Christie Ridgway: Bachelor Boss

“Relax,” Carlo said. “It’s just me.”

“Yeah. Just you,” Lucy repeated.

Just the man she’d dreamed about since she was fifteen years old.

She managed to get decent once more, but was still struggling with the top buttonhole when her new boss made a brotherly noise and moved in as she continued to fumble. “Here. Let me finish it up.”

He was wearing an easy, indulgent smile as he pushed her hands away and reached toward her collar. For an instant, his fingertips brushed the hollow at her throat and she jerked in helpless reaction, her pulse pounding against his touch. He froze, his fingertips now only making contact with button and fabric.

Still, his nostrils flared and she could smell her perfume rise around them, the scent surging stronger as her heart continued to hammer in her chest.

He cleared his throat. “Goose,” he said. “You smell like a girl.”

A nervous bubble of laughter escaped her throat. “Carlo, I am a girl.”

“Right. Yeah.” He made quick work of the stubborn top button, then retreated toward the doorway. There, he shoved his hands in his pockets and cocked his head, studying her. “Actually, you’re more than a girl. You’re a woman.”

“You noticed?” If it hadn’t been obvious before, this little comment made it crystal clear that the kitchen-kiss two years before hadn’t even rated his attention.

He leaned one shoulder against the jamb and gave her a half smile. “Now I think I’ll find it hard to forget.”

The deep note in his voice stroked like a brush down Lucy’s spine, bumping against each vertebrae. Her tongue swiped at her dry bottom lip and she watched his eyes follow the movement.

Suddenly, her heart sped up again, her pulse fluttering against the place at her throat that still throbbed from his accidental touch. Was…was Carlo looking at her with a masculine kind of interest?

She took in the gleam in his deep-set, dark eyes and then tried to find more clues in the aquiline line of his masculine nose and the sensual curve of his full mouth. He was a beautiful man, every artistic angle of his face a testament to his Italian heritage—but she couldn’t read his expression.

She licked her bottom lip again.

Carlo abruptly straightened, his gaze dropping away. “So, uh, Goose—”

“ Lucy .” And didn’t that answer her question? No man would feel the least bit of lust for someone he thought of as “Goose.” Disappointment coursed through her, even though she’d taken the job for this—to finally accept there was no mutual heat between her and Carlo.

No heat. No hope.

“So, Lucy , I suppose I should get back to work.”

With an inward sigh, she followed him with her gaze as he strode down the hall, admiring the way the European cut of his pale blue dress shirt accentuated the muscled leanness of his back and waist. She didn’t try to find a word for how she felt about the curve of his tight, masculine behind in the dark slacks.

Three weeks, Lucy. Three weeks to look, but nottouch. Three weeks to accept, finally, that’s all you’llever have of him .

A few minutes before five, she was congratulating herself on making it through the could-be-disastrous initial day, when a messenger appeared with a high-priority package for Carlo. Fine, she thought, she’d deliver the slender cardboard envelope and bid him good-night at the same time. Then her first day on the job, and her first day with Carlo, would be behind her.

At her tap on his door, he called her inside. This time he was sitting behind his desk, file folders in front of him, his computer screen angled just so.

He looked up as she entered. “Lucy. Just the person I’ve been thinking about all afternoon,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

Her fingers squeezed the package. “Me?” The view behind him was still awe-inspiring, but she couldn’t drag her gaze away from his face to appreciate it. He’d been thinking about her?

“I realize I don’t know what brought you back to San Diego.”

“Oh.” What to say? Dissatisfaction with the jobs she’d found in the accounting industry she’d spent four years preparing herself for? It made her sound so flighty. So, well…ditzy and goosey, especially when every Sutton sibling had gone straight from graduation to climbing the ladder of success in the corporations they’d joined right after college. “Of course, you know I’m from here, and…”

“Your father mentioned something to mine about disappointments in Phoenix?”

She shifted her weight on her feet. “Well…um…” Her face was heating up again and she didn’t know what more to say. While she knew the jobs in Phoenix had not been quite right for her, would Carlo, like her family, only see her as unable to settle down?

“I got to thinking you might have had man trouble.”

Lucy blinked. Man trouble? The only man trouble she’d had recently was the trouble she had forgetting about Carlo and the feelings for him she couldn’t seem to stamp out. “It’s not—”

“I admit that until just a couple of hours ago I was still picturing you at about fourteen years old in my mind. Banged-up knees, a mouthful of braces and all those white-gold curls.”

Terrific. While she’d been tossing and turning at night, wondering what it would be like to be with him, his lingering image of her was something that sounded horribly close to Pippi Longstocking.

Carlo cleared his throat. “But now I see that you’re all grown-up. Like I said earlier, a woman.”

Hmm . That sounded more interesting. And even more interesting than that was the way he was staring at her mouth again. Could it be…?

Uncertain, Lucy held her breath as the atmosphere in the room seemed to ripple with a new, tingly charge.

He jerked his gaze from her mouth to her eyes. “And I was thinking maybe you’re here because someone broke your heart.”

“Oh. No. N-not yet.” Because so far she hadn’t quite accepted she could never have Carlo. And now, with this new shimmer of tension in the room, she was even less sure it could never be.

No, Lucy. No! Don’t delude yourself!

Listening to her common sense, she interrupted the drift of the conversation by sliding the priority envelope in front of him. “Anyway, this just came for you. It looks important.”

When he picked it up, she turned. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carlo.”

“Wait.”

She didn’t spin back around. “It’s after five.”

“But we’re old friends, and I was thinking that since you’re doing me the big favor of filling in—” His voice broke off. “ Damn .”

Curiosity reversed the direction of her feet. “You were thinking…?”

He was staring down at what looked to be a pair of tickets in his hands. “I was thinking, no, I know ,” he said, grimacing, “that I could use a date for tonight.”

Lucy swallowed. “Is there someone you’d like me to get on the phone for you? Tamara, or…?”

“You, Lucy.”

“Me?” She was beginning to sound like an echo machine.

Carlo was up and around his desk before she could run for the door. Not that she really wanted to. Not when he came close enough to do up her buttons again…or undo them.

The air was jittering with tension. And heat. Or maybe that was just her. No. No . Carlo was standing over her and she saw his nostrils flare as he took in another breath of her perfume. He was looking at her in a manner that surely he wouldn’t waste on Pippi Longstocking.

You smell like a girl .

I see that you’re all grown up .

A woman.

“So will you go with me to a party tonight?” he asked.