The Boss's Urgent Proposal. SUSAN MEIERЧитать онлайн книгу.
sounded uncertain. Almost as if she didn’t know how to treat him anymore.
Josh understood that feeling perfectly. He hadn’t necessarily missed that his former secretary was an attractive woman, he had just never noticed that she was drop-dead gorgeous. Not that that influenced how he felt about her. He had always liked her. True, he didn’t show her any affection. Sometimes he wasn’t even really friendly. But he was busy. He was always busy. It wasn’t easy to work for family. First, he didn’t want to take advantage of the generosity of his uncle. Second, he didn’t ever want anyone to accuse him of not pulling his weight. If he worked harder and longer than everyone else, it was because he had to.
And if that meant his personal life suffered, then so be it. The problem was, though, in one ten-minute encounter out of the office, with roles reversed, or perhaps in some respects completely nonexistent, watching Olivia’s hair shifting around her every time she moved, and her nice little butt outlined in her jeans, Josh was considering that maybe—just maybe—his life was out of balance.
“Josh?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry,” Josh apologized quickly, then hoped she hadn’t caught him staring at her, pining for something he couldn’t have. Because that was ridiculous. Hormones. An unexpected wash of testosterone. That’s all. His goals, his lifestyle, his dedication to a man who had rescued him from a job he hated, couldn’t be overturned merely from seeing a pretty girl in jeans that fit as if they were cut to cling to her curves.
“Tell me what box to move and where to take it, and I’ll start toting and storing.”
“Okay,” she said, chipper and happy again.
Josh nearly breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. He didn’t want to be attracted to anybody, but he especially didn’t want to be attracted to her. She worked for him. Any move he made or inadvertently flirty thing he said could be construed as sexual harassment, but more than that she was vital to his plans right now. He needed her to be his teacher…and maybe his friend. But that was it.
Comfortable that his resolve was in place, he took a quick peek at her to see if the sight of her disrupted his reinforced conviction. When it didn’t, he knew he was back to normal. It was for both of their benefit that he didn’t see her as anything other than a secretary, and if it killed him over the next few days, he would treat her as impersonally as possible.
They stepped into Josh’s foyer a little more than an hour later and Olivia gasped with appreciation. Pale oak trimmed the three-tiered stairway that led to an open second-floor hall. Ceramic tile glistened beneath her feet. A sparkling chandelier hung from a glittery chain.
“Oh, gosh, Josh, your house is fantastic.”
“Thank you. I like it,” he said, taking her summer-weight jacket when she handed it to him.
“Did you do this yourself?” she asked, peeking around the corner at a comfortable room that was furnished in Southwest American decor. Earthy greens, hazy pinks and muted browns in the accent rug, sofa, and chairs came to life as soon as Josh turned on an overhead light.
“Gina helped. But the truth is I know what I like, and when I see what I like I…” He paused, and his face scrunched with an odd look before he slowly added, “I usually go after it. Not always, though, because some things aren’t meant to be. Or aren’t meant to happen.”
When he said the last, Olivia got the distinct impression he wasn’t talking about furniture anymore. For a fleeting second she worried that he had somehow caught on to the fact that she was unreasonably attracted to him and was warning her off, but that couldn’t be it. He hadn’t in four years figured out she had a crush on him. It was a stretch to think he saw it now. Besides, she hadn’t succumbed to his magnetic pull yet. Her resolve was in place. He might be good-looking and sexy, but even if she loved him to pieces, he didn’t love her. She was done pining over unrequited love.
But as he led her from the homey living room, through a formal dining room and into a cheerful kitchen decorated with a red-and-white tablecloth, curtains and chair pads, Olivia had second thoughts about her resolution. In fact, being in the room felt downright spooky. All her girlhood she had dreamed of a kitchen exactly like this one, and though she hadn’t precisely envisioned the living room, she loved it. She could live in this house as comfortably as he could, and that seemed to point out that they were more alike than they realized and might even be a sign that they were made for each other.
She stopped that conclusion. Immediately. Her decision was final. The man didn’t love her. She needed to go. She was going. There was a big, wide wonderful world that she had missed while longing for him to notice her. She wasn’t missing another minute of it.
“So, is there anybody expecting you in Florida?”
“Oh, my gosh! Yes. My mother,” Olivia said. “I need to call her and let her know I won’t be arriving tomorrow.”
He smiled. “My thought exactly. Why don’t you use the phone in the den while I see if I can find something to make for dinner? If I can’t find anything, I’ll order out for pizza. Anything special you like on your pizza?”
“No. I’m sort of a cheese-and-sauce girl. Nothing fancy for me.”
“You don’t even like pepperoni?” he asked quizzically.
She grimaced. “I don’t mean to be difficult, but no. If you don’t mind, I hate pepperoni and I hate picking it off even more.”
Josh’s expression changed so rapidly, Olivia couldn’t follow it. “I hate pepperoni, too.”
They looked into each other’s eyes for about thirty seconds, and though Olivia knew she was digesting the significance of yet another thing they had in common, she also knew he was not.
He didn’t like her.
He wasn’t attracted to her.
Heck, he hardly realized she was a woman. She had to remember that!
“I’m going to go call my mom,” she said, then turned and fled the room. At least this time, she not only left as she planned, she actually made it away from him without him changing her mind.
She followed a logical path through the downstairs until she found his den. Walls paneled in rough wood greeted her when she opened the door. She walked to the utilitarian computer workstation, turned on a brass lamp and found the multiline phone under a stack of Hilton-Cooper-Martin marketing reports. Even at home the man worked.
Olivia got a tug on her heartstrings. He desperately needed someone to care for him, to bring love into his life, to make his world warm and filled with simple pleasures, and she wanted so much to be that person.
But she also knew she had wasted enough time. Josh didn’t want her. If she were truly the woman who could bring joy to his world she would have figured out a way to do it in four years.
“Hello, Mama?” she said, when her mother answered the phone. “It’s Olivia.”
“Oh, Liv, thank God it’s you,” her mother said, and though Olivia had heard that nickname a million times it suddenly struck her that only her mother ever used it. But, tonight, Josh had. “When you didn’t call from your hotel, we were worried sick that something happened.”
“Well, something did happen,” Olivia said, leaning back in Josh’s office chair and twisting the phone cord around her finger. “Since my job doesn’t really interface with anyone else’s, and they haven’t found a replacement for me yet…”
“Oh, my Lord, you’re staying aren’t you?” her mother said, sounding discouraged. “Liv, honey, I thought—”
“It’s not what you think,” Olivia said, interrupting her mother in a rush. “I’m staying the weekend. I’m going to explain my job to Josh and tell him where to find things, so he can train a replacement. We might have to go into the office tomorrow,” she said, realizing that unless she actually showed him her filing system Josh would