Page 31 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

Sumner’s response had effectively stunned everyone into silence. Our cue. And Sumner seemed to pick up on it, too; he turned around and grabbed me by the wrist with his free hand, drawing us away from the crowd of onlookers we’d amassed.

I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as he pulled me after him, away from the country club building. My heart stumbled to keep up in my chest. I’d never had someone defend me so earnestly before, upset on my behalf. Even when my mother’s friends muttered snotty things regarding me to her face, my mother rarely quipped back in response.

Sumner, though, had stepped up to bat and swung even against the likes of Yvette Conan, and, in my book, he hit a home run.

Like I said—incredibly hot.

Sumner released me when we were out of view of the tennis courts and halfwayto the east pool, finally coming to a halt on the cobblestoned pathway behind the country club. I watched his back as his shoulders rose and fell with his breath, eyes coasting over where his hair brushed the collar of his teal uniform polo. He still clutched my suit jacket, wrinkled from his anger.

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” I said, allowing myself to show the barest tinge of amusement. “I didn’t know your puppy dog self could do more than just show your belly.”

Except teasing was not something Sumner wanted to hear. He whirled on me, eyes still flaming. “What is wrong with you?”

“Me?”

“You were going tostrip? Right there in front of everyone? Really, Margot?” He blinked several times, at an obvious loss with his parted lips and livid gaze. “This is exactly what your mother hired me for, isn’t it? To keep you from making impulsive decisions like taking your clothes off in the middle of the tennis court? Do you truly not thinkanythingthrough?”

The attraction that’d momentarily reared its head disappeared. “I wasn’t stripping.”

Sumner lifted my discarded jacket and looked pointedly at my unbuttoned vest and my dress shirt that still bared all the skin of my décolleté area.

“For your information, Idothink things through.” I began buttoning back up, feeling warm. “The second I undid the fourth button, they would’ve scattered. The lace of the top of my bra would’ve sent them running into the arms of their therapist. You cut in too quickly.”

Sumner shut his eyes. I stood there as he fought forthat unflappability, trying to console his frustration that’d brimmed over. It was clear he wasn’t familiar with giving into that feeling often, judging by the way tried to shake it off. I stared at him through it all, watching the livid line above his brow and the pinch of his eyes as they eventually softened.

His eyes opened, and he reached out, folding the distance between us in half as he draped my jacket over his shoulder. “I want to understand you,” Sumner murmured as he picked the jacquard fabric of my vest up, fingers beginning to button it back up. The heat behind my neck flared hotter. “Help me to understand you.”

This is why no one likes to talk to you, dear.Yvette’s voice was an ugly one in my head, and it circled relentlessly, paired with the sarcastic tone of her daughter’s.He just wants to inherit her parents’ company.Neither statement was new to me by any means, but neither had ever been stated so bluntly before. The words stacked upon everything else in my mind, causing the tower to teeter.

“Yvette said a man only wants a woman that looks like one,” I said, holding still as his attention was fully focused on his task. “I was going to show her how woman-like I am.”

“I thought you didn’t care about her opinion of you,” he returned. “That’s what you told her.”

Something in my chest hummed as he delicately fastened the final button of my vest, something that felt dangerous and new and quiet. “I guess I just wanted to prove to her what someone once told me. That it’s not clothes that make you ugly or pretty.”

Sumner dropped his hands but didn’t step awayfrom me. I wondered if he regretted ever saying such a thing to me. “And to see the look on her face,” he added.

My mouth quirked, just a little. “And to see the look on her face.”

Sumner’s eyes dropped to my lips as he noted the tiny lift, and a corner of his own raised in return. A ripple of something unknown stirred in my chest. He stepped back and replaced the distance between us, drawing a hand through his wind-tousled hair. Only then could I breathe again, lungs aching.

I looked around for the first time. We’d found ourselves truly off the beaten path, a long way to the east pool. Even though it was the beginning of summer, with temperatures that caused the water to beckon, most of the clubgoers opted for the pool on the westside of the facility. The eastside’s pool was smaller, and the kitchen didn’t deliver meals out to this wing.

“What department are you working in?” I asked, eyeing Sumner’s uniform as I took my suit jacket down from his shoulder. As my eyes roamed lower, I locked onto something sticking out of the front of his khaki’s pockets. “Is that sunscreen?”

He looked down as if just remembering and pulled out a small tube of sunscreen. “I stepped outside to make a phone call, and this lady…” Sumner trailed off, and for the first time, I noticed the hint of distress onhisface as he turned the sunblock over in his hands. “She was heading to the pool, and told me she wants me to put sunscreen on her back.”

The audacity of it, as well as the absurdity, nearlyhad my jaw dropping. “Did you tell her that the staff doesn’t do that?”

“She said she’s had people do it for her before.” Sumner, gazing down at the sunscreen, appeared like a little kid who dreaded something they had to do. It reminded me of all the times I’d been forced in that same position before, not given a choice, not wanting to get in trouble for saying no.

The switch inside me flipped once more. “Where is she?”

Sumner became even more distressed. “It’s okay, Margot, seriously.”

I wadded the jacket up, fingers digging into the ball and, if it’d been flesh, they would’ve cut deep. “You are my secretary, not anyone else’s.Mine. You’re not going to rub sunscreen on some middle-aged lady because she wants to get felt up by a hot guy in his twenties.”

I’d begun walking toward the pool, but Sumner caught my upper arm, fingers firm against the paper-thin material of my shirt, and pulled me to him. His golden eyes were filled with a complicated emotion. “This is probably the sort of thing I was hired for,” he said. “Keeping you from ripping some old lady’s head off.”

---