Page 17 of My Lucky Charm

I close the door as Dallas leads Gray away, and before he disappears into the kitchen, he glances over his shoulder back at me.

He looked back at me.

I must be blushing because when I turn, I find Raya standing there, glaring at me. “Are you going to be able to handle this?”

“Who? What? Of course. Pssh.” I wave a hand. “Piece of cake.”

Raya sets her face in that trademark Raya expression, eyebrows up, neck cocked, arms crossed.

I shake my head and point a finger at her. “Stop it.”

“You get attached to people, Eloise,” she says, and then a bit lower, she adds. “You cannot get attached to that guy.”

I know why she says this. It’s unprofessional. Everything Raya does, says, and thinks is the opposite of unprofessional.

Sometimes I feel sorry for my oldest sister. She’s absolutely brilliant in business, but her love life? Nonexistent. She could really use someone to help loosen her up.

“This is a job, Raya,” I say, matching her surly expression.

“A good job,” she says.

“I know that.”

“Maybe the best job you’ve ever had,” she says.

I eye her. “You don’t think I can do it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” I look away.

She takes a step toward me. “Eloise, you couldn’t be more wrong. I think you’re perfect for this.”

I look at her face and find only sincerity.

“You do? Really?”

She nods. “Yes. I can’t think of anyone better. Talking to people on his behalf, being a sort of buffer for him in awkward social situations. Showing him around the city you love.”

If she only knew that her words are like sunshine to me.

But then my shoulders drop. Raya is almost never complimentary.

At least not to me.

Mostly, I think she thinks I’m a first-class disaster. She doesn’t know how hard I worked at my last job.

Or how genuinely good I was at it. I planned events and kept Jay’s calendar and talked to all kinds of professional people. And I excelled at all of it. And I felt good because of it.

But my stupid heart got in the way.

“But . . .”

Ah. There it is.

“. . . if you get personally involved with that man, it all goes up in flames.”

“That man is so not my type. What would even possess you to say that?”

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