Page 42 of All Out of Love

“Who do you think you are?” Miss Javits yelled angrily at her. “You aren’t supposed to be up there! Noone is allowed up there except for the staff assigned to the private residence. Which you must certainly are not! What do you think you’re doing?”

But after the way Grayson went to that jail house last night to retrieve her, Dena had a sneaking suspicion she had spent the bulk of the night repaying him for that retrieval. Which angered her. “And look at you,” Dena said. “Dressed like a street-corner hooker in this respectable home. Who do you think you are?”

“She’s my lady.”

It was Grayson’s voice at the top of the stairs. Everybody downstairs, including the maid staff that was cleaning the foyer and the head butler at the door, all looked up at him. Toya wanted to look up too when he said those words. Because they warmed her heart. But she kept on walking down.

“That’s who she is,” Grayson added.

Miss Javits and Dena were stunned. And not just because of who he said this nobody temp worker was to him, but also because of how he looked. In his navy-blue suit and tie, with his face freshly shaved and with his usually messy hair combed and groomed, they couldn’t recall the last time he looked more rested and pristinely put-together. But as he began hurrying down those stairs, and as Toya stepped off of the last stair, it was the former issue that consumed him. She was his lady? Did he say she was his lady?

Miss Javits knew he never claimed any of his prior “ladies,” including Dena, but he was boldly claiming her?

But Dena, who used to dream of having that title for herself, couldn’t hold back. “Since when?” she asked him as he ran down the final stair and stood beside Toya.

“Since right now,” Grayson said. “And let me make myself clear,” he said to his house manager, his butler, and his chief-of-staff, all three of whom represented the highest-level employees inside that home. “Miss Morgan’s word is as good as my word. You respect her the way you respect me. If I find out that any of you or members of your staff are gossiping about her or in any way disparaging her, you will be fired. Summarily. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir,” they all said firmly.

All except for Dena. Toya saw her non-response. She wondered if Grayson saw it too.

He saw it. “Do I make myself clear?” he asked Dena specifically.

Dena didn’t like it, and she couldn’t hide her displeasure. But she knew Grayson well enough to know that his word was the final word. If she loved her job, which she did, she knew she had better follow suit. “Yes sir,” she said.

“I won’t be in today,” he said. “And neither will Miss Morgan,” he added, as he placed his hand on Toya’s lower back and escorted her past his staff and out of his front door where he already ordered his valet to have his Maybach waiting.

When he opened the door and sat her on his passenger seat, and after he got behind the steering wheel and they drove off, Toya looked at the various groundskeepers who knew her as a temp worker well beneath even their classifications. They all looked shocked.

But Toya was thrilled. He was the one who told her they would be walking out of the front door where his car was waiting. He was the one who announced to his staff that she was his lady. He wasn’t trying to hide her. He wanted them to know.

That meant the world to Toya.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Brockhurst Golf and Country Club was exactly as Toya would have expected it to be. From the moment the valet opened the door for them, until they were walking down a long, palatial atrium that led into the restaurant, nothing but gold and marble and every kind of big and opulent-bordering-on-gaudy magnificence that overwhelmed the view. But as soon as Grayson interlocked her arm with his arm and the maître d escorted them to their table, all eyes seemed less on the view, and all on her. Some of the club members were staring her down.

She knew why. By all indications Grayson didn’t parade his ladies around town. He might have taken them to various places for sure, but he wasn’t going to have his hands on them in any way possible if he did. But he seemed to want them to see that Toya belonged to him, which even she was still trying to process. She was as surprised as they were.

But once they sat down and lunch was eventually served, the mood shifted and everybody minded their own business and forgot about Grayson and Toya. Which was absolutely fine with Grayson and Toya.

“Love it?” he asked her.

“It’s nice,” she said.

Grayson laughed.

Toya didn’t get it. “What?”

“This is considered the most exclusive place to dine in all of Maryland, and you say it’s just okay?”

Toya smiled. “I’m just being honest. The food could use some seasoning, and all of this gold everywhere looks like . . .”

“It looks like what?”

“Like the designer was trying too hard. I don’t know.”

“What you’re saying is that sometimes less is more.”