The Boss's Christmas Proposal

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 The just-from-bed tousled ringlets had been replaced by a sleek knot behind her head.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.