The Boss's Urgent Proposal

They stepped into Josh’s foyer a little more than an hour later and Olivia gasped with appreciation. Pale oak trimmed the three-tiered stairway that led to an open second-floor hall. Ceramic tile glistened beneath her feet. A sparkling chandelier hung from a glittery chain.

“Oh, gosh, Josh, your house is fantastic.”

“Thank you. I like it,” he said, taking her summer-weight jacket when she handed it to him.

“Did you do this yourself?” she asked, peeking around the corner at a comfortable room that was furnished in Southwest American decor. Earthy greens, hazy pinks and muted browns in the accent rug, sofa, and chairs came to life as soon as Josh turned on an overhead light.

“Gina helped. But the truth is I know what I like, and when I see what I like I…” He paused, and his face scrunched with an odd look before he slowly added, “I usually go after it. Not always, though, because some things aren’t meant to be. Or aren’t meant to happen.”

When he said the last, Olivia got the distinct impression he wasn’t talking about furniture anymore. For a fleeting second she worried that he had somehow caught on to the fact that she was unreasonably attracted to him and was warning her off, but that couldn’t be it. He hadn’t in four years figured out she had a crush on him. It was a stretch to think he saw it now. Besides, she hadn’t succumbed to his magnetic pull yet. Her resolve was in place. He might be good-looking and sexy, but even if she loved him to pieces, he didn’t love her. She was done pining over unrequited love.

But as he led her from the homey living room, through a formal dining room and into a cheerful kitchen decorated with a red-and-white tablecloth, curtains and chair pads, Olivia had second thoughts about her resolution. In fact, being in the room felt downright spooky. All her girlhood she had dreamed of a kitchen exactly like this one, and though she hadn’t precisely envisioned the living room, she loved it. She could live in this house as comfortably as he could, and that seemed to point out that they were more alike than they realized and might even be a sign that they were made for each other.

She stopped that conclusion. Immediately. Her decision was final. The man didn’t love her. She needed to go. She was going. There was a big, wide wonderful world that she had missed while longing for him to notice her. She wasn’t missing another minute of it.

“So, is there anybody expecting you in Florida?”

“Oh, my gosh! Yes. My mother,” Olivia said. “I need to call her and let her know I won’t be arriving tomorrow.”

He smiled. “My thought exactly. Why don’t you use the phone in the den while I see if I can find something to make for dinner? If I can’t find anything, I’ll order out for pizza. Anything special you like on your pizza?”

“No. I’m sort of a cheese-and-sauce girl. Nothing fancy for me.”

“You don’t even like pepperoni?” he asked quizzically.

She grimaced. “I don’t mean to be difficult, but no. If you don’t mind, I hate pepperoni and I hate picking it off even more.”

Josh’s expression changed so rapidly, Olivia couldn’t follow it. “I hate pepperoni, too.”

They looked into each other’s eyes for about thirty seconds, and though Olivia knew she was digesting the significance of yet another thing they had in common, she also knew he was not.

He didn’t like her.

He wasn’t attracted to her.

Heck, he hardly realized she was a woman. She had to remember that!

“I’m going to go call my mom,” she said, then turned and fled the room. At least this time, she not only left as she planned, she actually made it away from him without him changing her mind.

She followed a logical path through the downstairs until she found his den. Walls paneled in rough wood greeted her when she opened the door. She walked to the utilitarian computer workstation, turned on a brass lamp and found the multiline phone under a stack of Hilton-Cooper-Martin marketing reports. Even at home the man worked.

Olivia got a tug on her heartstrings. He desperately needed someone to care for him, to bring love into his life, to make his world warm and filled with simple pleasures, and she wanted so much to be that person.

But she also knew she had wasted enough time. Josh didn’t want her. If she were truly the woman who could bring joy to his world she would have figured out a way to do it in four years.

“Hello, Mama?” she said, when her mother answered the phone. “It’s Olivia.”

“Oh, Liv, thank God it’s you,” her mother said, and though Olivia had heard that nickname a million times it suddenly struck her that only her mother ever used it. But, tonight, Josh had. “When you didn’t call from your hotel, we were worried sick that something happened.”

“Well, something did happen,” Olivia said, leaning back in Josh’s office chair and twisting the phone cord around her finger. “Since my job doesn’t really interface with anyone else’s, and they haven’t found a replacement for me yet…”

“Oh, my Lord, you’re staying aren’t you?” her mother said, sounding discouraged. “Liv, honey, I thought—”

“It’s not what you think,” Olivia said, interrupting her mother in a rush. “I’m staying the weekend. I’m going to explain my job to Josh and tell him where to find things, so he can train a replacement. We might have to go into the office tomorrow,” she said, realizing that unless she actually showed him her filing system Josh would never understand it. “But then I’ll be on my way.”

“Good. Good,” her mother said, her tone indicating that she was trying to be understanding and supportive.

“Mama, don’t worry,” Olivia said to alleviate her mother’s fears. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

“It isn’t that I don’t think Josh is a nice guy. When I met him at your company picnic, I thought he was a great guy. A very sweet, polite boy who seemed to focus too much on work. But, Liv, you have to start thinking about yourself and you have to stay in the real world. Remember what happened to me?”

Olivia bit back a sigh. “Yes, Mama.”

“After your father died I waited ten years for Greg Ruppert to marry me, but he never did. And two weeks after I came to my senses and broke up with him I found the right man. I’ve not only been happy as a clam since then, I’ve found peace, and joy, and a purpose in life.”

“I know,” Olivia said softly, realizing it was true.

“And I honestly believe your right man is just around the corner,” Olivia’s mother continued. “I can feel it. I can feel it in my heart and soul in the way only a mother can feel these things. I just know you’re about to find your real Prince Charming.”

At that, Olivia smiled. Her mother relied on instincts and what she called lessons from history to make some fairly accurate predictions. If Karen Brady Franklin said she believed with her mother’s heart and soul that Olivia was about to meet her Prince Charming, then Olivia also believed it was true. She felt a surge of regret that Josh Anderson wasn’t the man of her dreams, but put that feeling down as old habit. She had wanted him to be the man of her dreams for so long, it was hard not to think of him in that context, and she supposed that was really what her mother was worried about. She was afraid that Olivia wouldn’t be able to break the ties. And if she didn’t she would miss out on her real destiny.

Looking at the big picture of her life, and the four wasted years, Olivia had to agree that was probably true. Even if her Prince Charming was around the corner, if she didn’t get away from Josh Anderson, Olivia would never see him.

“Thanks, Mama,” Olivia said. “I’ll call before I leave.”

“Okay, Liv. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mama.”

Olivia hung up the phone with the satisfied, warm feeling she always got after talking with her mother. Though Karen Brady Franklin was definitely opinionated and didn’t hesitate to give voice to her ideas or render her predictions, she had never been a pushy mother. She listened with warm-cookie sympathy to Olivia’s troubles in grade school. She taught Olivia to stand up for herself in middle school. And in high school she taught her to like herself exactly the way she was and to choose the career Olivia wanted, not the one offered by the expert of the moment.

She guided, she didn’t dictate. She listened. She led by example. She let Olivia make her own mistakes and then helped her pick up the pieces with a lesson learned. In Olivia’s eyes she was the perfect mother. And she was also the reason Olivia wanted to have kids herself. She wanted to give the benefit of the same experience to her own child. Both Olivia and Karen knew that if Karen hadn’t waited around for Greg Ruppert, she would have had more children upon whom to lavish love, but because she had waited Olivia didn’t have a sibling. Olivia lost out, Karen lost out. One more reason to heed the advice of a woman who had suffered losses waiting for a man who didn’t want her.

“So, did you talk to your mother?” Josh asked as Olivia stepped into his spotlessly clean red-and-white kitchen.

“Yeah. You were right. She had been a little worried, but I explained the situation to her and she won’t be expecting me or a phone call for a few days.”

“Always good to keep your mother informed,” Josh said. “I ordered pizza. It should be here any minute.”

She smiled. He smiled. For Olivia things began to fall comfortably into place. As long as she remembered her mother’s life, her mother’s warnings, she would get out of this with both her dignity and her sanity.

As they ate, Olivia began to detail her duties, most of which Josh had once performed himself but had forgotten, given that he hadn’t had much contact with them in at least two years. She rattled off a list so long, Josh began to get nervous. But when she described her system of filing documents in her computer and also the hard copies in the cabinets that lined the wall beside her cubicle, Josh felt light-headed. This time he couldn’t blame the feeling on being unreasonably attracted to Olivia. This time the feeling was overwhelm.

He didn’t realize how much work she did and wondered if he wasn’t going to have to replace her with two people.

“Wow,” he said, leaning back on his chair and tossing his paper napkin to the table. “I’m never going to learn all this stuff in a weekend.”

“Sure you will,” Olivia said confidently. “In fact, while I was on the phone with my mother I realized we could make this a lot easier if we just do the training in the office tomorrow. That way I can show you the filing cabinets, show you what’s in the drawers, show you the color-coding system for the different grocery stores, show you the document system in the computer.”