The door shuts with a click! just before she turns around.
“I know that Wade Mason isn’t a name you come across daily,” she says, moving far too easily through my office. “But I figured that I would get here, and it wouldn’t be you after all. I mean, what are the odds?”
Before I can break down those odds for her—about one in one hundred thousand, give or take—she reaches me.
And reaches for me.
The scent of coconuts hits me before she does. By the time I get ahold of all of these moving parts—Curt’s impending arrival, this random woman in my office, and the encroachment on my personal behind-the-desk space—she wraps her arms around me and pulls me in for a hug.
Oof.
She leans back quickly. Her eyes are sparkling.
“You’re a friendly one, aren’t you?” I ask, taking a step back in case she has a knife. Because what kind of person hugs another unprompted? Psychopaths. That’s who.
Her laughter is light and breezy. “You don’t remember me.”
Fuck.
I hate when women—when people—do this. They think they’re special enough to warrant being memorable against the hundred other faces you see through the course of a week. Somehow, regardless of the number of interactions you’ve had within a certain timeframe, you are the asshole who can’t remember them.
It’s total bullshit.
The woman flips her hair off her narrow shoulder and allows me an even clearer view of her pretty, freckly face. She doesn’t look like a psychopath.
Then again, they never do.
“Should I tell you who I am, or should we make a game out of it?” she says, moving to the other side of my desk.
I exhale, confused about so many things—who she is, why Eliza let her in my office, and where the hell is Curt Bowery when you need him?
“I’m not much for games,” I deadpan, hoping she’ll read between the lines and gather that I’m not a fan of … this.
“Really?” She falls back into the brown leather chairs facing my desk and laughs. Her gaze settles on me. “Games can be fun, you know.”
“I suppose they have a time and place,” I say, sitting back down in my chair. I grab a fresh notepad and try to avoid her eyes. “I have an appointment that should be arriving any time, so I’d appreciate it if we could get to the bottom of … who are you? Why are you here?”
I lift my eyes to meet hers. They snap together like the last two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She runs a finger over her bottom lip as if she—and I—have all the time in the world.
“I thought for sure you’d remember me,” she says.
“Isn’t that a bit pretentious?”
She narrows her eyes but continues to grin. “No more than your portentous assumption that I’m not your twelve o’clock.”
Confidence oozes out of her as she effectively tosses the banter-ball back over the net. Coupled with her poise at my cool demeanor—a tactic that usually softens whoever is sitting across from me—it’s quite a show.
It’s also respectable.
“Okay,” I say. “Fair enough. But I’m still going to need your name.”
She seems satisfied with my capitulation.
“I’m Dara Alden,” she says finally. “We had a class together at Georgia Tech. We did a presentation together about intimacy in relationships in a communications class my freshman year.”
She pauses, waiting for me to connect all the dots. And I do. Quickly.
Dara Alden was my partner for the worst class and worst project I’ve ever been forced to participate in. I was certain the professor matched us together just to see me suffer. He had it in for me—no thanks to a speech I presented on why communications classes weren’t beneficial to all students and should be eliminated from prerequisites.
I start to respond when my speakerphone buzzes.
“Mr. Mason? You’re needed on an urgent call regarding the Greyshell project,” Eliza says. “It can’t wait, sir.”
Internally, I groan and make a mental note to remind her not to call me sir. “I’ll call them back.”
“But, sir …”
My jaw clenches in both frustration and embarrassment. “I’ll call them back, Eliza. Thank you for letting me know.”
“Okay. Thank you. I’ll … tell them,” she says before ending the call.
I run a hand through my hair and try to stay calm and focused. But when I glance back up, Dara is watching me with unbridled amusement.
“I’m curious,” Dara says, her voice as sweet as honey. “Did your opinions on intimacy change?”
Pulling at the collar of my shirt, I grab a pen. Have Eliza turn down the thermostat.
“I don’t recall what my opinions were a decade ago,” I say, jotting down the thermostat thought in my notepad. “But it’s safe to say I’ve always considered intimacy in relationships …”
Why are we talking about this?
I set down my pen and level my gaze with hers. “Are you really my twelve o’clock? Or was that something you picked up on because I mentioned it, and you just ran with it?” I pause. “Did Boone put you up to this?”
She snickers. “Relax, Wade. I don’t even know who Boone is.”
“You’re the only female in this part of Georgia who can say that with a straight face.”
“Heck, maybe I should know him.” Dara laughs. “Can you introduce us?”
I flip her a look. I don’t know what I mean by it, exactly. It just radiates from me without my trying. She seems amused by it and, thankfully, also lets it go.
“All joking aside,” she says, running a hand through the air. “Yes. I’m your twelve o’clock. My grandfather is Curt Bowery, and I need an architect.”
Well, shit.
It feels like I’ve been hit on the side of the head a little bit. I’m not sure what to say in response to this news. I knew exactly how I was going to deal with Curt, but this isn’t Curt. I don’t know why it matters, but it does. Sort of.
“I suppose my follow-up question would be …” I search for the right words. “You do understand what an architect does, right? I design things—buildings, houses, hotels. I’m not a therapist specializing in relational intimacy. As a matter of fact, I’ve said all that I have to say about that topic.”
She laughs. It’s smooth and loud and sounds foreign in my office.
“That’s disappointing,” she says, crossing one leg over the other and settling in. “I was hoping we could spend our afternoons discussing intimacy types and debate over whether true intimacy is even reachable in modern-day relationships again.”
I can’t help it. I smirk. “It sounds as though you’ve lived the past ten years reading a lot of self-help books.”
Dara shrugs, teasing me. “And it sounds as though you’ve lived the past ten years alone and are just as cantankerous as you were back then.”
I look down so she can’t see my ghost of a smile. It’s that gesture—the tiniest splitting of my cheeks—that kicks me out of whatever bullshit distraction was happening between us and back to reality.