“Dude, you haven’t seen my car. I’d be shocked if you actually wanted to keep it.” Brenna grinned at him. “But you’re welcome to take the keys any time you need it. I don’t mind.”
He gave her a skeptical look, as if he didn’t quite believe that her motives were pure. “I’ll take my bike to the store. You said you have a corporate card?”
“Did I say that? It’s Grant’s visa. Just wear sunglasses when you use it and no one will suspect anything.”
“You do realize this is a small town and I’m an outsider? That’s a surefire way to get arrested.”
Jeez, it seemed Grant wasn’t the only paranoid one around here. “I have tattoos and no one’s stopped me.”
“Yeah, but you’re a cute girl. I’m a big scary man on a bike.”
“Fine, fine.” Brenna pointed at him. “You drive, I’ll shop. We’ll just consider it team building or something.”
His mouth twitched. “Fine.”
• • •
A half hour later, they returned to the main lodge with twelve rolls of foil. Brenna was pleased to see that no one was up yet, so she bounded to the desk and began to dump her foil out on Grant’s desk. “Thanks for driving me into town.”
“Sure.” Rome sat down across from Grant’s desk and watched her as she began to move stuff off the top of Grant’s desk.
“Your bike’s pretty sweet,” Brenna commented, trying to make him feel at ease. He wasn’t the most chatty sort. “You ever been in a biker gang?”
“Motorcycle club,” he corrected. Then added, “Why would you ask that?”
She shrugged. “You ride a bike.”
“I can’t just own a bike? What kind of car do you drive?”
“A Sunfire.”
“You ever been in a Sunfire club?”
“All right. Good point.” Brenna unrolled a long sheet of foil and began to smooth it over the surface of the desk. “I suppose that was kinda dumb for me to ask, right?”
“Nah.” Rome’s tone was guarded. “I get asked that a lot. And I didn’t say that it wasn’t true, just wanted to know why you’d ask.”
Oh. Okay, now she didn’t know what to think. But clearly Rome was reluctant to talk about it, so she decided to let it die. People were allowed their secrets. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one to press him for details. “So what do you think of our business so far?”
“It’s different.”
That wasn’t a ringing endorsement, and it bothered Brenna. They’d worked hard to make their small niche business a success. Well, more like Grant, Dane, and Colt had worked hard and she’d kept them company. She glanced up at Rome’s face and reached for more foil. “Different like how?”
“Well, far as I can tell, you have an ex-hockey player, an ex-marine, a handyman who you don’t need, and a secretary who’s sleeping with her boss. None of that exactly screams normal.”
“Normal is overrated,” Brenna said between noisy crinkles of foil as she unrolled another sheet.
“It is.” He seemed to relax in his chair a bit. “That’s why I applied here. I figured if anyone around here’d accept me, it’d be you guys.”
She smiled at him. “That’s sweet.”
He rolled his eyes at her.
That was the sort of thing Brenna was used to, though, so she didn’t mind. It was sweet. She went back to covering Grant’s desk with foil.
“So do you harass all the guys with foil?” Rome asked, curious.
“Nope. Just Grant.”
“To show him that you care for him?”
Brenna stopped mid-foil, then frowned in Rome’s direction. “No one said I cared for him. I just said we were sleeping together. We actually really don’t get along all that well.”
“Uh-huh.”
She pulled Grant’s monitor closer and began to cover it. “Now what does that ‘uh-huh’ mean?”
“It means that I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe that I don’t get along with Grant?” She snorted. “Did you not see me buy all the foil in Bluebonnet a half hour ago?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think that you’re foiling his desk because you want to annoy him. You say that, but I can’t imagine that you sleep with all the people who bother you.” He leaned back in the chair and went to kick a foot up . . . and then paused, clearly rethinking placing his foot on all that shining foil. “I think you do this stuff because you want his attention.”
She paused again. Looked over at him. Snorted in derision once more. Then she went back to wrapping. Want Grant’s attention? Please. She did this sort of thing because she liked to get under his skin. There was nothing better than seeing that expression on his face go from incredulous to exasperated in the blink of an eye. Then he’d scowl and turn his gaze on her and—
Oh shit. Rome was right. She loved getting Grant’s attention. Well, that was an obnoxious self-discovery, she thought to herself. “Let’s not talk about me anymore. Are you going to sit there and distract me or are you going to help me?”
“I’m not helping,” Rome said. “The last thing I want is to be an accomplice.”
“Chicken,” she told him.
He bent his arms and flapped them like wings.
• • •
By the time Grant arrived into the lodge for the morning, the sun was shining, birds were singing in the crisp morning air, and every inch of Grant’s desk was covered with gleaming silver tinfoil, right down to his stapler and the three pens he kept on his desk in a Wilderness Survival Expeditions branded coffee cup (also covered).
He stopped as he entered the room and stared at the desk. Really stared at it for a long, long time. It was difficult for Brenna to keep working as if nothing was wrong, knowing that he was standing ten feet away and staring dumbstruck at his desk. But she kept typing. It was quite a work of art, if she admitted it to herself. She’d already taken a few pictures with her phone and posted them to a few social media websites so her friends could appreciate her artistry before Grant woke up and tore it all down.
A moment later, the skin on the back of her neck prickled and she knew he was staring at her. And she couldn’t stop the silly smile that started to curve her mouth, no matter how much she tried to bite it back.