Love, Your Secret Admirer

Sarah smiled at him. “It’s okay. No harm done. I should know better than to stop in the hall.”

Gazing into Sarah’s eyes, Grant grinned and Matt’s pulse began to hammer. He rose from his seat and rounded his desk. He was halfway to Sarah’s workstation before he realized he had no clue what he would say, and no right to say anything anyway.

Grant stepped back. “I still should have been looking,” he said, then picked up his briefcase. “Would you tell Sunny to buzz me the second she gets in? I’m closing my door today. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

Sarah turned and walked to her desk. “Sure. I’ll be glad to.”

Grant stuck his nose in his newspaper again. “Great. Thanks.”

Matt stared at the scene, deciding he must have imagined anything flirtatious he’d thought he’d seen in the beginning of that mess. Not only did Sarah not look interested in Grant, but Grant didn’t look interested in Sarah. A swell of relief filled Matt’s chest, until he realized he really was jealous. And not just the I-wish-I-was-like-him kind of jealous. He was full-blown, man-woman jealous. And there wasn’t a darned thing he could do about it.

“Do you need something, Matt?” Sarah asked curiously and Matt recognized that he had been standing in his doorway, staring at her, for at least thirty seconds.

He looked at her beautiful red hair cascading around her and at her pretty green eyes. In that second, he knew that if the situation were right, he would be dating her. And it didn’t seem fair that he couldn’t.

But, fair or not, it was life. Not dating a subordinate was a rule made not to protect bosses, but to protect the people who worked for them. Because he would never, ever, do anything to hurt Sarah, Matt turned and walked into his office without a word. He would get beyond this. He had to.

But as the morning wore on and the parade of men continued, Matt began to get tense. He also noticed something else. Not one other executive in this company seemed concerned about dating a subordinate. True, none of them was Sarah’s immediate supervisor as Matt was. But they were still supervisors. And supervisors didn’t date subordinates! They all should be staying the hell away from her.

The flirting and silliness went on throughout the afternoon, and Matt’s irritation grew. The whole world seemed intent on thumbing its nose at rules Matt held sacred. He became more and more angry at the injustice of it, until he snapped at Carmella that night when she stopped in his office to deliver a copy of a confidential memo from the head of the company, Lloyd Winters.

“Sorry,” he said, then ran his fingers through his short hair, spiking it.

Carmella smiled at him. “That’s okay. It’s nearly eight o’clock,” she said, obviously referring to the fact that he was working late. Not only was the quarterly report due in six weeks, but also he did his staff review for Lloyd the first two weeks in September. “It’s been a long day for you.”

“Yeah. A long day made longer by the parade of men stopping by to flirt with my assistant.”

Carmella grimaced. “I’ll talk to her.”

“It’s not Sarah that’s the problem. It’s the guys coming to ogle her.”

Carmella studied Matt for a second and he felt his face redden as she smiled knowingly. “You’re not angry. You’re jealous.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” She took a seat on one of the captain’s chairs in front of Matt’s desk and grinned at him as if this were some sort of game. “So, what are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” he said, tossing his pencil to his desk, confused that he seemed to be the only reasonable person in this company since Sarah got her makeover. “In the first place, she’s my assistant. Asking her out is a sexual harassment suit wait to happen.”

“I don’t think Sarah would…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Matt said, interrupting her, deciding that the entire office had gone around the bend and there was no sense trying to persuade Carmella with an argument she wouldn’t understand. Particularly since he had a better argument up his sleeve. One she couldn’t dispute. “There are more considerations here than just the boss/assistant thing. For one, I’m not in a position yet where I could ask somebody to marry me.”

Carmella only stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

He stared back. “About what?”

“Oh, come on, Matt. I know you’re one of those people who likes to be prepared, but don’t you think it’s a bit overboard not dating a woman because you can’t ask her to marry you?”