Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight) (2 page)

Straightening my spine, I attempt to reclaim the power I’ve given him and persuade us both that my gaping was in our imaginations. “I’m Ms. Miller, Mr. Ward,” I confirm. “I know you have a flight to catch. What can I do to help?”

The amusement in his unique pale-green eyes says he’s fully aware of the gift I gave him and he’s keeping it. “I need you in my office. We have to cover a few things before I leave.”

“Yes, of course,” I agree quickly, and, expecting him to turn and lead the way, I take a step closer. He doesn’t move. We end up almost toe-to-toe, with me staring at his chest. It’s safer than his eyes, which will see too much. It’s a nice chest. Broad and hard enough to flex beneath his shirt and suit jacket as he reaches for the ringing cell phone in his pocket.

I take a step backward. He turns and faces the other direction and answers the call: “Right. Yes. I’ll be on my way.” Short and sweet, and he ends the connection before facing me again. “Change of plans. You’re riding with me to the airport.” He doesn’t wait for my agreement, but, then, he didn’t really ask a question. He gives me his back and disappears into his office.

I blink after him, trying to process what has happened. Ride with him to the airport? I swallow the cotton forming in my throat. This is going to be him and me in a small space, playing with who gets what power, before I’ve even sat down at my desk.

“Ready?” he asks, reappearing with a briefcase on his shoulder and stopping only a few steps from me.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m ready.”

His eyes narrow ever so slightly, and suddenly we are standing here as if he doesn’t have a flight to catch, staring at each other, and I am drowning in the depths of his light-green eyes. He’s sizing me up in some way, and it’s unnerving.
He’s
unnerving. Seconds tick by, until his lips hint at a curve of a smile, as if he has seen something in me I did not intentionally mean to show him, and he says, “I guess we’ll find out just how ready you are, now, won’t we?”

I see the challenge in his eyes, read the undertone of his words, and this pleases me.
There is a reason he didn’t pull Dana from the front desk despite her reservations. He doesn’t want the timidity of insecurity. And while I might have lost myself for a while, I am back, and Bambi I am not.

“Yes,” I say, lifting my chin. “We will.”

Approval flashes in those gorgeous eyes of my new boss, and he says, “I’m looking forward to it, Ms. Miller,” then motions me ahead of him. “Ladies first.”

Pleased with his reaction, and feeling better about this job by the moment, I shift my briefcase on my shoulder and head toward the main lobby. Tall and broad, he falls into step beside me, and I am still far too aware of him. It’s a problem I will need to fix, and quickly. Which is exactly why, when we enter the lobby, I do not look at Dana. I don’t need her, or anyone else, reading my attraction to Mr. Ward before I can get a grip on it. Both he and the staff need to trust that I’m competent and professional if I am going to be his right-hand person.

I punch the elevator button. While Mr. Ward lingers behind to instruct Dana to leave his messages on his voice mail, the scent of him seems to chase me. It’s spicy and wintery, stirring the oddest memory of a candle my mom used to burn during the holidays.

A second nervous jab of the elevator button and, with Mr. Ward on my heels, we step into the car, that cursed cologne of his suffocating me with its deliciousness. I face forward. He does not, and I’m quite aware of him leaning on the wall, inspecting me with more nerve-racking intensity. I think he’s doing this intentionally, playing a game, continuing to test me.

Steeling myself for the impact that is this man, I slowly turn to face him, and find that only a few steps separate us. Against my natural instinct, which tells me that we are too close, and my feminine instinct, which says we are not close enough, I settle on standing my ground. Besides, moving away would come with the risk of showing weakness.

He doesn’t speak, and I can’t fight the need to fill the empty space. “I have a good memory, so if you want to start running through important information, I’m all ears.”

His eyes light with more of that challenge I’d seen in his office. “Why do you want this job?”

My not-so-far-gone post-college interview speech flows automatically from my lips. “To
be a valuable asset to your company and build a career.”

“I value honesty, not politically correct answers you think I want to hear. Why do you want this job?”

Honesty
. There’s a unique concept, which I think is more myth than reality, but I cannot deny him what I so crave in my own life. “Security,” I say. “Stability. Pride in my success that lets me pay my bills.”

He does more of that intense staring of his, and several seconds tick by in which I do not dare breathe, before he approvingly says, “That’s more like it.” Then he tosses me another abrupt change of topic. This one more sensitive than the last. “I understand you moved here from Texas for a job that was eliminated.”

“That’s right.” While I am pleased with my immediate response, I do not succeed at keeping the tightness from my voice.

“How do I know you won’t haul it back home while I’m gone?”

“I’m not going back.”

“Now or ever?”

Knots form in my stomach. “Ever.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“You can’t be sure,” I say precisely. “But I can and I am.”

His head tilts thoughtfully, my direct answer giving him pause. “Do you have family here?”

My reply is instant, my defenses impossible to shackle. “Is that a job requirement?”

Several beats tick by before he asks, “Are you alone?”

I’m not sure what he means by “alone,” but he’s on a roll that I don’t like. First he carved me up, and now he’s punched me in the gut. “What I am,” I say, a hint of tartness I do not intend slipping into my voice, “is here to stay. I’m also a damn good employee.” I don’t give him time to question my reply. “Where are you headed?”

I think he will push me harder, but he doesn’t. “New York.”

“When will you be back?”

“Monday.”

Relief washes over me, and his glower is instant. “Hoping for an easy first week?” he asks, his tone dry, hard.

“No.” I clearly need to work on my poker face. “That’s not the case.”

“Then what is the case, Ms. Miller?”

I hope he really does like honesty, because that’s what he’s getting. “Your absence gives me a week to organize whatever that explosion is on my new desk and to get a general footing in the office. That includes sizing up the staff to work with them most effectively, which is important since they appear quite intimidated by you.”

“The staff? You’ve only met Dana, who barely has contact with me and is so insecure that she was afraid to even fill in as my secretary.”

“Even the staffing agency seemed intimidated by you.”

“Do you find me intimidating, Ms. Miller?”

I consider that objectively. “No. You don’t intimidate me.” My attraction to him does, and so does the idea of losing this job, but he doesn’t.

His brow arches. “You’re sure about that?”

I open my mouth to assure him that I am, but the elevator dings and the doors open to a rush of people. A woman in a business suit is being shoved forward by a group of giggling females. I sidestep to avoid her, but it’s too late: She stomps on my foot. Despite the pain, I manage to catch pieces of conversation that tell me I have just become a victim of a well-lubricated bachelorette party.

I tumble backward, gasping as a hard, big body absorbs mine and strong hands close down on my shoulders. “Easy, Ms. Miller,” I hear in that deep, rough baritone I already know as my boss’s, and then he leans in even closer, his mouth near my ear, his breath warm on my neck. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I reply, but it comes out as more a pained pant than a confident assurance. I’m not sure if that’s because my foot has been stomped on, or I’m horribly embarrassed, or I’m tingling everywhere he is touching me—and in some intimate places he is not.

“I’m so sorry,” the offending woman gushes, looking appalled, only to be shoved toward me again as the party piles in and crowds us like sardines in a can. Desperate to stay standing, the foot stomper grabs my arm to steady herself, then quickly lets go. “So sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I manage.

Mr. Ward leans down again, and, Lord help me, his chin brushes my hair as he says, “I’m making an executive decision. We need to get out of the car before we are locked inside with
them for who knows how many floors.”

“Yes,” I agree, and I all but gasp as his fingers curve intimately at my waist and his body urges me forward.

I don’t breathe until we break free of the elevator and he releases me.

“How’s your foot?” he asks. He is taller than I remember, towering over my five feet five inches, and he’s giving me another one of those intense inspections I tell myself I’ll develop an immunity to. Then again, no matter how many chocolate stomachaches I get, I never seem to get enough.

“Not as painful as my embarrassment,” I assure him, and laugh nervously. “What can I say? I like to make a lasting impression, and since you’re leaving I didn’t have a lot of time.”

“Do you need to sit?”

“We need to get you to the airport,” I say, and add the motto that got me back to me not that long ago. “I’m bruised, not broken.” And I intend to prove it was, and is, true.

His eyes narrow, darken. “Bruised but not broken.” His voice is softer, seeming to caress the words as he adds, “I like that.” And for some reason I’m not sure what he’s talking about or why air is suddenly lodged in my lungs.

“Mr. Ward!”

We both whirl around at the sound of his name being called, and the source appears to be a thirty-something man, with short, dark hair who is wearing a rust-colored jacket and earpiece that gives me the impression that he’s security. My new boss flicks me a look. “I’ll meet you at the car. Tell the doorman you’re with me and he’ll get you to where you have to go.”

I nod but he doesn’t notice, having already turned away from me. I’ve been dismissed. Maybe this job isn’t so unlike working as a reporter. Or, I think cynically, the Thanksgiving with my family that I plan to miss in three weeks’ time.

With a heavy sigh that comes from deep in my soul, I seek out one of the many signs hanging from the casino ceiling and head toward the exit, but something makes me pause. I turn just in time to witness Mr. Ward scrub his hand down his face and mutter a curse I can read from a distance. A second later, his gaze lifts and collides with mine, the turbulence in the depths of his stare crashing into me, a rough blast of dark emotions. For several seconds our eyes hold, and I don’t know why but I have the oddest thought. In this moment of time, I think he, too, is
bruised but not broken
.

As if he knows I see this, he abruptly turns away, giving me his back.

* * *

“Why aren’t you in the car?”

At the sound of Mr. Ward’s voice, adrenaline surges through me, and I am on my feet, no longer warming the bench I’ve been seated on for a good ten minutes.

“I—”

“Tell me in the car,” he says, cutting me off. “We need to go.” His hand comes down on my back, scorching away the chill of the November air and urging me toward a limo parked a few feet away.

The valet opens the back door and I slide inside. The soft leather hugs my legs, and I pull my skirt to my knees as Mr. Ward joins me, settling in directly across from me. “Why weren’t you waiting in here where it’s warm?” he demands, his voice a reprimand that nears cranky and stirs old ghosts and goblins worthy of the Halloween only a week before. I do not like that they are alive when they should be buried, and I rebel against them and his tone with me.

“I would have liked that,” I say, my voice matching his crankiness, “but the staff gave me the impression they thought I was the newest chick chasing the millionaire CEO.”

The tension vanishes from his face, and a low, sexy rumble of laughter slides from his lips. Instantly, I find myself relaxing into the sound. “You aren’t going to be a wilting flower, are you?”

“Do you want a wilting flower?”

“No. I do not want a wilting flower, Ms. Miller. Nor do I want a ‘chick chasing the millionaire CEO.’ I’ll end that perception immediately.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say, softening with his vow.

He, on the other hand, seems to do the opposite, his humor fading, the hardness returning. “Actually,” he corrects, “it is. I’m leaving, and you have to be able to function when I’m gone.”

“I will,” I say, certain he needs to hear this, though I don’t know why. “You can trust me to get the job done.”

There is a slight tensing of his jaw that I read as skepticism. The car engine starts and he proves I’m right in my assessment by declaring, “I have concerns about you, Ms. Miller.”

Cotton lines my throat. “Concerns?”

“You’re a reporter.”

“By trade, yes.”

“You’ve never worked as a secretary,” he comments, and it’s not a question.

“Do you want just a secretary or someone with extra skills to bring to the table?”

“Clearly, you excel at asking questions and not answering them.”

“You didn’t phrase it as a question, and zipped lips should be one of my job requirements anyway.”

His cell beeps and he pulls it from his pocket, staring at the text message for what seems like forever. Finally, without typing a reply, he sets the phone on the seat and his gaze goes to the window.

Seconds tick by, and I can almost feel the tension curling in and around him, thickening the air until I can barely breathe. I wonder how he can. “Everything okay?” I ask softly.

His gaze shifts to me, and his eyes are steely hard and impossible to read. “Do you gamble, Ms. Miller?”

“Badly,” I admit, unsure where this abrupt change of topic is taking us. “And only when I have no other option.”

“Well, here’s the only sure thing you’ll get in Vegas and this job: Something is always not okay. You either deal with it or you crash and burn.”