SUSAN MEIER - The Boss's Urgent Proposal

“Hi, Josh.”

Glancing up, Josh swallowed hard. Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway with her voluminous hair pulled into a ponytail and her body encased in cute jeans and a fitted top, both of which were perfectly innocent. But when he looked at her, he imagined her dressed in the red filmy thing from his dream. In his mind’s eye, he saw the swell of her breast caressed by what appeared to be see-through chiffon. He saw the curve of her hip shift against the lightweight material. He saw the long length of her legs.

He would have been mortally embarrassed, except Olivia didn’t know about the dream and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Particularly since her chipper greeting proved she wasn’t holding that “almost kiss” against him.

“Hi.”

“You got any Frosted Flakes?” she asked, ambling into the room like they were best friends who always had sleepovers. As if she wasn’t troubled or titillated by the fact that they’d spent the night under the same roof.

“Turntable below the microwave. Bowls are in the cupboard by the sink.”

“Thanks.” She walked into the room, her ponytail swishing around her.

Josh rubbed his hands across his face as if he was attempting to awaken himself, but, really, he was stifling a groan. It was pretty damned hard to miss the fact that this woman was gorgeous. He blamed her conservative work wardrobe for his not seeing any of this before, but even that excuse only went so far. She never hid her hair, those eyes or that soft-looking skin. He had to have had his head in a cloud. God only knew what else he missed about her in the past four years. But that didn’t worry him as much as the fact that he couldn’t seem to be in the same room with her without having thoughts that were definitely inappropriate. Some even bordered on downright lusty.

“What time are we going in to the office?” she asked, bringing a bowl to the kitchen table.

Josh leaped out of his seat. “As soon as I shower,” he said, and chuckled a little nervously. “That’s why I just jumped up like that…I need to go shower.”

“Good.” She poured Frosted Flakes into the bowl. “You go shower and I’ll eat while I catch the morning news.”

“Good.” He began backing out of the kitchen. “Let me know if anything interesting happened while we were sleeping.”

For some reason or another that comment struck her as funny and she started to laugh. Josh took advantage of her preoccupation with giggling to get out of the kitchen, but also to remind himself that that was the kind of relationship they had. Buddies. Friendly coworkers. Gumbas.

Otherwise she would have noticed and reacted to the fact that he was only wearing a robe. Sure, it was a long, commonplace—all right, ugly—robe, but it was only one layer of material. She could have at least tried to peek around in an attempt to see if he wore other clothes beneath it. Instead, she acted as if she wouldn’t care if he were stark naked, sitting beside her.

He frowned. Now that he thought about it, that really rubbed him the wrong way. He might be older than she was but he wasn’t unattractive. Ignoring him shouldn’t be so easy. In fact, since she made it look like such a cakewalk, Josh had to wonder if she wasn’t somehow faking. Maybe the real deal was that she was attracted to him, but pretending not to be since he had never seemed to be attracted to her?

He knew that was reaching, but the truth was it felt out of balance to be this captivated by her when she didn’t even notice his handsomeness, his innate goodness or his sexuality. Women were always telling him he was handsome, or kind, or sexy.

Surely something about him appealed to her.

He considered the situation in the shower, while pulling on his jeans and sliding into dock shoes, and he decided he needed a test of some kind. He couldn’t come right out and ask if she was interested, but he could most certainly hint and see where that led them.

As he locked the house and, with Olivia, walked through the connecting garage, no good opportunity presented itself, and no obvious test popped into his mind. So in the car he asked, “Did you sleep well?” if only because he ultimately concluded that was at least a way to open the door of communication. If she said she hadn’t slept well and gave him a flirty little smile, he would know he wasn’t crazy.

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.