Читать книгу The Boss's Urgent Proposal - SUSAN MEIER, Susan Meier - Страница 11

When his gaze stayed on her mouth, Olivia realized Josh was going to kiss her and her breath froze in her throat. Her blood tingled through her veins. Her knees weakened. For four long years she had been waiting for this man to kiss her. Now that the moment had arrived, she savored every second of the exquisite torture of anticipation, stunned that her dreams were about to come true.

But when he returned his gaze to hers, she also saw from the look in his eyes that he was confused about why he wanted to kiss her—confused enough that he didn’t follow through. He didn’t kiss her. He took two paces back and spun away so quickly, Olivia felt a breeze.

“Well, I guess you can handle putting these sheets on by yourself. Good night, Olivia,” he said as he bent to grab the old linens from the floor, and nearly sprinted out of the room.

Olivia collapsed on the bed, wondering what the heck had just happened. He seemed to be seeing her differently, but since he didn’t follow through it also confirmed that he was fighting the fact that the way he saw her was changing. Which meant she couldn’t let the near miss with kissing cloud how she felt about him or her decision to leave. She might have had twenty seconds of glorious anticipation, but for him that “almost kiss” was nothing more than a fleeting, confusing thought.

If she were a silly woman, she might be insulted that he was rebelling against viewing her as anything other than a loyal employee. But she wasn’t a silly woman. She was a realist, on her way to a new life and only detained in her old one because she didn’t want to leave any loose ends. It would be horrible if Josh called her for assistance a few weeks after she was gone, on a day when she was homesick, because she might be lonely enough to return. Then she would be right back where she started. She needed to teach him her job, so she could move to Florida knowing they would have no more contact. She wanted to go and not look back.

The next morning, Josh peered over his bowl of cereal at Olivia as she entered the kitchen. Though he had tried to cover his mistake, he wondered if she realized he had considered kissing her the night before. That in and of itself would have made facing her hard enough. But much to his consternation he had dreamed about her while asleep.

The dream, more than the near miss with kissing, was what really made this first encounter difficult, because in his dream Olivia was dressed in something filmy and sexy, close enough to touch, but always eluding him. That was the good part of the dream. The bad part, the part that woke him with shock and a feeling of bewilderment, was that she also told him that she was leaving him because he didn’t love her. Which was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

Actually it was wishful thinking. Every time they talked last night, first at her apartment, then at his house over pizza, he discovered there was more to like about her beyond her good looks, which were sufficient reason to grovel at her feet in most male circles. He could understand himself wishing she were interested in him. Any normal man would want this woman yearning for his affection. But given that she was leaving, it was fairly obvious that she wasn’t longing for his love, so the second half of the dream was pure fantasy.

“Hi, Josh.”

Glancing up, Josh swallowed hard. Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway with her voluminous hair pulled into a ponytail and her body encased in cute jeans and a fitted top, both of which were perfectly innocent. But when he looked at her, he imagined her dressed in the red filmy thing from his dream. In his mind’s eye, he saw the swell of her breast caressed by what appeared to be see-through chiffon. He saw the curve of her hip shift against the lightweight material. He saw the long length of her legs.

He would have been mortally embarrassed, except Olivia didn’t know about the dream and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Particularly since her chipper greeting proved she wasn’t holding that “almost kiss” against him.

“Hi.”

“You got any Frosted Flakes?” she asked, ambling into the room like they were best friends who always had sleepovers. As if she wasn’t troubled or titillated by the fact that they’d spent the night under the same roof.

“Turntable below the microwave. Bowls are in the cupboard by the sink.”

“Thanks.” She walked into the room, her ponytail swishing around her.

Josh rubbed his hands across his face as if he was attempting to awaken himself, but, really, he was stifling a groan. It was pretty damned hard to miss the fact that this woman was gorgeous. He blamed her conservative work wardrobe for his not seeing any of this before, but even that excuse only went so far. She never hid her hair, those eyes or that soft-looking skin. He had to have had his head in a cloud. God only knew what else he missed about her in the past four years. But that didn’t worry him as much as the fact that he couldn’t seem to be in the same room with her without having thoughts that were definitely inappropriate. Some even bordered on downright lusty.

“What time are we going in to the office?” she asked, bringing a bowl to the kitchen table.

Josh leaped out of his seat. “As soon as I shower,” he said, and chuckled a little nervously. “That’s why I just jumped up like that…I need to go shower.”

“Good.” She poured Frosted Flakes into the bowl. “You go shower and I’ll eat while I catch the morning news.”

“Good.” He began backing out of the kitchen. “Let me know if anything interesting happened while we were sleeping.”

For some reason or another that comment struck her as funny and she started to laugh. Josh took advantage of her preoccupation with giggling to get out of the kitchen, but also to remind himself that that was the kind of relationship they had. Buddies. Friendly coworkers. Gumbas.

Otherwise she would have noticed and reacted to the fact that he was only wearing a robe. Sure, it was a long, commonplace—all right, ugly—robe, but it was only one layer of material. She could have at least tried to peek around in an attempt to see if he wore other clothes beneath it. Instead, she acted as if she wouldn’t care if he were stark naked, sitting beside her.

He frowned. Now that he thought about it, that really rubbed him the wrong way. He might be older than she was but he wasn’t unattractive. Ignoring him shouldn’t be so easy. In fact, since she made it look like such a cakewalk, Josh had to wonder if she wasn’t somehow faking. Maybe the real deal was that she was attracted to him, but pretending not to be since he had never seemed to be attracted to her?

He knew that was reaching, but the truth was it felt out of balance to be this captivated by her when she didn’t even notice his handsomeness, his innate goodness or his sexuality. Women were always telling him he was handsome, or kind, or sexy.

Surely something about him appealed to her.

He considered the situation in the shower, while pulling on his jeans and sliding into dock shoes, and he decided he needed a test of some kind. He couldn’t come right out and ask if she was interested, but he could most certainly hint and see where that led them.

As he locked the house and, with Olivia, walked through the connecting garage, no good opportunity presented itself, and no obvious test popped into his mind. So in the car he asked, “Did you sleep well?” if only because he ultimately concluded that was at least a way to open the door of communication. If she said she hadn’t slept well and gave him a flirty little smile, he would know he wasn’t crazy.

But she didn’t even look at him when she said, “Hmm-hmm.”

“No restlessness?” he prodded, telling himself not to be discouraged because his first question was vague. This one would get much better results.

“No.”

Hmmm…

“No bad dreams?”

For this she did at least look at him. “Bad dreams?”

“Odd dreams, strange dreams,” he said, hoping she would finally get the drift so he didn’t have to buy a blackboard and spell it out for her. “Dreams you didn’t expect to have?”

“Josh, I’ve lived by myself for almost five years. I learned not to be afraid of the dark a long time ago.”

Okay, that was clear. She hadn’t been restless. She had slept well. She didn’t have any “dreams.” Maybe the person who needed the blackboard lesson was he. The woman wasn’t interested.

He pulled his car into his reserved parking space at the Hilton-Cooper-Martin Foods building. She didn’t wait for him to come around and open her door, further confirming that she didn’t see him as a gentleman friend from whom she expected courtesy, but as a former boss and an acquaintance.

All right. No big deal, he could handle this.

Though Josh had seemed peculiar all morning, when they got into the office building he calmed down, slipping into his work persona as if he had never left it. Olivia, however, started to feel strange. It had been a long time since she had worked on a Saturday and she had forgotten how peaceful and quiet the building was.

“Now, this is weird,” she said when they stepped into the elevator to go to his third-floor office.

“Oh, staying at my house where you have never been is perfectly normal, but coming to the office where you’ve worked every weekday for the past four years is suddenly weird.”

“You know what I mean.” She punched his arm lightly, and when her knuckles touched his solid flesh, she got another spark of recognition. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She had spent so much time ignoring him in his robe that she continued to pay as little attention as possible to him in the car and hadn’t noticed he was dressed casually. And he looked good. Darned good.

“No. I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s darker than normal, for one,” Olivia said, counting things off on her fingers to occupy herself and get her thoughts off his body. Especially off of how approachable and sexy he looked in more comfortable clothes. “And the whole place is quiet when it’s usually buzzing with people.”

The elevator door opened, they stepped out, and Olivia added, “And that makes it spooky.”

“I’ll protect you,” Josh said, but he rolled his eyes and walked away.

Olivia followed him to his office. He strode inside, flicked the switch for the overhead light and went directly to his desk. He sat on his tall-backed leather chair.

“You’re going to have to be the boss here, because I don’t know half the stuff you do. So, go ahead. Take the lead.”

Olivia stood uncertainly, halfway between her office and his. It was quiet. He looked different. Now their roles were reversed. Everything was off sync.

“If that’s how you feel, Josh, you’re in the wrong place to learn my job. My job’s out there.”

“Okay,” he said, and bounded out of his seat, as if her every wish was his command, confusing the situation even more.

Steeped in her own bewilderment, Olivia stood frozen in the doorway. Though Josh had reverted to a light tone, and though it had taken her twenty minutes to realize why he had been acting so strangely in the first place, she’d finally figured out what he was getting at in the car, because now she was feeling it, too. In these unusual circumstances they weren’t merely seeing each other differently, they were also gathering new information about each other, and those two developments were shifting them out of their comfort zone. He was having trouble relating to her because he was only for the first time seeing her as a woman. And though she’d always known he was a man, a very attractive, very sexy man, she realized that in this situation where the tables were turned, she would be relating to him in a different way, too. Which meant there was a very good possibility she would discover things about him she didn’t know.

Even as that piqued her curiosity, it also frightened her. What if he said or did something that made her like him again? No chance. If she could get beyond him begging her to stay, an almost kiss and ignoring his naked legs beneath a robe—while she fought off wondering if he wore anything on beneath—she could survive seeing a new side of his personality or uncovering a few pieces of his past.

“Let’s go then.” She pointed to her workstation, the cubicle in front of his office, turned and walked toward it. He happily followed her.

“This is my computer.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“I’m serious, Josh,” she said, but she giggled. Now that she was putting all this together, she had to admit this was the first different thing she had picked up on. The real Josh Anderson seemed to make a lot of stupid jokes. Unfortunately, she found most of them funny, which didn’t say a lot for the caliber of her sense of humor.

“If you don’t pay attention and we don’t wade through everything I do, I’m going to leave without you knowing all of my job.”

“Okay, I’ll be serious, too, because I know our time is limited and I’m going to respect your deadlines.”

“Good. Like I said, this is my computer. I have form letters in here for all the routine things you do. Like when you send information to the shareholders.”

“And all Hilton’s family members’ addresses are in there?”

“They’re the only shareholders.”

“Okay, that’s a good thing to know.”

“Here’s another good thing to know.” Olivia walked to the five filing cabinets beside her desk. “The first cabinet contains press releases and anything to do with public relations. The second cabinet holds advertising things. The third cabinet has family information and correspondence…otherwise called shareholder relations. The fourth cabinet is the special projects cabinet. These are hard copies and notes on the projects that you do for Hilton Martin personally. The fifth cabinet is interoffice stuff.”

“That’s fairly straightforward.”

“Well, before you say that, let’s open a drawer.”

She yanked on the top drawer of the first cabinet and showed him that press releases were broken down by category and filed by year and color-coded by store.

“I can handle that.”

She opened the second drawer and showed him that it was full of pictures that were broken down into hanging folders containing photos taken for distribution, advertising purposes, the annual report, and when something unusual or interesting happened. She then pointed out that each group of photos was categorized and color-coded by store. Each store had advertising photos, distribution photos, annual statement photos and general interest photos.

“We have this many pictures of the stores?”

“That’s only a one-year sampling.”

“We’re certainly stuck on ourselves, aren’t we?”

“Haven’t you ever wondered how and why we always had just the picture you needed when you needed it?”

He caught her gaze. “I thought I was lucky.”

Olivia giggled again, but quickly caught herself. “Okay. You thought you were lucky. Very funny.”

He shuffled his feet, seeming pleased that he could make her laugh. “I knew we took pictures. I knew we took a lot of pictures. I just didn’t know this was how you kept them.”

“Now you do.”

He nodded. “Now I do.”

When she finished explaining the contents of the drawers, Josh stared at her. “You did a lot of my work.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Not a clue,” she said, but inside she was secretly hoping he would offer her a huge raise to stay. She knew it was wrong, but she wished it, anyway, if only because the proposition would be a nice boost for her pride.

“I’m thinking that a regular secretary isn’t going to be able to do half this stuff, and at least for the first year or two I better take over some of it again.”

Because that was a very good idea, Olivia refused to let herself be disappointed that he hadn’t asked her to stay, mostly because she wasn’t going to stay. And her ego was fine. Her self-esteem was fine. She didn’t need his praise. “Probably.”

“Which also means I should get most of these files into my office.”

“We can move them now. We’re wearing jeans, and after tomorrow I won’t be around to help you.”

“Okay,” he said amicably, but Olivia noticed that he gave her another one of those odd looks he had been giving her since breakfast. With his dark eyes he reminded her of a sad puppy, and Olivia almost panicked, thinking that he was again feeling the sense of loss and was on the verge of asking her to stay. But not for purely professional reasons, as the request would have been a few seconds before when they were talking about how much of his work she did. Those sad puppy eyes turned everything around and made the request personal. Very, very personal. They seemed to be telling her he knew he would miss her.

I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to stay. Olivia repeated the quick litany in her head. Particularly since the only new thing she had learned about him was that he could make stupid jokes. And that wasn’t a basis for everlasting love. Or even changing one’s mind.

“Okay,” he said again, shaking his head as if to lose the melancholy mood. “But I only have one empty cabinet.” He took a handful of files from the first drawer. “So, today we can only move the public relations things. I’ll call maintenance before we leave and have them bring up two more cabinets. That way, we can work on this again tomorrow.”

Stifling a sigh of relief, Olivia said, “Good idea.”

They worked quietly while they carried files into his office and set them on his desk. But when all the folders were in four tall stacks, and he started handing them to her to organize in the cabinet behind his desk, the silence felt awkward.

Reaching for any topic to break the sad, oppressive mood, Olivia said, “You know, Josh, I’ve never heard the story of how you got your job.”

“My uncle Hilton came to my house and told me that he needed me.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t be impressed. He didn’t need me, but it took me a year to realize that because I never caught on to all of the coincidences. The real deal was that I was spending the weekend here in Atlanta with my mother…”