She had secretly written to Santa once, and mailed the letter. But Santa hadn’t bothered to respond or grant her that wish. Her father never returned, and her mother’s depression got progressively worse until relatives had threatened to take Kim away.
The emptiness in her past was riddled with fear and loneliness and a young girl’s angst. Her mother’s rants and monologues had followed Kim everywhere, and guilt had made her stay close. Her mother didn’t need another disappointment; couldn’t have withstood her daughter leaving, too.
There had been no escape until college, and even there, while testing her wings, guilt had been part of Kim’s existence. She had fled some of that darkness, while her mother had not. She was okay, and her mother stayed sick.
Tonight that sickness had become hers. She had become a player, against her will, as if her mother had risen from the grave to goad her on. She had been willing to hurt someone, a man, so that her secrets could go on being secrets, and her hurt stayed tucked inside. She had wanted to trust, and had been shot down.
“Kim?”
The voice was close, deep and too familiar for comfort. A wave of chills pierced Kim’s red dress. The elevator was too damn slow, and she hadn’t expected Monroe to follow her.
Now what?
Wobbling on her weakened knees, Kim whirled to face Monroe in all his gorgeous male beauty. The persistent bastard wasn’t going to let her off the hook, but he wouldn’t touch her again if he knew what was good for him.
He leaned toward her before she could voice a protest, and placed both hands on the wall beside her. It took him several seconds to speak.
“There’s no need to run away.” His tone seemed too calm for the expression on his face. He pinned her in place, within the cage of his arms, as if knowing she’d bolt at the first opportunity. The front of his shirt showed creases from where she had greedily tugged at it in a moment of blissful mindlessness.
Kim didn’t reply. She could not think of one appropriate word to say.
“I really don’t see the need for an all-out war, or whatever you imagine this is,” he said. “I asked to meet in good faith to discuss the problems facing us. I was trying to find a way out of this mess.”
Kim tried to hit the elevator button with her elbow. Though there’d likely be a hint of snow on the ground outside tonight, the corridor felt stiflingly warm. Part of that heat came from Monroe, who acted as if he knew exactly what she had done, and what the outcome had to be. Clever man.
“I believed we could work something out,” he said. “For a minute back there, I thought you might honestly want to.”
She had to fight for a breath. Monroe’s closeness was a reminder of how far she had strayed. That kiss, in public, would be career doom for her if rumor of it got around. She wasn’t the one with the VP spot. He was.
She tried to touch her lips, to wipe away the feeling of him, but couldn’t raise her arms. Monroe’s inferno pummeled at her, overheating her from the inside out, rendering her excuses for her behavior useless.
“I tried to explain,” she managed to say.
Maybe he hadn’t gotten the picture, after all, about the blackmail. His mouth lurked a few millimeters away from hers. Dangerously close.
“But you didn’t explain. Not really,” he said. “None of that was the truth, right?”
“More than you know.”
“There’s still time to explain, Kim.”
She shook her head.
“I wasn’t the only one who wanted that kiss,” Monroe remarked. “And it wasn’t planned.”
“How dare you presume to know what I want?”
“Well, at least one of us is honest. I’ll admit that it wasn’t the goal of tonight’s discussion, but I will also confess that I liked it. I liked it a lot.”
“It was business suicide for me, and you know it.”
“So, you’ll use the kiss against me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Well, if it’s a lawsuit you want, we might as well make the best of it. There’s no need to slap me this time. What good would it do if no one is watching?”
Each time Kim inhaled, his shirt rubbed against the red silk of her dress, sending pangs of longing through places she hadn’t focused on in a long time. The closer he got, the more of his disarming scent she breathed in.
She wanted that kiss his lips were promising. Another kiss. A better one, if there was such a thing, especially given that no one, as he said, was there to witness it.
With that thought, Kim knew she was screwed. Chaz Monroe wasn’t merely an intelligent bastard, his actions were highly suspicious. Was he a man ruled by what was in his pants, or did he have some nebulous plan of his own to humble her with?
When his mouth brushed across her right temple, Kim squirmed and glanced up to meet the directness of his gaze. She absorbed a jarring jolt of longing for the closeness she had to repel. Monroe was her boss. No one in the company could condone a relationship with him that might eventually lead to the promotion she already deserved. Rumors were a plague in business. If she were to get a promotion in the near future, some would now say she had slept her way to the top.
Several coworkers had witnessed what happened in the bar. Whereas it might have gone unnoticed if she’d kept quiet, in a moment of panic she had idiotically made sure it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Plan C had been set in motion.
Damn him. Damn you, Monroe.
“Why can’t you leave me alone?” she demanded.
His breath stirred her hair. “Obviously, that contract involves personal issues for you that I hadn’t anticipated.”
“Bravo for concluding that.”
“I have no way of knowing what those issues are unless you tell me about them.”
“They aren’t your business. Not something so personal. Leave it, Monroe. I’m asking you to let it go.”
“Or what? A bit of blackmail will back your request up?” He sighed. “I’m concerned, that’s all. Neither of us has to be those people in the bar. We can be friends if you’d prefer that. I’m actually a good listener. We could go someplace quiet and talk things over.”
“Like your apartment?”
He shook his head.
“But you’d like to take me to your apartment,” she said.
“What fool wouldn’t? But that’s not the point here.”
“I’ve asked you to back off.”
He touched the cheek she had slapped. “Right. I got that.”
“And you refuse to listen,” Kim said.
“I don’t tend to take no for an answer when a moment like the one in the bar told me otherwise.”
“Then we can finish this tomorrow,” Kim said. “After we’ve thought it over and had some distance.”
“I’m fairly certain we should finish this now,” Monroe countered. “I’d really like to know what upsets you. I thought you were going to cry.”
His gaze was volcanic. He had nice eyes. Great eyes. Light blue, with flecks of gold. Those eyes wouldn’t miss much, if anything. He would see her cave. Right then, his gaze sparkled with a need to understand what she had been thinking, beyond the possibility of blackmail. Or else maybe he just wanted to know more about the terms of their deal.
Letting Monroe strike a nerve is what had gotten her into this mess. He was too handsome, and too willing to get to know her better. Men like him often used women, her mother had preached. If you gave them your secrets, they’d betray those secrets at the drop of a hat. If you gave them your love, they’d easily destroy it.
Kim wanted desperately to stop hearing her mother’s voice. She would have covered her ears if Monroe had let her.
“If you’re going to fire me for slapping you, go ahead,” she said a bit too breathlessly for the sternness she had been aiming fo
r. “There’s no need for us to further humiliate each other.”
“Fire you? Humiliate you? I wanted to meet with you to avoid those things.”
“Well, you didn’t do a decent job of reaching that objective. Now you do want to fire me, right? You’ll have to, unless I protect myself?”
“That was never the idea, Kim. You’ll have to believe me.”
“Then why can’t you leave me alone? We were doing fine here until you arrived.”
“Fine? This company was sliding, whether or not you knew about the bottom line. It was in serious decline. I came here to help the agency out of that decline. The company’s success means a lot to me because I have a stake in it. I need everyone to work, including you. If you’re one of the best people here, your help is needed in all areas.”
“I’ve been doing more than my share.”
“I know that, and yet I need more. I’d ask you to do things you don’t necessarily want to do because the company requires it right now, and for no other reason.”
“Not because you want to kiss me again?”
“Yes, damn it. I want to kiss you. But believe it or not, I do have some control.”
He leaned closer as he spoke, so that Kim felt every muscle in his body from his shoulders to his thighs, and everywhere in between. Yet his mouth drew her focus: the sensuous, talented mouth that had nearly done her in.
“It’s going to be yes or no,” Monroe said. “You have it within your power to upgrade, maybe even to upper management someday. All you have to do is what I ask, or explain why you can’t.”
Kim shut her eyes.
“Look, Kim. Do this one thing for me, and we’ll reevaluate your position here.”
Kim stopped shaking just as she realized she was shaking. Like the last VP, Monroe was promising her the moon when he had no real capacity for giving it to her. He was the vice president. The only way for her to take over that job was for him to leave it.
“I’d like you to leave me alone,” she repeated.
“The company needs you.”
“Yes. With your body pressed against mine in a public hallway, I can feel how badly you need me.”
That did it. Enough was enough. No more squirming. No more playing around. Chaz Monroe had finally done it. He had just buried himself.
Smiling grimly, Kim reached into the purse hanging at her side. She pushed Monroe away and drew out the small tape recorder she kept there. With a precise movement of her finger, she clicked the gadget off.
He glanced at her in surprise, then looked down at what she held in her hand as if not quite believing what he was seeing.
“My lawyer will be talking to your lawyer in the morning if there is any further mention of my contract,” Kim said, slipping out from beneath his arm. “You have heard of sexual harassment, being number-one boss man and all?”
He was staring at her as though he’d just felt the arrow of doom pierce his heart dead-on, and also as if he had been betrayed. His arms dropped to his sides. His expression smoothed into something unreadable.
The elevator pinged as the door rolled open. Kim walked inside and turned, wearing a smile she had to struggle to maintain. Her insides were in knots. Both hands were shaking. She hid her sadness and the urge to throw the recorder at Monroe. She felt like sinking to the ground.
He just stood there. He didn’t look angry, only disappointed. He had been bushwhacked, broadsided. Did he fear what would happen to him if this conversation were to fall into the wrong hands? Did he now fear for his job?
Monroe had a casting couch, pure and simple, and she’d nearly been flat out on top of it. So what if she had liked the kiss and his hard body pressed to hers? It was best not to think about those things now. The guy, gorgeous as he was, charming as he could be, shouldn’t have taken such liberties. The vice president should have known better.
With a stern bite to her lower lip, Kim used her purse to snap the button inside the elevator that would close this case once and for all. Was she proud of how she’d accomplished this? No. Happy about it? Absolutely not. She felt dirty. Yet she had remembered the recorder at the last minute and done what had to be done.
Monroe wouldn’t fight her. Nothing good ever came of a lawsuit. So, the hope she maintained right that minute was that he would realize this and stop bothering her to change the terms of her contract. Life as usual would be the result.
The dark clouds she had been trying so hard to shake off drifted over her. She pictured her mother smiling. In reaction, Kim felt her face blanch. She swayed on her feet, truly hating what she had done and the memories that wouldn’t stop invading her mind, all because of her mother’s far-reaching influence.
This night was over, and it was too late to take anything back. She had made her bed, but at least Monroe wasn’t in it.
“Good night,” she said to him with a catch in her throat.
He stood in the corridor, motionless, his eyes on her as the elevator doors finally closed.
Five
Well, well...
Kim had called his bluff. She thought she’d done pretty well in this game, and he had to hand it to her. She’d hung in there and had been fairly creative about it. Still, the result was a disappointment. He hadn’t figured she would go so far in the wrong direction.
As the elevator doors closed between them, Chaz shrugged his shoulders. He knew that Kim had to be feeling a little guilty after hearing him state his case. She wasn’t dense. The telling detail about her current state of mind was that aside from the tape recorder, she hadn’t slapped him again.
Hearing the clink of rapidly approaching heels on the marble floor, Chaz turned and said, “That wasn’t remotely close to what we had discussed.”
Brenda Chang strode up to him wearing a frown. “I don’t feel very well. I feel like I’ve just stabbed my best friend in the back because—oh wait—I have.”
“You left us alone out of the goodness of your heart,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but you didn’t pay me enough to betray her.”
“I didn’t pay you anything at all.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I had to try to reach her. I did try.” Chaz shook his head, eyeing the elevator.
“You have no idea how much she’d like to capitulate. She’s just not ready,” Brenda said.
“There’s no way to help with that? You won’t tell me what her problem is?”
“Not for love or money. Wild horses couldn’t drag Kim’s secrets from me without her permission.”
Chaz ventured another lingering look at the elevator.
Brenda’s voice sounded small. “What next?”
“My hands are tied. She wants to be left alone.”
“You already knew that.”
Chaz shot her a look that indicated quite clearly that he wasn’t in the mood to prolong this discussion.
“All right,” Brenda said. “But you’d better turn out to be a good guy, that’s all I can say, or you’ll have problems added onto problems. That’s a promise.”
Chaz leaned back to read the numbers on the elevator panel above the door. “If she’s going back to the office, will she stay up there long?”
Brenda shrugged.
“Does she need your shoulder to lean on?” he asked.
“I doubt it. Besides, she’ll probably get out one floor up and use the stairs to leave the building, knowing she’d get past you that way.”
Brenda’s eyes widened when she realized she’d said too much.
“That shrewd, eh?” he asked.
She blew out a sigh. “Every woman knows how to do this, Monroe. Avoidance is coded into in our genes.”
“So what will she do after that?”
“Simmer awhile, most likely, and the
n start thinking.”
“She doesn’t really have a case you know,” he said. “There’s no one to remove me or waggle a finger over a kiss.”
Brenda nodded. “I know that, and who you really are. You might have changed your name if being undercover here is your game, because I just looked your family up online. Kim doesn’t know yet because I didn’t get to it until now.”
“You looked me up?”
“The internet is a marvelous thing,” Brenda said. “Your family’s business dealings are plastered all over it.”
“Then you know why I’m here?”
“Yep.”
“You’ll tell her?”
“I would have already, if you hadn’t followed her to this hallway. Just so you know, friends don’t usually allow each other to do anything they might regret.”
“When she knows about me, and without her little blackmail scheme getting her the office she wants, will she leave the company?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. What would you do, in her place, if you found out that the man you were going to resort to blackmailing was in fact the owner of the agency?”
“I’d take the damn Christmas gig and get on with it,” Chaz said.
“Yes, well you have millions of dollars to fall back on, and no female hormones. Kim has a tiny apartment she can barely afford as it is, close by because she’s here working most of the time.”
Chaz gave her a sober sideways glance. “Point taken.”
“Is it?” Brenda countered.
“Quite.”
“She’s not putting you on, you know. She has been dealing with holiday stuff for years. Very real issues. Serious setbacks.”
Chaz looked again to the elevator, which had indeed stopped two floors up. He then glanced to the revolving doors leading to the street. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where her apartment is?”
“The name is Chang, not Judas.”
“I want to keep her, but I’m running out of options, Brenda. I’d like to tell her about my real position here, myself, before she does anything stupid.”
The Boss's Mistletoe Maneuvers Page 6