The Boss's Proposal

by Cathy Williams

She only knew that her mind had spent the past few days preoccupied with one thing and one thing only.

  Or perhaps one person would be more to the point.

  When she thought of Max Forbes, her brain seemed to close down completely, leaving her at the cruel whim of memories that made her body begin to ache.

  She gripped the chrome tap and stared hard and purposefully into the sink, willing the onslaught of thoughts to go away, but it was no good.

  The worst, most humiliating thought of all was the realisation that none of it would have happened if she had not invited him into her bedroom. True, she’d had more than her usual amount to drink, but she knew, inside herself, that blaming a few glasses of wine for what had happened between them would be an act of cowardice. The plain, unadorned truth was that she had felt relaxed enough with him in that restaurant to open up. She’d stopped putting up barriers and had succumbed to the power of his raw masculinity and the sexy charm that she’d fought desperately against from the very first minute she’d laid eyes on him.

  She turned on the tap and rinsed her face with ice-cold water, but beneath the water she could still feel her cheeks burning. Not only had she proceeded to force the man into her room, or at least put him in a position where to say goodnight and leave would risk appearing rude, she’d then done the unthinkable.

  Her body had been on fire. During the meal, she’d felt herself get more and more turned on every time his eyes fell on her. By the time they’d reached her bedroom, her imagination had been in full flow and she’d been in no mood to put the brakes on.

  She’d felt sexy and alluring and vampish. The memory of it was enough to make her shudder with mortification. Amazing what a few glasses of good wine and an active imagination could do to a girl, she now thought bitterly. She had slowly begun to pull up her jumper, her fingers playing with the soft fabric, while he’d stood in silence and watched, his eyes dark with desire at what she was so readily and eagerly offering him. No strings attached. On a plate. With a silver spoon. And all condiments included. What man wouldn’t have been burning up with enthusiasm for such an abandoned offering? She’d opened the floodgates by kissing him, and doing a strip tease, in a ridiculously sensuous fashion which had probably had him sniggering all the way back to his bedroom.

  But he hadn’t been sniggering then. She’d seen the darkening intent in his eyes with a flare of wild excitement. When their mouths had met, she’d felt as though the moment had been one she’d been waiting for all her life and the greed of his responses had fuelled in her a heady sense of power. When he’d pulled down her bra, the air had felt wonderfully cool on her hot skin and her nipples had puckered in response and pulling back had been out of the question. She had, and the thought of it now made her groan with shame, shoved him down to her breasts. There had been just one thing in her head at that point, and that was the burning need to have her desire sated. She needed to feel his mouth on her nipples, sucking, drawing them in, nibbling and licking the pulsing, protruding bud.

  Her legs, opened and waiting for his urgent exploring hand, had been a wet cavern of delight. He’d massaged her thighs while she had placed both her hands behind her head, eyes shut, body arched upwards to receive his ravaging mouth.

  From outside, the light had filtered into the room and spread an interesting array of shadows around them, so that everything seemed other-worldly. She could remember watching in drugged fascination as he’d stripped off his clothes. His hands hadn’t been able to undo his shirt-buttons quickly enough and in the end, he had ripped it off. Only a few hours before, he’d been the archetypal boss with his demure, efficient secretary. She’d taken notes, her legs neatly crossed beneath the prim, unrevealing skirt. No one would ever have guessed that only a few hours later she would have shed all her inhibitions and thrown herself at her boss with the urgency and feverish passion of a woman who had spent her entire adult life in a sexual desert.

  Vicky inspected her face in the bathroom mirror for guilt and shame. She would have to make sure that she eliminated both before she ventured back into her office. She’d made an utter fool of herself but she wasn’t about to lose every shred of dignity in the process.

  She would have to make a show of pretending that the whole sorry episode had not made any indelible mark on her. She smiled ruefully at her reflection at the thought of that whopping lie. The fact was that her moment of abandon had cost her dearly. She straightened, fished into the make-up compact and began applying a little mascara, controlling her shaking fingers with effort.

  Even in the throes of her love affair with Shaun, before revulsion had set in, she’d never felt such a burst of dangerous, white-hot craving. She’d not been able to get enough of Max. When his mouth had left her breasts and moistly made its way down the flat planes of her stomach, the throbbing between her legs had made her squirm. The first touch of his tongue flicking gently at her pulsing womanhood had made her moan loudly and thrash against the bed, then she’d begun to move against his mouth, her body twisting up and down and from side to side while he gripped her hips and plunged his tongue deeper and deeper into her welcoming, honey-sweet essence. Her orgasm had been a wild, shuddering release that had seemed to vibrate into infinity, and still their lovemaking had continued. He’d waited for her body to sag then, slowly but surely, like a maestro fine-tuning an instrument, he’d aroused her all over again, and this time she’d been the one to explore his body, until his desperate need for her had made him push her down onto his huge erection.

  At no point and at all points, they could have stopped themselves from reaching the final destination.

  But they hadn’t and there was no point killing herself with regrets. It had happened and now she would just have to suffer the consequences.

  She finished with the mascara, and dabbed a little lipstick on. Blusher she would leave. There was enough natural colour in her cheeks to make anyone think she had overdone it with the artificial stuff anyway.

  She was stuffing the compact into her bag and wondering whether she should head back, when the cloakroom door was pushed open and Catherine, secretary to one of the company directors, let out a little squeal of relief.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ she said anxiously. ‘What on earth have you done to him?’

  ‘Done to him? Done to whom?’ Vicky said, feigning ignorance.

  ‘Your boss! He got in ten minutes ago and stormed into Jeremy’s office like a tiger in need of a victim, then he ordered me to smoke you out. Those were his precise words, Vicky. Smoke you out.’ The excitement of what could possibly be going on had replaced the urgency of her mission. Catherine now looked as though she would be more than willing to listen to any number of juicy explanations, however impatient Max had been to get hold of Vicky. ‘So what’s going on? I haven’t seen him that thunderous for…forever, and I’ve been here since the company got going! What have you gone and done?’

  ‘I’d better go, Catherine. No point you getting into trouble as well by staying here too long.’ Which did the trick. Catherine jumped and practically shoved Vicky out of the cloakroom so that she found herself propelled into her office with a lot less preparation time than she had hoped for.

  Forbiddingly, he was waiting for her in his office, and the dividing door was open so that she was subjected to the full force of his scowling face as he beckoned her into the chair in front of his desk. Vicky sat down, crossed her legs and adopted a bland expression. At least, that was what she’d aimed for. Her mouth felt as though the muscles had seized up, which probably meant that she was displaying something more akin to a deranged grimace.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ He held a sheet of paper in one hand, which he then proceeded to dangle dismissively before letting it flutter down to the desk. Vicky followed its progress downwards, mesmerised, before finding her voice.

  ‘I thought it best… I realise that…I’m afraid that due to my own stupidity…’ She didn’t dare look him directly in the eyes so ins
tead she shifted her focus to an indeterminate point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. He’d tilted his head to one side and now appeared to be settling down to wait for her to finish her sentence.

  ‘I just think that what happened in New York has jeopardised my position here, that’s all,’ she concluded, when she realised that she was going to find no help whatsoever from his quarter. He began drumming his fingers on the desk, an aggravating, steady sound that did nothing for her already shredded nerves.

  ‘And don’t act as though you don’t know what I’m talking about!’ she muttered when he still hadn’t said anything. ‘I don’t think that a boss-secretary relationship is feasible when the boss has slept with the secretary! Do you?’ Or even, she thought guiltily, when the secretary has slept with the boss. The steadily drumming fingers slowed their rhythm without actually stopping. The sound was driving her mad.

  ‘It happened,’ he said softly, leaning back into the chair and folding his hands behind his head so that he could stare at her through narrowed eyes. ‘These things do, believe it or not. People have too much to drink…’

  ‘I knew it! You’re blaming me! I wondered when you would get down to that.’

  ‘I wasn’t blaming anyone. I was merely saying that human nature is not always strong. We both made a mistake—’ he paused, allowing her to digest that ‘—but that doesn’t mean that we have to let one slip-up throw everything out of proportion. Unless, of course, you feel that you wouldn’t be able to put the incident behind you…in which case, I would more than understand if you walked out of this office right now.’

  ‘What do you mean, not able to put the incident behind me?’ Vicky asked suspiciously.

  ‘I’m merely saying that you may feel yourself more involved with me than you care to admit…’

  Vicky emitted a shriek of near-hysterical laughter which she hoped was sufficient to inform him of the absurdity of his suggestion. In case it wasn’t, she clarified coldly, ‘It was a mistake, as you said. Nothing more.’

  ‘So where’s the problem? We put it behind us, we get on with life. I don’t want to lose a brilliant secretary and I don’t suppose you’re that willing to throw away a damn good pay packet, so let’s make a deal. We put it down to experience and it’s never mentioned again. Believe me, I feel as exposed as you do. I don’t approve of any boss having sex with his secretary and, aside from that, I opened myself up to any number of scenarios which I’m experienced enough to spot and avoid. What if you’d cried sexual harassment? It’s a measure of my trust in you and my belief that we can carry on working together that I’m asking you to stay at all.’

  ‘And what if we find that it doesn’t work that way?’ She noticed that he hadn’t even euphemistically used the phrase making love. They had had sex: regrettable, but not earth-shattering.

  ‘If it doesn’t work that way, then…’ He shrugged and fixed his cool, grey eyes on her. ‘We call it a day.’

  Choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea were equally unimpressive options, she was fast discovering.

  Walking out would tell its own story. And what if he got it into his head to follow her? If only because of the secretarial skills she knew he valued? He obviously had no qualms about just showing up on her doorstep. What if he just showed up and Chloe happened to be around?

  On the other hand, to remain was to open a Pandora’s box. Making love to Max had stirred her emotions into a chaotic, seething mass. She didn’t know what she felt, she just knew that fear was involved—and not just fear of what Max could do to her should he ever find out the truth of her situation, but fear of what she could do to herself simply by spending time with him. She was finding it easier and easier to let her defences slip. One day she would make a fatal error.

  ‘I’ll give it a couple of weeks,’ she said now, sitting on the fence because she couldn’t think of where else to go. ‘But I’ll only stay on one condition,’ she continued inflexibly, ‘and the condition is that if I decide, for whatever reason, that I’m unable to work for you, then you leave me alone. You don’t try and persuade me to stay, you just respect my decision.’

  ‘Of course,’ Max said, magnanimous in victory. He felt himself sag with relief. He hadn’t known what he would do if she’d stuck to her decision to resign. In fact, it was true to say that he hadn’t known a number of things until she’d come along and turned his world upside down, because there was no use pretending otherwise. He felt like a man clinging onto a piece of driftwood in the middle of a stormy sea, with no real clue as to where he was going or when his ordeal would end.

  ‘Fine,’ she said quietly, looking away from him while he continued to stare at her. He wondered how much or how little their lovemaking had meant to her. Certainly, her averted profile wasn’t giving much away, and he was overcome by a primal urge to force her to submit to him, to confess that he had made the earth move for her, to acknowledge that she’d never been as aroused by anyone in her life as she’d been aroused by him. In fact, he was assailed by a ridiculous, puerile desire to hear her tell him that he was the best.

  He irritably began tapping his fountain pen on the desk, while his mind threw its leash and travelled joyously down memory lane, rearing up at the volcanic turn-on the sight of her naked body had been for him. Every bit of her uncovered had been a revelation without compare. The taste of her nipples still lingered on his tongue, making him feel worryingly unsteady. Sleeping with her, instead of diminishing his fantasies, had succeeded in making them proliferate. Right now, at this very moment, he could quite easily have locked the outside office door, whatever the hell anyone who came along might think, and taken her. Stripped her of her neat little grey outfit, a libido-quencher of the highest order, and laid her on his desk, naked and exquisitely open to his mouth and hands. He would have liked to have suckled on her delicious breasts at this very moment, with the fax machine going outside, the light on his phone informing him that he’d calls waiting and the computer terminal begging to be downloaded of its important messages. He couldn’t think of anything more erotic than letting the world of high finance wait until their needs were satisfied. He cleared his throat and hastily rummaged pointlessly through some of the paperwork lying in his open briefcase. With great effort, he managed to get his mind to operate on a more relevant level and, with even greater effort, he succeeded in speaking to her about work and what had been happening in the office since he had been away.

  She was leaving when he thought to ask, ‘What did Andy Griggs have to say about your house?’

  Vicky, with one hand on the doorknob, turned to face him. Andy Griggs had slipped her mind. ‘I’m seeing him this evening. I had to cancel our previous appointment,’ she said, ‘but of course I shan’t go ahead with anything, not until I know one way or another…’

  Max felt an unsteadying combination of impotence, panic and anger. ‘Naturally,’ he said calmly, making himself smile and giving a rueful but utterly understanding shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘Have you decided what you would like to have done anyway?’

  ‘Well…’ Vicky hesitated. ‘I…I have noticed, ever since this all came up, that the house is in desperate need of renovation. I never gave it much thought when I first got back to England. I was too busy sorting out other aspects of my life. But last weekend I had a walk around the place and—’ she sighed ‘—things need changing. The rooms need rearranging. It worked when it was rented out because most of the time the tenants were students, so four small bedrooms was an attraction, but now I think I’d like to make the master bedroom much bigger, perhaps with a little sitting area, and I could do something about having a pl—’ She’d very nearly said playroom, but in time she swallowed the word down, although the near-slip had jolted her. ‘A place to work. I could put my computer in there…’ She gave her head a little shake and smiled apologetically. She hadn’t meant to say so much. As usual, she had ended up rambling on. ‘I have no idea why I’m planning all this,’ she said firmly, ‘There’s a goo
d chance I won’t remain with the company—’ she looked down when she said that, because the reasons for her departure were close enough to the surface of her mind to make her tremble ‘—and, even if I do, I haven’t got the money.’

  ‘Money isn’t a problem.’

  ‘Not for you perhaps.’ She pulled open the door, not wanting to become embroiled in a conversation that was only serving to remind her of yet something else she would be giving up when she left. ‘Will that be all? I think I should be able to cover most of this by this afternoon and the rest I’ll do first thing in the morning, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll be out of the office this afternoon.’ He paused. ‘I take it there won’t be any surprises waiting for me tomorrow morning when I get in?’

  Vicky flushed but didn’t say anything and, after a few seconds, he gave her a curt nod of the head, which she read as her dismissal, and she went back into her office, breathing a sigh of relief that she was out of his presence, even though things had not gone according to plan. The plan had been that she would now be on her way to yet another employment agency, clutching her CV and prepared to do a typing test. Instead, here she still was, ensconced in her leather swivel chair, and she was edgily aware that a part of her was relieved that she wouldn’t be leaving. It was, in fact, the same part that had encouraged her to remove her jumper a few nights previously and to offer herself to the man she kept reminding herself she needed to escape from. And it was the same part that responded to his wit, his humour, the part that had, she acknowledged shakily, become addicted to his every mood, every shift in his expression, every change in his voice. Her fingers continued to fly across the computer keys and her eyes scanned the document she was typing, but her mind played its dangerous games somewhere else. Somewhere in a land of No Return, where her heart seemed to have wandered when she wasn’t looking.

  She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she jumped when he strode into her section an hour later, slinging on his jacket and checking his pockets in an unconscious and automatic gesture which she had grown to expect. She stopped with her hands hovering fractionally over the keyboard. She could feel nervous perspiration prickling under her arms and above her lip. She even thought she could feel the rush of blood through her veins. Hot, boiling blood, surging like a toxin. She’d fallen in love with him and it was like feeding off poison. He had to repeat three times that he would see her in the morning before she came to her senses and nodded, not daring to open her mouth because she knew her voice would give her away. Her eyes drank him up, though. She felt like a guilty sinner, gorging on temptation as she took in the lean hungry power of his body—the body she had touched!—the angles of his face, the full, sensual lower lip that promised so much more than fulfilling sex.