The Boss's Christmas Proposal

All around them, it was as if everyone—the laborers, the staff—had decided it was time to stop whatever it was they were supposed to be doing so they could witness the moment.

The pampered heiress had arrived.

Early.

“Here.” Shin appeared, pushing a luggage cart that Greg knew he’d had to retrieve from the mezzanine level, where they were all being stored until the hotel opened for guests. “This might be useful.” He shot Greg an amused glance as he stopped beside Kimiko Taka.

The girl swept a slender, ivory hand over her shoulder, pushing aside her thick tumble of deep brown hair. She turned, not even needing to beckon before Marco hurried into action, deftly stacking her luggage onto the cart, and treated Greg to her rear view.

The hair—he’d seen it photographed in newspapers and gossip rags looking any number of ways from straight and nauseatingly pink, to black and rainwater slick—was now swirling down the back of her white fur jacket in a mass of ringlets that almost reached her waist. But it was the minuscule skirt beneath the hiplength jacket that damnably caught even Greg’s attention.

Tasty.

The word was printed right across her derriere, outlined in sparkling pink stitching.

He felt a pain settle between his eyebrows. Taka hotels were all about taste. Good taste. “Ms. Taka.”

The girl whirled on her impossibly high heels to face him. “Yes?”

“Dōzo yoroshiku.” Despite his misgivings about her, he greeted her with the faint bow that had become automatic for him in the month since he’d been at the Taka. “I am Greg Sherman, the—”

“—the general manager here at the Taka,” she finished in slightly accented English. “Yes. My parents speak most highly of you.” Despite the fact that she was the Japanese-born one here, she eschewed the usual practice of returning his circumspect bow and stuck out her hand instead in a thoroughly Western greeting. “How do you do?”

“You’ve taken us by surprise, actually.” He clasped her hand briefly. Long enough to feel how slender her fingers were, how cool her hands were and how electricity shot up his arm at the contact. He released her and reached for the strap of the rescued case that she’d looped over her shoulder. “We didn’t expect you until next week.”

Her hand brushed against his again as she released the strap. Her deep brown eyes were sparkling. “Better early than late, surely?” In a smooth move, she slid her jacket off her shoulders to reveal a shimmering white, silk blouse through which a pink, lacy bra was plainly visible. Before she could toss the jacket on the mountain of geometrically stacked luggage, half a dozen hands reached out to catch it, earning a seemingly delighted little laugh from her. “In any case, this is quite a welcoming committee.”

“Who have other matters to attend to,” Greg said pointedly. Looking over her head was easy because, even with the stilettoheeled boots, the top of those bouncing brown curls didn’t reach his shoulder. He gave Marco a look, but the young man was evidently not ready to give up his impromptu bellman duty.

“I can take these to Ms. Taka’s room,” he offered.

Kimiko looked over at Marco. “Oh, would you mind?” She gave him a smile that could have melted a glacier. On Marco, it was devastating. Greg could practically see the maintenance worker dissolve into a puddle.

His annoyance deepened. “Focus that attention on the pallet, Marco. I expected it to be moved the first time I told you.”

The young man flushed at the rebuke. “Sorry, Mr. Sherman.” He moved from hoarding the gleaming-bronze luggage cart to the pallet jack. He ducked his chin as he maneuvered the pallet away from them. “Ms. Taka.”

Kimi smiled gently at the remorseful man. For pity’s sake, it was just a stack of chairs amid a thoroughly chaotic and unfinished hotel lobby. “It was very nice meeting you, Marco.”

His smile was sudden and beaming. “You, too, Miss Taka.” He pushed the contraption bearing several high stacks of chairs across the concrete.

The construction noise around her suddenly seemed loud, and Kimi sucked in a quick breath before turning back to Greg Sherman.

He did not look anywhere near as kind as the departing Marco. Even though she had done her research about the man in her few weeks before leaving Chicago, she was unaccountably nervous now that they were face-to-face.

Sadly, the black-and-white head shot that had accompanied his vitae in Helen’s files had done little to prepare her for the real thing. The photo had only shown a severely conservative man with darkish hair and light eyes who looked as if he rarely smiled.

Helen had told Kimi that she had hand-picked Greg Sherman to be the general manager of the Kyoto location, and Kimi had been surprised, because her stepmother usually liked people with a little more…life…to them.

But Greg Sherman, in the flesh, was definitely fuller of life than that bland photo had been. Oh, his hair was conservatively short, but the medium brown waves looked like they would escape over his brow given the least provocation. The deep brown suit he wore was well-tailored if not exactly cutting the edge of male fashion, but she supposed it was the ideal choice for a man helming a new first-class hotel.

Then there was the fact that just the brief graze of his hand had left her skin tingling.

She reminded herself that this was her boss. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“I am sorry to have caused a distraction,” she said sincerely. “It is good to be here.”

The light eyes of the photograph were actually a very distinctive, very pale shade of green. No bluish tinge. No hint of brown. Just a pale green surrounded by a defining black ring that made them all the more startling, and they were looking her over without a single hint of expression.

He did not even acknowledge her sentiment. Instead, he eyed the cart. “Is this all of your luggage?”

She was not certain if he had stressed the all or not. But she was absurdly grateful that she had decided to leave a few things back in Chicago, or there would have been more. Still, she might as well admit to the obvious. “I never did learn the art of packing light. And yes, this is all.”

He did not return her smile. “Mrs. Taka-Hanson told me that you’ve asked to stay on-site. You’ll want to settle in.”

She would not lose her good humor just because the man had the personality of a plank of oak. A very tall, very broad in the shoulder plank of oak. “Yes, if only to get this stuff out of the lobby.”

He seemed to let out a faint sigh. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting, I’ll get your room key.”

Kimi looked past him to the wide, curving sweep of the reception desk. She imagined that beneath the thick plastic and protective paper covering nearly every surface, it would be as spectacular as the one at the Taka San Francisco. She had heard that things were a little behind here, but she had expected the hotel interior to look a little more…finished. “Is the rest of the hotel in such—” she hesitated for a moment, trying to find a suitable word that would not sound as if she were being judgmental.

“—chaos? Today seems somewhat more so than usual.” For an infinitesimal second—so brief that she would later wonder if she had imagined it—his gaze dropped from her face to her toes, hitting all points in between. “Our computer network isn’t operational yet,” he added. “It adds a fresh dimension to the challenges our team’s already facing.”

The explanation was smooth. Almost smooth enough that she could brush away the idea that she was a contributing factor to his chaos. Almost.

So, Mr. Sherman figured he had her number, did he?

She swept away the sinking disappointment and lifted her chin a little, giving him the same kind of direct look that she had learned at her father’s knee. “Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be here.” She rested her hand on the cool bronze of the luggage cart and smiled with as much good humor and grace as she had learned from her stepmother. “As you can see, I come hoping to be prepared for anything.”

He remained unimpressed. “Shin.”

The slender man who had brought the luggage cart snapped to attention.

“Arrange for Ms. Taka’s things to be taken up to the Mahogany Suite.”

“Right away.”

Kimi retrieved her jacket and draped it over her arm, smiling at the man as he guided the cart across the concrete, before it was handed off to two other younger men. She was not surprised. She recognized Shin Endo from his photo, too, and it seemed unlikely that the security director for Taka Kyoto would concern himself with bellman duties.

Speaking of which. She hurriedly fell into step behind Greg, who was striding toward the reception area. “Have all the staff positions been filled now?” Three weeks ago, when she had pretty much begged her father not to have her drawn and quartered for dropping out of school, the staff roster here had been only partially filled.

“No.” His answer did not invite further inquiry and she did not know whether to be delighted or aggravated. Yes, she knew she was coming in at a very junior level. Helen had made that more than clear when she had told Kimi what she could expect once arriving in Kyoto. But did that mean he could not discuss even some basic matters with an interested staff member, junior or not?

He slapped a thick folder down on the long, curving desk and walked around where it very nearly met the opposite and inner curve of an open staircase. Even behind the chest-high reception desk, Greg looked ridiculously tall. More like an American quarterback than an urbane hotel manager. That detail also had not shown through Helen’s black-and-white photo.

Kimi dropped her jacket onto the desk and the thick plastic covering the wood crinkled. “How many employees live here on-site?”

He did not look up from whatever it was he was focusing on behind the desk. “Not many. Will you need more than one key?”