Only with You (The Best Mistake 1)

Something she dusted off about once every…never. Not because Marnie wasn’t the silver set type. She totally was. The fancier and more antique, the better. But actually using the set meant getting it dirty. And dirty was not Marnie’s thing.

As Marnie poured the coffee and sliced an apple tart that was too perfect to be homemade, Sophie’s gaze caught on her father.

Oh no. Sophie knew her father’s “serious face” too well. Chris Dalton had apparently realized he was letting his daughter’s suitor off too easily.

“Uh-oh. Here we go,” Will whispered.

“Gray, what is it you do for a living?” Chris asked.

Gray cut a very precise bite of Marnie’s apple tart before responding, “I’m in the hospitality business. Hotel acquisitions, specifically.”

Chris leaned back in his chair and studied him. “So you’re a sales guy?” This was not a compliment.

“Sort of,” Gray replied.

Brynn set a hand on Gray’s arm. “He’s being modest. He’s the CEO and president of the company.”

“President, that’s not bad,” Chris said. “You must have a decent education behind you, then?”

“Dad,” Brynn said warningly.

“Yes, sir, I got both my bachelor’s degree and my MBA from Northwestern.”

“Mmm. Adequate. You probably got all the ‘wild’ out of your system in school? Ready to settle down and be a man?”

“Oh my God,” Sophie muttered into her coffee.

Gray set his coffee aside. “I’m not sure I was ever the ‘wild’ type, Mr. Dalton.”

“Shocker,” Will said as he helped himself to the rest of Sophie’s tart.

The table fell silent for several moments until Brynn broke the awkward quiet.

“Hey, Soph, how’s the job hunt going?”

Sophie closed her eyes briefly. Crraaaappp.

When she opened them, she wasn’t surprised to see her parents staring at her.

Brynn let out a distressed sigh as she read the situation. “They didn’t know.”

Sophie gave a sharp shake of her head.

“Sorry,” Brynn muttered. But the damage was done.

“Job hunt?” Marnie said, her voice two octaves above normal.

“Oh, Sophie,” her father said wearily. “You didn’t get let go, did you? In this economy, dive bars like Stimp’s…”

“It was Stump’s, Dad. I worked there for four years, how do you not know this? And no, I didn’t get fired. I quit.”

Somehow Marnie and Chris looked even more dismayed than when they thought she’d been fired.

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“Well…okay,” Marnie said slowly. “I can’t say I’m not relieved that you won’t be working at that…dump any longer.”

Marnie turned to Gray, whom Sophie had been carefully avoiding. She could imagine what she’d read in his eyes: Wow, whorish and unemployed.