Читать книгу The Boss's Christmas Proposal - Allison Leigh - Страница 9

“No, Bridget, don’t worry about it. Last thing we need is a flu bug being spread around the hotel. Stay home, and take care of yourself.” Greg disconnected the call and stared at the mess that had accumulated in only one day without his assistant.

God knew what shape the desk would be in by the time Bridget recovered.

He exhaled roughly and picked up the hotel phone to dial Human Resources. They’d have to assign someone temporarily since it now appeared that Bridget would, at the very least, be away for several days. “I need a body who can manage to answer basic correspondence and can keep me on schedule without requiring my constant babysitting,” he told the girl who answered. “And I need them immediately.”

“We’ll send someone over to your office right away, sir.”

“Thank you—” What was the girl’s name? She’d come on board yesterday. Before Kimiko had set her sexy booted toe on the property. He grimaced. Focused harder. A redhead from Australia. “—Sheila.” He nearly pounced on the name, feeling oddly victorious.

“My pleasure, sir.”

He hung up again and went into the bathroom adjoining his office to finish shaving, which he’d been doing before Bridget’s call interrupted him. Then he grabbed a fresh tie from the spares he kept in the closet and flipped it around the collar of his unfastened shirt. If he hadn’t spent the entire night working in his office, he’d be taking care of these matters in his room.

From the small television in his office he listened to the international news. His phone buzzed again, and because he had no Bridget and no fill-in for her yet, he went out to answer it. “Sherman.”

“Don’t you sound so intimidating, honey.” The female voice was bright and cheerful and sounded as if she were right next door rather than back in Berkeley, California, where his mother lived in the house he’d bought her two years earlier. “How’s my little boy?”

He hit the speaker button and turned down the volume on the television. “All grown up, Mona.” Which was more than he could say for his mother. “What’s wrong?”

She laughed a little too heartily for a little too long. “Nothing has to be wrong for me to call my son.”

Theoretically that was true, Greg knew, but experience told a different tale. “Okay, so how are you? You’re taking your blood pressure medicine like you’re supposed to?” He started buttoning up his shirt.

Through the speaker her exaggerated sigh sounded even more false. “I’m fine. Actually, I have good news.”

He paused. Looked at the phone warily. “Oh?”

“Now, don’t go sounding like that,” she warned in a rush. “I’m just going on a little vacation, and I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t call and worry when I wasn’t home. Europe! Isn’t that the most exciting thing? You know how much trouble it was last year to get my passport—my goodness, it never would have come through if not for you—and now I’m getting to use it.”

The passport had been needed because she’d insisted on visiting him in Düsseldorf, where he’d been managing an aging grande dame of a hotel. But once there, she’d hated Germany and had flown home early. He hadn’t been sorry to see her go. She was his mother, and he wanted her well. But close they were not.

He flipped up his collar and worked on the last two buttons. “Where in Europe?”

“Oh, we’ll go where the spirit moves us.”

He sat down on the corner of his desk. “We?” he prompted cautiously.

“I’m not very likely to go alone, am I?”

He rolled his head around on his suddenly tight neck. “Who is he?”

“Who says it’s a he?”

Because it always was. He kept the thought to himself and waited. Fortunately, it didn’t take long. His mother was a flighty creature who couldn’t keep two cents in her pocket at any one time, but she was at least pretty honest about it.

“His name is Ralph,” she finally said in a rush. “Can you believe that I’ve fallen in love with a man named Ralph? Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a perfectly fine name, just a hair old fashioned. Which is a good description of him, you know. Old fashioned, I mean. We met at the grocery store. He caught my grapefruit. They’d dropped through the bottom of my bag. He rescued my fruit and then, oh, honey, he just rescued my heart. What can I say?”

Greg pinched the bridge of his nose. “When is this vacation supposed to occur? What about your job?” Her latest was as a clerk in a bookstore. Not that she needed the money, considering that Greg had been supporting her for years. But her history had proven that when she was working, Mona had a much easier time staying clean and sober. “You haven’t been there long enough to merit vacation time.”

“Oh, them,” she dismissed airily. “Stuffed shirts. I should have known it when they told me what to wear to work.”

His brain flashed back to Kimiko Taka. Something it had been doing too often in the past twenty-four hours.

Just because he’d told Kimiko what to wear didn’t mean he was a stuffed shirt. He was the general manager, for God’s sake. He was responsible for the image they presented. As a Taka, she ought to appreciate that fact. It was his problem he couldn’t get the girl out of his head.

He focused on his mother. “In other words, you’ve already quit your job.”

“No matter,” she said swiftly. “I’ll find another.You know that.”

That was true enough. Mona Sherman had never had difficulty finding jobs. She could charm employment out of anyone. It was keeping them that had always been her challenge. He knew he could spend an hour arguing with his mother about the wisdom of her actions, or he could save himself the breath, since his arguments had never had any impact in the past. It was just always his job to clean up the mess afterward.

“What’s Ralph’s full name?” He wrote it on the pad next to his phone. “Does he have an address?” He was somewhat surprised when she provided one. He’d half expected her to blithely impart that Ralph had already moved in with her since the grapefruit rescue. “Take your cell phone in case something happens. I’ll call the company and make certain you’re covered for international calls.”

“Don’t be such a worrywart, Greggie. Now, I love you. Be sure you’re taking those herbs I sent you. They’ll keep your sex drive healthy.”

He rolled his eyes. He lectured his living-in-the-sixties mother on taking her blood pressure medication.

She worried about him being able to get it up.

“Call and check in,” he reminded, ignoring the herbal advice, much as he’d ignored the package. It might have made it through customs, but the box had been relegated, unopened, to the bottom of Greg’s closet.

“I’ll try,” she said before hanging up. Which, in Mona-speak, meant don’t count on it.

A soft sound behind him had him looking around.

Kimiko Taka stood in the open doorway of his office.

Yesterday she’d been the picture of brassy American boldness. Today she was the epitome of professionalism. Couture professionalism, anyway, he allowed, giving the cut of her closely tailored ice-blue suit an experienced eye. The just-from-bed tousled ringlets had been replaced by a sleek knot behind her head. Even her makeup was subdued. Her full bowshaped lips looked soft and pink and unadorned, but that just made her wide, almond-shaped eyes stand out even more.

Unfortunately, she was no less attractive today than she had been yesterday. If his mother could see into his head, she’d realize that he needed no help from some damn herbs.

As for what Kimiko Taka was doing standing in his doorway? He had a sinking feeling in his gut. “Don’t tell me HR sent you.”

She looked genuinely puzzled. “Um, okay. I will not tell you.” She lifted a folder at her side. “Grace asked me to come and have you sign off on these orders.”

He let out a breath. God. He was losing it. Of course HR wouldn’t have assigned Kimiko Taka to be his temporary assistant when he’d already told them to put her in sales. He waved her forward and took the folder from her to scrawl his signature where she indicated, then eyed her from across his cluttered desk. She wore a small hand-printed name badge on her lapel—a far cry from the engraved ones the rest of the staff already possessed. “You’ve obviously had your personnel orientation.”

“This morning.” She took the folder back from him. “It was very informative.”

He glanced at his watch. “You’ve already toured the hotel?”

“Well, no. We did not get that done yet. I will return there during my lunch break for the tour. Grace was anxious for me to start. Evidently two people in her department called in this morning with the flu.”

That made three staff members to bite the bug. Great. “You needn’t give up your lunch break for a tour.” Though he gave her points for being willing to do so. That is, if she’d actually follow through. Despite her impassioned speech after the staff meeting the evening before, he still questioned her commitment.

What did the girl want to work for, anyway? She was an heiress, for Christ’s sake. She should be a guest in hotels like this, not some junior underling.

“I do not have any other plans for my lunch break,” she said reasonably.

“How about eating?”

She looked at the tray sitting on one side of his desk that held the Western-style scrambled eggs and bacon that he’d never really gotten to. “Like you are doing?” She lifted the folder a little. “Thank you for the signatures.” She turned as if to go, but paused. “I hesitate to tell you this, but—”

He was a fair-minded manager, he reminded himself. Or he was supposed to be despite his desire for some space from the disturbing young woman. “What is it, Ms. Taka?”

She moistened her lips. “Your shirt is misbuttoned.” She smiled faintly and hurried out of his office. The hem of her skirt swayed slightly above her knees. Perfectly circumspect. Perfectly…perfect.

He forced himself to look away from the view she presented and looked down at his shirt and tie that he’d managed to forget all about.

She was right.

With a sigh, he began reworking the buttons.

Too bad he couldn’t seem to realign his unwanted reaction to her just as easily.

Kimi was still smiling when she made it back to the sales and catering department. Aside from the office that Grace used, there were two others; one set up as a consultation room, and the other—far more spacious—housed several desks in an open area. It was to one of these desks that Grace had assigned Kimi. It had started out as empty as Mother Hubbard’s cupboards, but, after just an hour, was now piled high with project files that Grace wanted her to quickly review so she was up to speed with the rest of the department members.

She left the folder on Grace’s desk and headed to her own considerable pile of work. There were three other associates in the room, though, huddled over a round table spread with charts. They looked over at Kimi when she entered, barely returning her smiling hello, and she stifled a sigh, making herself approach them anyway. “Hi. I am Kimi Taka.”

It was regrettably obvious that they already knew and had formed their opinions about her, too. It seemed that Greg’s expectations about her fitting in with the rest of the staff members were all too accurate.

One of the group, a young dark-skinned woman who looked around Kimi’s age, started to smile, but faltered at the fast looks she got from the others. But she still provided her name. “Tanya Wilson. Welcome to Kyoto,” she added in a slightly southern-sounding rush.

Kimi’s smile warmed a little in response. “Thank you.” She looked at the other two—a natty blond guy in a beige suit who looked about her stepbrother Andrew’s age, and a stylish woman who had probably been perfecting the art of looking down her nose in front of a mirror since she was five. Kimi stuck her hand out toward the snooty woman. “And you are…?” She lifted her eyebrows slightly.

The other woman did not quite have the nerve to ignore Kimi, though it looked like she wanted to. The handshake she gave, however, was limp. “Charity Smythe,” she supplied with a bored clip. “And this is Nigel Winters.” She spoke for the man, as if she did not trust him to speak for himself. “And as you can see, we’re in the middle of a discussion.”

Kimi wanted to swipe her hand down her skirt to wipe away the memory of that cold-fish handshake. Instead, she looked curiously at the charts on the table. Grace had already told her that the department worked as an ensemble regardless of who the lead person on a project might be. “Is this the Nguyen wedding?” She had been familiarizing herself with the details of the four-hundred-guest wedding to be held before Christmas when Grace had sent her to Greg’s office.

Tanya nodded. “The problem is—”

“—there is no problem,” Charity cut her off. “We’re just finalizing some minor details.” She swept up the floor charts and strode to the door. “Come along, Nigel. Tanya. We don’t have time to sit around all morning twiddling our thumbs.”

“Delightful meeting you,” Nigel said quickly, as if sneaking it in before Charity could stop him. Then like two scurrying rabbits, he and Tanya sped after the departing woman.

As far as Kimi could tell, Charity seemed rather misnamed.

Kimi went to her desk and pulled the top file closer. An hour later, she had read through everything. If the quantity of special events on the department’s plate were anything to go by, the Taka Kyoto was already proving to be a success.

Charity and crew had yet to return. She pushed away from the desk and started toward the coffee urn situated on a long counter that ran the back length of the room when Grace called her name. Kimi changed course and walked over to Grace’s door. “Yes?”

“I suppose your coat is up in your room?” She barely waited for Kimi’s surprised nod. “Run up and get it and meet me in the lobby. A car will take us to Osaka. I’d like you to sit in on a tour operator’s meeting with me. Bring the mayoral luncheon and the Nguyen wedding files along. We’ll review them on the drive.”

Pleased, Kimi quickly sifted through the files on her desk, found the appropriate ones and took the service elevator up to her floor though it was less conveniently located than the lobby elevators were. The twenty-first floor was as still and silent as it had been since she had arrived, though a slender, elegantly decorated Christmas tree had appeared just across from the elevator bank. She had not verified it, but she was certain that she was the only one on the floor. By placing her in a completely different location than any other staff members who lived on site, Mr. Misbuttoned Sherman was following true to form by pointing out that she really was not one of them.

And unfortunately, that particular sentiment was evidently more widely shared than Kimi had anticipated.

Within minutes, she had retrieved her coat, exchanged the project folders for her laptop inside her briefcase and was heading back down again. She hurried back to the lobby only to slow her pace decorously when she spotted Grace in conversation with Greg.

Not that she had expected otherwise, but his starched white shirt now looked very correctly buttoned beneath the dovegray tie he wore. She kept her gaze lowered deferentially as she stopped beside Grace; no one else need know that in doing so, her gaze was free to roam the undeniably perfect fit of Greg’s dark gray trousers. The only thing marring the lines was the hand he had shoved in one pocket.

Or perhaps mar was the wrong term.

She moistened her lips and looked away from the way the fine wool tightened across his hips.

“Mark my words, Greg,” Grace was saying. “The president of Kobayashi Media will find some reason to blow off the mayoral luncheon. Oh, there’ll be plenty of perfectly offered apologies and excuses, but I’ll bet you a week’s salary that he’s a no-show.”

“Excuse me.” Kimi interrupted the breath that Grace had stopped to draw. “Shall I see if the driver is ready?”

“Thank you, dear.” Grace did not look twice at Kimi.

The speculative glance that Greg gave her as she moved away, however, stuck in her mind throughout the drive to nearby Osaka, through Grace’s meeting and through the return trip back again.

By the time their driver left them at the hotel once more, Kimi still was not certain why Grace had wanted to include her in the tour operator’s meeting. But at the very least, it had been an interesting way to spend the morning, and it had been well away from the disturbing Mr. Sherman.

“I never realized how resorts and hotels vied for that sort of business,” she admitted to Grace as they returned to their offices.

“We’re all in it for a buck. Or, a yen—” Grace smiled “—as the case may be. Tourism is alive and well, even among—or particularly among—the high-end consumer that we court. The president of the local tour association is full of complaints that the Taka Kyoto is too cosmopolitan. Of course, he’s related by marriage to a local official who bitterly opposed the building of the Taka in the first place. Your presence there this morning was a not-so subtle reminder to them that while the Taka is cosmopolitan and international, its roots are nonetheless of Japan. Taka is an important name in this country, and not just because of the TAKA-Hanson corporation.” Grace patted Kimi’s shoulder and pulled open the door to the stairwell. “Don’t look so disappointed, dear.”

“I am not disappointed,” Kimi lied.

But Grace wasn’t fooled. “Of course you are.” Her voice echoed along with their footsteps. “You’d probably like everyone to forget who you are. To accept you purely based on your strengths and abilities.”

“Is it that obvious?”

Grace smiled slightly. “Maybe not obvious, but perfectly understandable. Everyone wants to be loved unconditionally.”

Kimi had never felt unloved by anyone who mattered to her. “Well-earned respect is what interests me,” she admitted.

They had reached the lower level. Kimi couldn’t help but look toward Greg’s office, but the door was closed.

“The fact that you realize respect has to be earned is to your credit,” Grace was saying, oblivious to Kimi’s furtive glances down the hall. “Whether I told you my reasons for wanting you with me or not, you represented the Taka name admirably this morning.”

Kimi skipped a little to catch up to her supervisor. “But I barely said a word.”

“You didn’t have to, my dear. They were all watching every move you did or did not make. How you greeted the other attendees, whether you were appropriately modest and deferential, whether you held to their highest ideals of good manners. And you did. You are a Japanese woman bearing a venerable name. They can find in you a suitable ‘face’ for the hotel, something that, for some, has been lacking.”

“My father would be surprised to hear that. He finds me distressingly Americanized.” She trailed after Grace into her office.

Grace’s smile widened. “Then perhaps you combine the best of both worlds. The drive was useful, as well. I’m confident that you know the details of these two events inside and out. And since Charity’s Japanese is still considerably less than perfect, I’m going to make you the point person for the Nguyen wedding.” Her gaze skipped past Kimi’s suddenly slack jaw. “Oh, good. Greg. I was hoping to catch you.”

Kimi barely kept herself from whirling around.

“What’s this about the Nguyen wedding?” he asked.

“I’m making Kimi the point person.”

Kimi wanted to cringe. Even after just those few minutes with Charity, she could well imagine the other woman’s reaction at being replaced at all, much less by Kimi. “Grace, I appreciate the confidence, but I have never—”

“Stop.” Grace waved her hand. “We’ll discuss it later. Just trust me when I warn you that, like Charity, you’ll spend most of your time answering a dozen inane phone calls from their wedding coordinator. A truly impossible man named Anton. He’s not French, however. He’s wholly American, and from all accounts, excruciatingly tiresome. Now go on. I need to bend Greg’s ear for a moment.”

Kimi half-expected Greg to voice his protest that she would be given any level of responsibility—even one merely to field a fussy wedding coordinator’s calls. But he didn’t, and she headed back to her desk. Tanya was on the telephone and looked to be taking copious notes, and Nigel was at the wide whiteboard that hung on one wall, writing entries in the calendar-style grid.

Kimi had no messages waiting for her, and she scrawled a note that she was taking a lunch break and placed it in front of Tanya, who glanced at it before giving an absent wave.

Kimi didn’t need lunch, however. She needed to finish her employee orientation. Namely, she needed to tour the entire facility. And now that she was point person on an actual event, it seemed even more important.

She took the wedding file with her, just in case she needed to make notes for herself, and went back to Human Resources. Unfortunately, the girl who was supposed to conduct the tour had gone home sick. Instead, Kimi was handed a detailed map with instructions to visit all the highlighted areas and sent on her solitary way.

With no better idea where to begin, Kimi decided to start from the ground floor and go up. Or, as the case was, two floors below ground level, where the soaring exhibition space sat hollow and silent except for the muted sound of power tools coming from somewhere nearby. She skipped the office floor since she had already seen most of it, as well as the main lobby level, and went up to the third floor where the first of the ballrooms were. There were two here, with a combined reception capacity of nearly six hundred. It was pleasing to see that the interiors looked fully completed.

She was standing beneath the enormous crystal chandeliers that hung from the grand ballroom’s ceiling when she felt the back of her neck prickle.

It was enough warning that she managed not to startle when Greg spoke. “They’re stunning. Ally Rogers had the chandeliers specially designed for the space. She was here last week overseeing their installation.”

Kimi’s grip tightened on the project folder, afraid he just might yank it out of her grasp. “All of the interiors that have been completed are stunning,” she agreed. She had never personally met Ally Rogers, but knew that the interior designer had stepped in to finish the San Francisco site when there had been problems with the original designer. She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth for half a second but still could not refrain from asking. “Are you following me?”

He gave her a sideways glance. “Is that what it seems like?”

“Do you ever answer a question directly?”

“I’m in Kyoto now.” The corners of his mouth kicked up ever so slightly, but it was still enough to make Kimi’s breath catch. “Where all direct answers are often distinctly…indirect. But to answer your question, yes. I am following you. I heard you were here on your own.”

Kimi waved the folded map. “Even I can follow a floor plan.”

He let her acerbic tone pass. “Your…Mrs. Taka-Hanson called me while you were out with Grace.”

“Checking up on me?” She might have expected that from her father but not necessarily Helen.

“She does have business with me here that doesn’t concern you.” His voice was mild, but Kimi still felt a flush burn through her skin.

She refrained, however, from asking why he had bothered to even tell Kimi about the call at all.

“I assured her that we were all doing our best to assimilate you into the fold as quickly as possible.” His voice was inscrutably smooth.

“I am sure she was greatly comforted.”

“Are you always sarcastic?”

She lowered her chin slightly. “My most humble apologies if you have found this to be true.”

“I think I prefer the Kimiko Taka who stares me in the face when she has something to say.”

She peered up at him through her lashes.

He made a muffled sound she could not interpret, and then he did slide the thick project file right out from her grasp.

Her lips parted, dismayed. “Please do not take it away from me, Greg—Mr. Sherman. I know the wedding budget is substantial and that I have no real experience with—”

He lifted his hand. “It is up to Grace to distribute her projects. I trust she knows what she’s doing.” Even though he did not sound entirely confident of it. “I was merely intending to carry it for you.”

“Oh.” Her lips slowly closed but suspicion quickly reared. “Like you would do for a guest?”

His lips twisted slightly. “I’d like to think it’s just habit to carry a lady’s books.” He nodded at the map. “What else is on the agenda?”

Bemused, she looked from him to the glossy page. “Um, the rest of the meeting rooms, I guess.”

“Let’s go, then. You can lead the way since you’re such an experienced floor-plan reader.”

“You’re coming with me?”