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“Oh, really?” Declan asks her, not taking his gray eyes off me.
“That’s right,” Nora says. “I don’t have to use it for an hour every day. As long as I’m enjoying myself and using it regularly, I’m doing what I need to do.”
Declan laughs—a noise still so rare to me that I collect each one like a treasure—and throws back his drink.
“You’re shameless, Gran,” he says. “You’ve corrupted my newest social media hire. If anything, her whole job is to get people to use the equipment. Up until now, she’s been doing an excellent job.”
I glow at the praise, grinning at Declan. He’s much more relaxed than he usually is, and I realize I probably have Nora to thank for that.
“She’s still doing well,” Nora argues. “She’s meeting me where I am. I think that’s important.”
Declan’s looking at me, his gaze a little soft. “Very important,” he agrees. “Very on-brand.”
I was glowing before, but now I’m flushing. Can Nora tell that there’s something going on between me and her grandson? I hope not, and yet… I really like Nora. I like her for her spunk and sass, but I also like that she brings out this side of Declan.
The side that I would be powerless to resist if he let it out all the time.
“If you kids would please excuse me, this old lady needs to go to the powder room,” Nora says, patting my shoulder again warmly. “Sophie, it’s a pleasure. I know you’ll go far at my grandson’s company.”
“I hope so,” I say, melting as Declan bends down to kiss his grandmother again.
“Behave yourself,” he calls after her, and she waves dismissively over her shoulder without looking back.
It makes me giggle. The only woman in the world who can stand up to Declan Wright.
“She’s a firecracker,” I observe, feeling uncharacteristically at ease around Declan, even though we’re in public. “I like her a lot.”
“I happen to share that opinion,” he says, setting his empty glass down on a passing server’s tray. “And I can tell she likes you plenty. Watch her. She’s a shark. She’ll turn you against me.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I tell him quietly.
He leans toward me, placing his lips mere millimeters from my ear. “I hope you’re right.”
For just a split second, his lips make the lightest contact with my sensitive skin, and it’s all I can do not to give a full-body shudder.
God, I want him.
Anyone else around us would probably assume that Declan is telling me something—instructing me to do something, boss to underling. Would they know that I regularly spend time literally under him?
The desire racing through me is so strong that I’m right on the verge of not caring, when he pulls away. His gray eyes are molten, and I know that he’s feeling the same way. That both of us are just hanging on to our dignity by a thread.
Slowly—oh-so-slowly—we pull away from each other. Regain some semblance of control. Remember who—and where—we are.
“I need to make the rounds,” Declan says, but with a small smile. “I imagine that you do too.”
“Oh, yes,” I say, relieved and disappointed all at once. “Great event. Lots to do.”
Immersing myself in the work I’m here to do—in the mission I’m bent on completing—is actually helpful in cooling down from what I really wanted to do with Declan. It worries me, however, to consider how close we came to forgoing all the precautions we were taking with this whole affair.
Even with his grandmother here.
Andrea and I touch base a couple of times during the remainder of the evening, but I’m taken aback at the end of the night by Hannah touching me on the shoulder. I didn’t expect her to check in at all during the event, especially with the way she ignored directives from the get-go.
“Are you seeing this?” she asks, turning my whole body in the direction of her gaze with a too-tight grip on my elbow. “For a man who rarely mixes business with pleasure, this is rich.”
Hannah doesn’t look at me, her stare intense, a laser across the event space. I follow it just in time to see Declan throw his head back and laugh, his arm curled possessively around the waist of a beautiful woman in a form-fitting gown.
“Recognize her?” Hannah asks. “It’s one of the only women the paparazzi’s ever gotten photos of on Declan Wright’s arm. One of the few he’s ever publicly dated.”
