SUSAN MEIER - The Boss's Urgent Proposal

“Sorry.”

He caught her gaze and gave her the sweet, sheepish smile that always made her melt. “You could salve your conscience and save my career if you would stay another week and help me train a new person.”

She shook her head. “Can’t.”

“You already have another job?”

She shrugged. “An interview.”

“We can reschedule an interview,” he said, as if he still had the right to plan her life, and Olivia straightened her shoulders.

“There is no we, Josh. This is an interview scheduled between me and a new company—”

“What new company?”

Josh had never been this curious about her life. She knew part of his inquisitiveness stemmed from his natural gift for digging into a situation and finding a way to work it to his advantage. But she also sensed something else. He stood in her empty living room, gazing at her boxes as if they were strange, wonderful things he should explore, and Olivia got the feeling something was wrong. She knew he regretted losing her. She knew he regretted being rude. But the poor guy seemed like he was going to have a stroke or something.

“It’s a law office,” she mumbled, answering his question.

He looked at her. He really looked at her…and smiled. Olivia genuinely believed it was the first time that he was seeing her as a person, not just an employee.

“You’re going to be a legal secretary?”

“That’s actually what I trained to be.”

His smile grew larger. “No kidding.”

She shrugged, keeping her eyes downward because she was weakening. Really, really weakening. She had fallen in love with Josh Anderson because he was a workaholic who wasn’t any nicer to himself than he was to the people around him. Olivia knew he needed somebody in his life who would smother him with affection. She had fallen in love with him because underneath all that Princeton business knowledge was a simple, nice guy who took great pleasure in the most common, ordinary things when he finally got around to noticing them. To him everything was special and wonderful, because in an odd way everything was new to him.

“You ever work for a lawyer?” he asked suddenly.

“Yeah. When I first got out of college.”

“I hear they’re awful.”

“I’m sure Ethan McKenzie will be thrilled to hear that,” Olivia said with a laugh, referring to Hilton-Cooper-Martin’s in-house counsel.

“Hey, Ethan can be a barracuda when he wants to be.”

She smiled.

Josh smiled.

“Just give me one week, Olivia.”

She shook her head, feeling the weight of her shoulder-length golden blond hair as it shifted around her. “I can’t.”

Josh tried to argue, but she held her hand up to stop him. “It’s not something you can fix. I don’t have electricity,” she said, then hit the switch to prove it. “I told my landlord I would be out today and I have to be out today. I have to find a hotel room for tonight. Forget about finding a place to stay for an entire week.”

“Stay with me,” Josh suggested as if it were the most simple, most obvious solution in the world, but heat shivered through Olivia.

Stay with him…at his house…All alone with him when she was weakening toward him again. Oh, that would be wonderful.

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?” Josh asked innocently.

Unless she wanted to confess the truth, Olivia knew she didn’t have an answer for him. He had the perfect argument and his next words proved it.

“I have a huge house. You would have your own bedroom and bathroom. And it would give me a chance to make everything up to you. Every insensitive, inconsiderate thing I’ve done in the past three…four years,” he said, correcting himself, “I could replace with something good. I like you, Liv. I feel terrible about the fact that I didn’t treat you better. And I want to fix this.”

Olivia couldn’t help it. She smiled. There was no way he could “fix” what had happened between them unless he married her. For a silly second she wondered how he would react if she told him that, but decided it wouldn’t be wise to mention it.

“I hope you’re not planning to spend this week trying to convince me to change my mind about leaving, because you can’t ‘fix’ the reasons I’m leaving.”

“Okay, so I’ll respect your privacy,” Josh said quickly. “I won’t ask why you’re leaving, I won’t try to get you to stay. I will keep to the letter of this bargain.”

Though she had already begun to weaken, she wavered even more. She did feel guilty about leaving at such a bad time. Not just because Josh was busy, but because everyone was busy. Before Josh was through he would have everybody working, helping to ward off the competition, saving the company from the new grocery store chain that was trying to infringe on their territory. While she, the one person who should have been there to support Josh and to pay back Hilton Martin for all the good things he had done for her, would be hundreds of miles away.

“I’ll get Ethan to write up an official agreement if it will make you feel better,” Josh coaxed.

But his proposal had exactly the opposite effect. All the girls in the office knew why she was leaving. They had helped her to forge her declaration of independence. They would laugh at her if she came back. Even for a week. Even to help him.

Especially if she came back to help him.

“I can’t.”

“What do I have to do to change your mind?”

Knowing Josh would see right through a lie and would also see a little too far into the meaning if she told him the truth, Olivia wrapped her arms around herself and turned away from him so he couldn’t look at her face.

“I already told everybody I was leaving. They had a party and a cake. I can’t just show up Monday morning.”

“So, don’t,” Josh said in his usual I-can-find-the-answer-to-anything voice. “Train me at night.” He snapped his fingers. “I know. Train me tomorrow and Sunday. That way if anybody sees you at the office, you can still say you’re leaving Monday.”

He had a point. And she did regret deserting him. And she did feel awkward about putting Hilton-Cooper-Martin Foods in a bind when there was so much work to do.

“Okay,” she said, but the minute the word was out of her mouth she regretted it because Josh gave her his beautiful smile again. And he was looking at her as if he really appreciated what she was doing. And they were about to spend at least a weekend in the same house, probably across the hall from each other. Undoubtedly staring at each other over Cheerios.

Boy, this didn’t feel right at all.

If anything, Olivia got the sudden, distinct impression she’d jumped from the frying pan directly into the fire.

Josh glanced around Olivia’s empty living room, desperately wishing she still had a chair, because the second she opened her door he felt he needed to sit. But without furniture in the room, he was forced to stand on legs that didn’t seem to want to support him.

Olivia had knocked him for a loop dressed in jeans and a cute little green top. With her blond hair hanging past her shoulder blades instead of pulled back in the usual ponytail or neat chignon, she didn’t look at all like a secretary, but a woman. For the first ten seconds he actually felt dizzy and sort of weak-kneed. He would have wisely sat for a bit to give himself time to get his bearings, but she didn’t have a darned chair!

“So,” he said, trying to sound casual and knowing he was failing. But it didn’t matter because he had accomplished the real goal of his mission. She had agreed to help him get organized so he could train her replacement. No matter how silly or how shaky he sounded, the victory was his. And the sooner he got her out of this house and into his, the less chance she would change her mind.