiet about this whole situation. Usually, you spill a lot of details, and this time you’re quiet.”

“Close the door,” I said. “At least make it look like we’re working if we’re going to gossip.”

“Oh shit, you’ve got gossip!” Sawyer closed the door quickly, then sat down in the seat, leaning toward me as if I was about to spill state secrets rather than boring details about my date with Gregory.

“Gregory and I are going on a date tonight,” I said. I didn’t love talking about Gregory without knowing exactly where we stood. This was new and crazy. Dating a VP at the company I worked for was probably frowned upon. Plus, he was my brother’s best friend.

None of those reasons stopped me from leaping into this with both feet.

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