IN LOVE WITH HER BOSS

by Christie Ridgway

  Uneasiness drew like a cold finger down her spine. "The gym," she said, her mouth dry.

  He shook his head again. "No. Somewhere else … someone else?"

  She didn't want him pursuing that line of thought. "But I've never been to Montana before." Except for the first few weeks following her conception. "Have you ever been to South Carolina?"

  He hitched one hip onto the corner of her desk. "So that's where the pretty accent comes from."

  "Yes." His intense regard was making her palms sweat, so she cast about for another subject. "Why don't you … why don't you give me a little history of the company?" Maybe it wasn't as impersonal as she would have liked, but at least it was off the subject of her person.

  Josh settled himself more comfortably on the edge of the desk. She tried not to stare at the long muscles of his thigh, but sheesh! the man was substantial.

  "My dad built the business," Josh said. A little smile played around his mouth, and she wondered if he'd noticed where her gaze had wandered. "I'm the youngest of four – all the rest girls. My sisters are married now and scattered between Montana and California. But growing up, Dad and I spent a lot of time at the constriction sites – pure self-defense – because a houseful of women can be … daunting."

  Hah. Lori didn't think this man could be daunted by anyone, but three sisters went a long way to explaining his self-deprecating charm. "Your father is retired now?"

  Josh nodded. "He and Mom travel around in a Winnebago most of the year in order to serially spoil their ten grandchildren."

  A big family. Sisters. Nieces and nephews. A wealth of people to turn to when times were bad.

  "What about you?"

  The sudden question made her jump. "M-me?"

  "You." He smiled, that slow smile that turned her insides upside down. "Are you the petted youngest, the earnest eldest, what?"

  "The lonely only." The words just slipped from her mouth and her face instantly heated. He didn't need to know anything about her. She didn't want a man, any man, to get that close.

  It was as if he could read her mind. "Do I make you nervous?" he asked.

  "Of course not."

  His face softened, as if he knew she was lying but forgave her for it. "Well," he said. "You make me nervous."

  She blinked. "I do?"

  "Yeah." He let a beat go by. "It's not many women who flatten me."

  Something warm flowed through the air between them. Lori felt it touch her skin, making it tingle, making her pulse skitter.

  Her panic jumped to a new level. But this was a different kind of panic than she felt around most men. A new panic, or a forgotten one. Yet Josh was still dangerous.

  She looked down at her notebook. "Perhaps we should get to work."

  The warm current between them wasn't interrupted, but she knew he understood what she hadn't said. He rose to his feet. "Where did Lucy leave off?"

  For the next half hour he took her around the office, explaining what Lucy hadn't had the chance to. Finally, they ended up in his office, where he showed her the rack of rolled blueprints that represented the company's current projects.

  He settled into the big leather chair behind his desk and she perched on the chair opposite, her gaze snagging on plaques on the wall behind his head. Probably two dozen hung there, mostly team pictures of little kids. Boys, girls, basketball, baseball, football, their uniforms all proclaiming Anderson, Inc.

  Josh twisted around to see what had caught her attention then turned back. "Now you know my secret."

  "Your secret?" She didn't want to know it. Of course she did. "What secret?"

  "I'm a sucker for a kid in a uniform." He sighed. "Any uniform."

  She felt the smile start at her toes. When it reached her mouth, he smiled back, as if delighted. "Any uniform?" she asked.

  He nodded sadly. "There's the cutest little Brownie who lives next door to me. I bought out her whole troop's worth of cookies." There was a gleaming wooden credenza behind him and he pulled open one of its drawers to display box after box of Girl Scout cookies. "I couldn't help myself."

  His eyes were serious as they met hers. "So the next time you're in the mood for a thin mint, do me a favor, will you, and eat a whole box?" Then he grinned.

  That heated, tingly current rushed like a flash flood toward her. It wasn't what she wanted, it wasn't what she was looking for, not in the least, but she didn't seem to have any choice but to let the feeling sweep over her. Sweep around her.

  After two confusing years of marriage and three years during which she'd been both frozen and afraid, it was as if her feminine senses had come awake with one quick jolt. Or with one quick fall to the floor of the gym.

  "Lori—" he started, then the phone rang. She jumped for it, but he held her off with his hand and lifted the receiver himself. She could feel his eyes on her, even as he spoke some important-sounding specifications.

  Half embarrassed and half scared of what Josh might be seeing on her face, Lori looked away. Her gaze moved to the Girl Scout cookies in the drawer to another photo, this one sitting on top of the credenza itself. It was a framed photo of a blond bride.

  Josh's wife.

  She didn't question her immediate conclusion. He certainly wouldn't choose to display just one of his sisters, and the beautiful woman looked like the type big, dark Josh would love.

  He was married.

  A feeling twisted her insides. Relief, she guessed. Whatever current she'd been feeling was imagined, or at the very worst, all on her side.

  Josh was a married man. As he completed his phone call, she let that knowledge sink in. He wasn't any kind of threat to her. She didn't have to worry about him getting too close.

  He was a husband.

  At the click of receiver to cradle she looked up. Stood up. "I'll just get back to my desk."

  His eyes narrowed. "Are you all right?"

  Lori realized he wasn't wearing a ring. But for a man who worked with his hands, that was probably a good idea.

  "Are you all right?" he asked again.

  Of course. Now she was. Whatever was between them was something she'd obviously misread – she was so good at misreading men – and—

  "What are you looking at?"

  Until that moment, she hadn't realized she was looking at anything. But then he swung around to follow her gaze. They both stared at the photo of the bride.

  Lori swallowed. "Your wife?" She thought her voice sounded normal.

  Josh nodded.

  "She's beautiful," Lori said. Then she smiled at him, because it was going to be okay. He was safe now. He was married.

  But he didn't smile back as a shadow crossed his face. "She was. Kay died five years ago. I'm a widower."

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  "I'm sorry for your loss," Lori said, her voice soft and sincere.

  "Thank you." Josh looked away from the photo and back at the beautiful woman standing on the other side of his desk, cursing whatever it was about her that made him feel as if his hands, his feet, his Adam's apple were all too big. But he felt more than just physically awkward at the moment.

  When was the last time he'd told someone he was a widower? In the small town of Whitehorn, after that first, awful day, everyone had known.

  He cleared his throat.

  She shuffled her feet.

  "Is there—"

  "Why don't—"

  They both broke off.

  Josh took a breath. "Ladies first."

  Lori clutched her notebook against her chest. "I was going to ask if there was anything else you wanted to tell me before I went back to my desk."

  Yeah. He wanted to tell her she was the most gorgeous woman he'd ever seen. It was the damn truth. Dark hair, blue eyes, creamy skin tinged with just a hint of peach. And her voice … it was moonlight. It was Southern, moonlit nights with fluttering lace curtains and bodies tangled on a bed.

  He wanted to tell her he'd never considered him
self a romantic man, but looking at her filled his thoughts with an embarrassment of bad lyrics to a country western song.

  He wanted to tell her he'd fallen to the floor of the gym on Christmas Eve a settled, thirty-seven-year-old man and gotten up a randy teenager again, in instant lust for her long legs, her long dark hair, her full mouth. The way she'd stared back at him, her gaze filled with equal parts attraction and wariness, had done nothing to cool him off. That same gaze from her now didn't dampen his interest one bit.

  Yet, see, there was that wariness, so instead he said, "Sit down for another minute. I want to know a little more about you."

  Snails moved more quickly. Rain clouds appeared cheerier. After she finally returned to her chair, she reached inside her notebook and slid out a sheet of paper. "My résumé," she said, handing it to him.

  He didn't even glance at it. "Why don't you tell me?"

  She delivered the facts without emotion. "I moved to Montana from South Carolina last week. I signed on with the Whitehorn Temporary Agency. They sent me to Lucy. Lucy hired me."

  Despite the dryness of the details, he could listen to that soft accent all day. South Carolina. Montana. The words were prettier in her Southern voice. "But why?" he asked. "Why Montana?"

  She shrugged. "I grew up in the South. It was … time for something different. Someplace different."

  "But why would you pick Whitehorn? We're not exactly Billings or Missoula."

  She shrugged again, and her gaze dropped to her notebook.

  Frustrated, he looked down at her résumé. She was twenty-eight years old. She'd gone to college in South Carolina, in a town he thought he recognized as located at the southern end of the state. She had a degree in business administration. He looked up. "You have a college degree and you're temping as a receptionist?"

  "It's work," she said. "Experience."

  That non-explanation sent him back to perusing her résumé. Which made her even more of a mystery. For more than two years following her college graduation, there was no employment listed. And in the past three years she'd held seven different jobs in several different South Carolina cities.

  She was either easily bored or on the run.

  He frowned. "Why—"

  "Does it matter?" she interrupted. Steel suddenly hardened that soft Southern accent. "I'm technically employed by the temp agency, Mr. Anderson. They were satisfied. If you're not…" She shrugged, as if she wouldn't care if their paths never crossed again. "Call them and they'll send someone else over."

  Okay. That put him in his place. Josh had no reason to feel she'd slapped him across the face, because she was right. Her employment history – or lack thereof – was none of his business. Not as long as she fulfilled her duties as Anderson, Inc.'s receptionist.

  But he was irritated by her reticence because he wanted to know about her. Know her. And a few minutes ago he could have sworn there were sparks flying between them. Even before that, at the gym, her gaze meeting his had given him an I'm-Adam-you're-Eve rush that he hadn't felt in a long, long while.

  With a mental shrug, he threw off his disappointment. Lori was beautiful, but so were a lot of women. She was an enigma, but he'd never been very good at puzzles. And the bottom line was that she wasn't interested in his … interest.

  Sure, their mutual attraction was undeniable. Some things a man just knew; like, he knew which side to part his hair on or the exact spot to hit the basketball backboard for his best lay-up. But, right now Lori was putting up a sign that screamed Back Off in big neon letters, and she didn't need to flash it at him more than once.

  So fine. The lady wanted nothing to do with him. He got it. He'd put his focus strictly on business and forget all about her.

  He did okay for a while. A few hours. There were a dozen phone calls to field, a fire or two to put out at one of the constriction sites. By afternoon, though, when he was back at his desk and staring at piles of work, the only thing moving through his head was the enticing, peachy scent of his new receptionist.

  Ms. Hanson. He'd decided to call her that.

  She responded in the prim manner of the schoolmistress who had once ruled over this old building. With an efficiency that put his teeth on edge, she located the files he asked for. Tracked down a wayward bill. Watered the plant in the corner of his office that he usually treated to desert rations. After those words over her résumé, never once did she seem to be aware of him the way he couldn't help being aware of her.

  When the sky outside his window started to darken, he wandered into the office's reception area to check on the supply of firewood in the brass box sitting beside the woodburning stove. But it was chock-full and there was a telltale, winter-air pink on the receptionist's cheeks and nose.

  He frowned at her. "Ms. Hanson. Restocking the wood isn't your responsibility."

  From the chair at her desk, she looked up at him. A pencil was stuck behind her ear, pushing a lock of hair forward so that it tangled in her curly black eyelashes. "I don't mind."

  "Well I do." His voice was just short of surly. "It's heavy. You could be hurt."

  She brushed the hair out of her eyes. "I'm stronger than I look."

  "So you've told me before," he said. "That day at the gym."

  Her eyebrows rose. "Then you should believe me."

  Instead of a good comeback the only thing that occurred to him was the memory of his body lying across hers, so he stomped back to his office and dropped behind his desk. He was acting like an oaf, or worse, a jerk, but there was something about her that aroused his protective instincts. It was that wariness. It was that Southern voice.

  It was that peachy scent.

  He opened up the nearest file and pretended he was looking at it. Perhaps he'd been all wrong about the mutual attraction. He was thirty-seven, supposedly old enough to know when something was there and when something wasn't. But maybe he was going through some pre-midlife crisis. Maybe he was entering some delusional psychological state in which he imagined beautiful women had the hots for him.

  What a depressing thought.

  Depressing enough to send him stomping back to the reception area. "Ms. Hanson?" he barked.

  She blinked those astonishing blue eyes of hers. "Mr. Anderson?"

  He hesitated. For God's sake, he couldn't come right out and ask her if she was attracted to him. There was probably some sort of employment code about that, not to mention what his sisters would say if they ever heard about it. His ears burned just imagining his mother's reaction to something so bad-mannered.

  "Call me Josh," he muttered, then stalked back to his desk.

  As the afternoon wore on, his mood darkened. Lori Hanson was hell on his ego. On Christmas Eve, he'd been forced into buying the first round of beers for the team because he'd been bested by a woman. He'd laughed about it, been a good sport about his friends' ribbing, because he had no problem with strong females. Risk-taking women were trouble, but not strong ones. Until he'd turned ten and outstripped all three of his older sisters in size, they'd flattened him often enough for him to be used to it.

  But to make him doubt his powers of perception! That ability to recognize when a woman liked a man and when she didn't was the only thing a man had between himself and humiliation. Since Kay's death he'd enjoyed the companionship of women on occasion, always with the certainty that his attention was welcome. Because he knew which women welcomed him. Always.

  But now…

  Now he didn't know if be had his signals crossed or if the ones she sent out were the problem.

  Sighing, he cast a look at the deepening dark outside his window, then at the clock. It was 4:55. Well, the good news was that any second now Ms. How - the - hell - do - I - know - what - she's - thinking Hanson would be on her way home. Then he could settle down and finish all the work that he should have been finishing that afternoon.

  At 5:05 she hadn't left her desk.

  At 5:20, the only movements she'd made were to run her bands through her hair and fr
own at the computer screen.

  When it was exactly 5:30, he made himself exit his office and tell her she'd been free to leave for half an hour. She hmmed absently, wrapped up with some paperwork on her desk.

  By 5:45, he considered taking all his paperwork and dumping it on her, because only one of them seemed to be able to work in the other's presence.

  At 6:00 he couldn't take it anymore. "Ms. Hanson," he yelled from his desk.

  "Yes, Mr. Anderson?" came from the reception area.

  "Josh." He grabbed hold of his temper. "Ms. Hanson, it's time for you to go home."

  He thought she made another one of those absent hmms. With a look at the massive amount of work he had yet to finish, he strode into the reception area. "Ms. Hanson," he said from between his teeth. "Go home."

  She didn't look at him. "Soon."

  "You've done enough for today." While I've done nothing but make myself crazy. "It's time to knock off."

  She sucked in one edge of her bottom lip. "I'll leave when you do."

  Staring at her mouth, he knew if she stayed he'd never get anything done. Obviously, someone had sent her here to drive him over the edge. One of his competitors. One of his so-called friends. His sister Dana, who had never truly forgiven him for catching her entire Senior Prom date on audiotape.

  God, now his delusional thoughts were sliding into paranoia. Exasperated, his voice came out strangled. "Ms. Hanson, what the hell is wrong with you? I tell you to go home and you stay. What is it – are you afraid of the dark?"

  She stilled. Her eyelashes lifted to reveal those blue-as-some-exotic-flower eyes.

  Josh's gut twisted. Don't, he thought, suddenly as desperate not to know any more about her as he'd been desperate to know more about her earlier. Don't say it.

  But then she did. "Yes."

  * * *

  Lori knew Josh wasn't happy as he held open Anderson Inc.'s front door for her. "You should have said something," he grumbled, following her into the darkness.