by Fiona Harper
Her features didn’t move. ‘You need more practice. Now...I’d like to do something more productive than stand here and chat about what’s south of your belt buckle... I don’t suppose you have any actual work you want me to do, do you?’
Jason threw his head back and laughed, which seemed to take his new PA completely by surprise. The hard edge disappeared from her expression and she just stared at him.
‘Julie was right. I can see you and I are going to get on just fine.’
He saw a hint of surprise behind those intelligent grey-green eyes. And relief. He realised she’d maybe come out with all guns blazing because she was nervous. He was the boss, after all. But Kelly Bradford had showed guts and quick wit, both qualities he liked in a woman.
Darn this new no-flirting policy of Julie’s!
But he was going to have to live with the agreement he’d made. Thanks to the merry-go-round of different PAs he’d had for the last couple of months, progress on the McGrath deal had stalled and he needed to get it back on track. Maybe hanging on to one for more than a fortnight would help.
He picked up a folder that had been sitting on his desk and handed it to Kelly. ‘I’d like you to familiarise yourself with the Mercury shoes project. I’m in the process of setting up a meeting with a few sports personalities who I hope will endorse the shoes when we launch. We need a kick-ass presentation to convince them to take a chance on a new brand in the market.’ If that didn’t open the hallowed doors of McGrath’s office to him, he didn’t know what would.
She took the folder from him and hugged it to her chest, once and for all preventing any possibility of him being distracted by that top button.
‘Right,’ she said and backed away a few steps. ‘Will do.’ And then she turned and walked from the room, closing the door behind her.
Those curves in that skirt? Pure magic. Jason had enjoyed the view while it lasted, but he hoped his HR manager didn’t have as much divine authority as she claimed to have, or he was in danger of being fried by a lightning bolt from the sky.
* * *
Kelly walked back to her desk on shaky feet. Once there she collapsed into her chair and stared blankly at the computer screen, still clutching the folder Jason had given her to her chest. What the hell had just happened back there?
Her boss had flirted with her, that was what.
That wasn’t new, especially after that episode with Payne last Friday, but she hadn’t expected it to become the norm.
She didn’t get it. She’d always had a certain amount of attention from the male species, but in the last couple of months it had gone to a whole new level, which was weird, because for a while after her chemo had finished she’d wondered if she’d ever feel attractive again.
Maybe it was because the words ‘not interested’ were practically dancing over her head in neon lights. Men always seemed to want what they couldn’t have, and she was projecting that out into the universe with a fury.
Her new boss had flirted with her. So what?
Kelly hugged the folder even tighter to her chest, causing a couple of pages at the open side to curl.
She’d wanted to flirt right back. That was what.
She hadn’t, though. Which felt like a victory, although she didn’t know why. She let out a slow breath and placed the slightly creased folder on the desk in front of her.
As she’d stepped into the room and walked towards him the energy he projected had been tangible. The air had practically hummed with it. She wanted to catch some of that stuff and bottle it, save it for the times when she was on her own at the end of the day, a struggling single mother with two small boys who’d developed a complex and effective strategy to avoid bedtime, the times when she was just so weary she couldn’t quite remember her own name.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it hadn’t been a physical thing at all. It had just been that drive and dynamism that had attracted her. She’d used to have buckets of that—once. Where had it all gone?
But then she thought about Jason’s dark, slightly unruly hair, those laughing blue eyes and those lips...those lips that just begged to be...
Kelly felt a jolt of warmth deep inside that had nothing to do with energy levels.
Blast. Just when she’d been halfway to talking herself out of it too.
She’d done her best to rein in what she’d been feeling when she’d been in there, despite the fact that although she’d stood as straight as a poker on the outside, something inside had gone soft and gooey, and she’d almost felt as if she’d been leaning towards him, curving invitingly...
Kelly lowered her head and rested it so her brow made contact with the folder she’d just placed on her desk. Oh, hell. Maybe she’d just been too long without a man. It had been almost three years since she’d split from Tim and there hadn’t been anyone else.
Yet, a small but optimistic voice in the back of her head reminded her. There hasn’t been anyone else yet.
Whatever.
It had been a long time. And how was a girl supposed to keep her head about her when she walked into a room and came face to face with Jason Knight? All that testosterone, those broad shoulders—hadn’t she heard he’d been a swimmer once?—that lazy smile lit up with wickedness... It had all been too much for her poor sex-starved circuits and they’d gone into overload.
She inhaled and sat upright again. Right. She had a job to do. She couldn’t sit here impersonating a jellyfish all day. Especially as she’d got the sense from Julie in HR that this was her last chance. She had to make this post work for the next few months. Her nest egg depended on it.
She blew out a breath and turned on her computer. There was plenty of work to do. And more interesting jobs than the stuff Payne had given her, that was for sure. She’d just bury herself in that and forget about the man on the other side of the office door.
A thud from inside made her jump. She went very still.
A very thin office door, it now seemed.
What had just happened? Had he knocked something over, fallen off his chair? She was just debating whether she should go and check on him when the noise came again. And then, a few moments later, again.
The basketball.
Thud.
Kelly flinched in her seat.
Great. If he was going to keep this up all day, she’d never have a chance of forgetting his existence and getting on with her work. Her forehead met the desk again. Lord, oh, Lord, what had she and her big I’ll-take-any-job-you-offer-me mouth got her into now?
* * *
Kelly waited outside her brother’s front door after pressing her thumb to the doorbell. The silence lasted a split second and then there was the thunder of little feet and squeals of ‘Mummy!’ in the hallway. On the commute, tiredness had set around her like concrete, but now it cracked and started to crumble.
Moments later her sister-in-law opened the door and Kelly bent down to greet her two boys. It was more like being hit by a pair of charging bulldogs than being hugged, but she smiled and kissed the tops of their heads before they ran off back to a room where a television was blaring. She stood up and smiled wearily at Chloe.
‘Thanks for looking after them today. That’s the one downside of temping—patchy work can mean patchy childcare.’
Chloe smiled back and shrugged. ‘No problem.’
‘I spoke to my usual childminder earlier and she says she can pick up again from tomorrow.’
Chloe stood back so Kelly could pass by, closed the door then followed her into the large kitchen-diner at the back of the house. ‘Well, let us know if you need us again. I think Dan misses the boys since you moved out.’
Kelly had lived here for more than a year after she’d sold the house. Her brother had been great, but when she’d felt well enough she’d insisted on branching out on her own. All the t
ime she’d been relying on him she’d felt as if she hadn’t quite finished her recovery, and that hadn’t been good. She really, really needed to feel as if she was moving on, putting the nightmare of the last few years behind her.
Chloe headed for the fridge. ‘I know it’s only Monday, but you look like you’ve had one hell of a week.’ She pulled a bottle of pinot grigio out of the fridge door and poured them both a glass. ‘I didn’t think it could get much worse than what you told me happened last Friday, but you look a bit...frazzled...this evening.’
Kelly chuckled and slumped onto a stool at the breakfast bar. Her sister-in-law was too polite. She knocked back a good long slug of wine. ‘What you mean is that I look like I’ve been run over by a truck.’
‘You look fine,’ Chloe said soothingly. ‘Just tired. Please don’t tell me the new boss has been doing circuits round the desk with you too!’
Kelly shook her head. More to dislodge the mental image that had suddenly warmed her ears than to disagree.
‘Well, that’s a relief!’ Chloe said, laughing.
Kelly didn’t join her.
‘What’s he like—the big boss?’
Kelly swallowed. Tall. Broad. With thick dark hair and a twinkle in his eye that could light kindling....
‘Oh, he’s okay,’ she said, looking down into her glass and swilling the wine around.
When she looked up again Chloe was smiling at her. ‘More than okay, I reckon.’
‘I didn’t say anything of the sort,’ Kelly said stiffly.
Her sister-in-law sighed. ‘You didn’t have to, Kells. It’s written all over your face. You’re a terrible liar, you know.’ She grinned. ‘He’s nice, isn’t he?’
‘No.’
And this time Kelly was telling the truth. Nice was definitely not a word she’d use to describe Jason Knight.
Chloe smiled even wider. ‘But you like him anyway....’
Kelly resorted to silence. And more wine.
Like was also the wrong word to use to describe what she felt for her new boss. It had been pure and unadulterated lust, that was all.
That was all?
The silence didn’t last long. It never did. Not when Kelly had uncomfortable thoughts running round her head that she needed to expel. ‘Okay, maybe I liked him.’ She wasn’t prepared to use another word just yet. That one, for all its wishy-washiness, was scary enough. ‘Maybe I haven’t felt that way for a long while.’
She paused to take another sip of wine. Chloe put her elbows on the counter, rested her chin in her upturned hands and sat there looking receptive. Kelly didn’t make her wait long. ‘And maybe I hadn’t felt that way since well before I split with Tim, but that doesn’t mean anything... Don’t give me that look, Chloe! It wasn’t a sign from on high. Just my hormones getting in a fizz over a nice-looking guy.’
But it would have been a whole lot easier to believe her own pep talk if she wasn’t actually both relieved and pleased about the strong physical reaction she’d had to her new boss.
‘It just took me by surprise,’ she added. ‘I haven’t told you this, but for a long while I’ve been a bit worried about my lack of interest in the opposite sex. I wondered...I thought...’ She looked Chloe in the eye. ‘I was afraid the chemo had fried that bit of me. I felt like someone had turned something off inside me, that I was broken somehow.’
‘But you’re not,’ Chloe said sympathetically and firmly.
‘Yup. And now everything’s okay. I’m all fixed again. That’s all I need to know.’
Chloe topped up Kelly’s glass. ‘So why don’t you do something about it?’
Kelly’s residual head-nodding turned to shaking. ‘Not a good idea.’
‘Because...?’
Kelly stood up and walked over to the other side of the kitchen, glass in hand. ‘Did you not hear last week’s story, with the sleazy boss and the desk...?’
‘You wouldn’t have that glow in your cheeks if you thought he was sleazy and, from what I can gather, he’s got a steady job, money in the bank and he’s rather easy on the eye. Much better than most of the single men out there in their thirties.’
Kelly wanted to disagree with that, but her sister-in-law had a point.
‘And the problem with Mr Sleaze was that you didn’t like him back. You’ve already said you’re attracted to your new boss. Does he like you?’
Kelly sighed and clutched her wine glass to her chest. ‘He couldn’t stop staring at my breasts when we first met, so I’d say that’s an affirmative.’
Chloe sat up and clapped her hands lightly together. ‘That’s decided then.’
‘Nuh-uh,’ she said, and walked down the hallway to check on the boys, who were still watching TV. When she came back she sat back down on a stool, faced Chloe and put her glass down. ‘Not only is he the boss, but he’s got a bit of a reputation as a player. He’s no good for the long-term.’
‘Who mentioned anything about long-term?’ Chloe sipped her wine and looked at Kelly from under her lashes. ‘Keep it short and sweet—you set the rules, you set the timing... Sounds like the perfect rebound guy to me. You’re long overdue one of those.’
Kelly snorted. ‘You’re out of your mind! It’s still a recipe for trouble and I need this job.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Chloe said. ‘You’ve got enough savings for a deposit. Why wait? You should be out there looking for a nice little house. Don’t tell me you’re as scared of house-hunting as you are of man hunting.’
‘I’m not scared,’ Kelly said, lifting her chin. ‘I just want to build up a buffer before we move, a little nest egg that I can rely on in case...’
The room went very quiet. After a few seconds Chloe leaned over and put her hand on top of Kelly’s. ‘In case it comes back,’ she said softly.
Kelly swallowed and nodded. ‘I need to know I won’t lose the house if I can’t work for a while. The boys shouldn’t have to go through that all over again.’
There was the sound of keys in the front door and the tiny stampede happened all over again, except this time Cal and Ben were shouting, ‘Uncle Dan! Uncle Dan!’
Chloe stood up. ‘Okay, I’ll stop pushing. It’s just that I can’t help but feel that you’re marking time, and that’s not you. You’re such a go-getter and I can’t understand why you don’t want to go get the house of your dreams—’ she lowered her voice ‘—or a gorgeous man who’s into you.’
Kelly stood up too. Of course Chloe didn’t get it. She hadn’t lost the home she’d thought she’d stay in till she died, the house that both Cal and Ben had been born in. She hadn’t watched the man she loved walk away without a backward glance and then take every opportunity to grind her even further into the dirt with the heel of his shoe. She hadn’t watched her children sleeping and felt sick with fear that one day she wouldn’t be there to tuck them in at night.
‘I’ll go and ask Dan if he’ll give you a lift home,’ Chloe said, heading for the hallway. ‘Save you getting the bus.’
Kelly nodded but her sister-in-law was no longer in the room to see it. She put her half-drunk wine down and picked up her handbag.
She knew she needed to get past those things, she really did. But it was easier said than done. That was why getting the house was important.
She allowed herself a moment to linger on Chloe’s other suggestion of how to move on....
Okay, she admitted it. A hot fling with someone like Jason Knight would be fun. But she wasn’t looking for fun. Didn’t need it. That wasn’t what her life was about at the moment. So she was going forward with her plans to save and buy a house because, once that was done, she knew she’d be able to stop holding her breath. She’d have taken the first step to moving on.
‘Boys!’ she yelled and headed towards the sitting room. ‘Get your stuff together. We’re
going in five minutes!’
THREE
‘Kelly, could I see you before you go this evening?’
Kelly stared at the closed office door and then the clock. Half past four. She’d hoped she’d be able to slip away quietly, with a polite farewell and a nod, as she’d done all week. This was the last thing she needed on a Friday afternoon. Especially this Friday afternoon. She was physically and mentally exhausted. They’d worked hard on the multimedia presentation Jason was putting together for Dale McGrath’s camp all week, and her boss had certainly flung everything at it—a slide show, a brochure, a promo video.
She was also tired because she’d discovered Jason did everything at one speed: fast forward. And Jason’s bounce seemed to be contagious. She’d accomplished more in a week than she ever could have imagined. More than she’d have managed in a month not long ago. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t dog tired at this end of the week.
To make it worse, he was so blooming enthusiastic! Instead of seeing the extra workload as an inconvenience, something to be got through to get to the end goal, Jason was like a big kid with a new toy. How could they make the promo video more interesting, slicker, glitzier? Could the video guy put in that cool fade he’d just shown them? Kelly could still see the big grin that had spread across Jason’s face when the technician had done just that. Most disconcerting.
The other reason Kelly was exhausted was because she was doing her level best not to like her new boss. Not that she wanted to dislike him; she just wanted to stay professionally neutral, but that was very difficult when he kept wearing the same expression her boys did when they knew it was Saturday morning and they were going out to play football.
She rose from her seat, blew out a breath as she picked up her notepad and pen and then opened Jason’s door.
She chickened out of direct eye contact for a few seconds, leaving it until she was pulling out the chair opposite his desk and sitting in it, giving herself a few seconds in which to prepare for the inevitable kick in the ribcage when she looked at him.
It still came when she looked up, winding her more thoroughly than usual—maybe because, instead of the usual glimmer of both humour and challenge in his eyes, he was looking far too serious.