don’t you sit there, on the sofa?’ Sophia gestured without looking at Grey, for all the world as though she hadn’t just ordered him about in his own home. Albeit a second home he visited less often than he would like, when he managed to eke out some free time to climb in the nearby mountains.
Grey wasn’t accustomed to taking orders. He wasn’t accustomed to having his statements ignored, either. He wanted to be able to scale those mountains too, not be stuck just looking at them when he glanced out of the windows. ‘I did say I don’t have time for this.’
‘I know, but we’re here now and it will only take a couple of minutes.’ She blinked guileless sherry-coloured eyes at him.
The lashes were ridiculously long. If he held her to him, cheek to cheek, those lashes would brush his skin. ‘Fine, do your worst. Just get on with it.’
‘First I’ll have to unlace the ankle brace and remove it.’ She waited expectantly.
Grey sat. Controlling her was like trying to trap light in a bottle. He had no idea how to manage her exuberance.
Sophia sat beside him, so close their thighs pressed together. Necessary, he knew, but the knowledge didn’t stop him from tensing as his body catalogued every nuance of that touch, reacted to it and wanted more of it.
She had golden skin and a soft, slender neck, her face a perfect oval with winged brows and a straight little nose and full, generous lips that were right out of a man’s fantasy. His gaze caught on those lips, caught on the smile that lingered there even now.
With a murmured word, Sophia leaned down and made quick work of removing the brace. When finished, she turned that megawatt smile on him again. The breath she drew held just enough of a hitch to tell him she wasn’t unaware of their closeness.
‘There.’ She lifted her hand and almost patted his leg. Almost, before she snatched her wandering appendage back. ‘The brace is off. Let’s get started with the exercise, shall we?’
‘By all means, let’s complete the physio routine.’ Grey didn’t want assistance with his physiotherapy. He didn’t want to be incarcerated in the countryside for the next week either, but Doc Cooper had some bug in his brain that Grey could be on the road to serious trouble.
All because a few readings had come in high on the scale after the accident—it was silly! Just because Grey’s mother had died young of a heart attack, no apparent trigger, and his father had had high cholesterol and high everything else before he, too, had died.
Okay, those weren’t silly, but Grey looked after himself. ‘Bloody doctor probably doesn’t know what he’s on about, anyway.’
‘Your exercises seem sensible to me,’ Sophia offered with a slightly confused look.
Grey ignored it and instead noted the way her hair cupped her face and neck.
Her body was all sweet curves. The sight of her bottom as it had wiggled about beneath his desk had almost made him moan, and Grey wasn’t someone to be affected easily by a woman.
Not unless he chose to be, and never involuntarily. Yet he’d noticed Sophia.
‘How does that feel?’ Her mouth formed the words and Grey could imagine her lips beneath his, lush and generous.
He didn’t want to, damn it.
Because Sophia Gable wasn’t only fluffy and colourful and capable of making a soup that truly defied description; she was a girl some man would take home to his mother. Grey didn’t take women anywhere, other than to bed. He stayed away from the kind who wouldn’t understand that.
As for the idea of him taking a woman to meet his three stepmothers? What a concept.
‘Grey? Your foot?’ Sophia spoke as though to prompt a child. ‘I’m trying not to hurt you.’
‘You’re not hurting me, and you won’t.’ Injuries aside, she had no power to hurt him in other ways. No woman did. Grey had seen to that, yet he wondered at his need to voice the knowledge aloud. Another thought followed.
He could hurt Sophia Gable without trying.
Grey was a hard man, toughened by years in a cutthroat business world. Hardened by his upbringing, too, although that truly was history, aside from the ongoing legacy of his late father’s three bored and at times self-indulgent past wives. He had let himself love them as surrogate mothers, one after another, until he’d finally realised the futility and refused to love anyone at all.
Sophia Gable was too gentle for him, soft and young. She looked as though she would care about anyone who gave her half a chance, and would expect them to care for her in return. Such women were made for marriage—an institution Grey respected when it worked, but would never enter into.
Why hadn’t he dismissed her completely from his awareness, then? Why did the curiosity, the interest, remain?
‘I appreciate your trust in me.’ She misread the meaning behind his words. Luminous eyes smiled at him. ‘My middle sister Chrissy broke two toes once, when we decided to rearrange the furniture in our apartment and she didn’t have her glasses on.’
A chuckle escaped. ‘That was a few years ago, but boy, did Bella, the eldest, get uptight. We all live separately now, but we had some fun times.’
For a moment he thought she looked just the tiniest bit sad, but she went on to work on his ankle, and to prattle about her life in Melbourne, and the thought faded.
A picture of a close-knit family emerged. Two elder sisters, one with a stepdaughter, the other with a nine-month-old baby named Anastasia. The husbands of those sisters. An elderly grandfather they all seemed to have taken to their hearts.
How would it feel to have a family like that? Grey couldn’t begin to imagine. He realised her chatter had died away and she had released his ankle.
‘Are you done already?’ The woman had talked to distract him while she’d put him through the requisite number of stretches. It had worked, and they’d been perfectly undisturbed the whole time. He even felt something close to relaxed—almost sleepy, actually.
Doc Cooper would be pleased.
Grey shuffled the sarcastic thought aside. He had goals to focus on. ‘It’s a wonder the phone hasn’t rung several times by now.’
‘It probably has. I put it on silent ring and sent it to the answering service before I left to make our lunch.’ She didn’t lift her head as she replaced and laced the exoform brace.
His relaxed mood frayed. ‘I need to know of all incoming phone calls the moment they occur. I have a company to control.’ He leaned forward and gave her the benefit of his displeased expression. ‘There could have been something urgent.’ One project in particular had issues right now and could cost him upward of three million dollars if it crashed and burned.
Her gaze locked with his, caught in the glare of his anger. ‘I’m sorry. I thought lunch time would be a break from all of that. I’ll check the messages now.’
The woman sounded disappointed in herself and her mouth looked vulnerable, as it had when she’d watched and waited to see if he liked her bizarrely flavoured soup. It might have grown on him, he supposed, but how could he know for certain? His taste buds had imploded after the first two sips.
Another urge overcame Grey now. For a scant moment in time, he thought of kissing her uncertainties away. Maybe he revealed something of that thought as he looked at her because her gaze flared from curiosity to interest.
Of its own volition, Grey’s body leaned towards hers. She copied his action before she stopped abruptly.
‘I’ll turn the coffee on to brew before I check the messages. I prepared it earlier so it’s only a matter of flicking a switch.’ She removed herself from beside him, didn’t stop until she stood half a room away.
With her hands clasped in front of her