The Boss's Urgent Proposal

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.”