One Night with her Boss Read online

  One Night with her Boss

  Noelle Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Proofreading: Vanessa Bridges, PREMA Romance

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Engaging the Boss

  About the Author

  One

  Anne’s boss got into the office by 7:00 every morning, so she always tried to arrive by 6:45.

  This morning, however, was one of those days when every outfit she put on looked frumpy. She normally thought she was a basically attractive person, but occasionally none of her clothes seemed to look good. So, after trying on half her closet, she settled for a pencil skirt she would have liked if it hadn’t made her ass look too big.

  She had to wear something, and she was already running late.

  It had already been a bad morning, and she felt even more out of sorts when she parked in her normal spot in the parking garage and saw Jake’s black SUV already parked two spots over.

  It didn’t matter. Not in the slightest. There was no reason she had to already be settled at her desk when Jake arrived every morning, with her email and voice mail already cleared out so she could focus on whatever was on the schedule for the day.

  But she preferred it that way.

  With a sigh, she climbed out of her ten-year-old sedan, her ankle wobbling slightly since she’d worn her highest heels, since they were the only shoes that worked with this skirt. Then she grabbed her satchel and the cardboard tray of four coffees she’d gotten on her way to work before she headed for the elevator.

  Jake was standing in front of it, talking on the phone. She was still a distance away when the bong chimed and the doors slid open.

  Since he was on the phone, she didn’t call out to get him to hold it, even though it meant she’d have to wait for another five minutes for the damned elevator to return.

  Jake’s back had been to her, so she didn’t think he’d seen her, but he was holding the elevator door open as she approached.

  He was still on the phone, and he sounded exasperated.

  She picked up her speed so he wouldn’t have to hold the doors so long, but that was a mistake because she stumbled on the last few steps, barely catching herself before the coffees all fell to the floor.

  So she was feeling rather flustered as she stepped onto the elevator, smiling a sheepish thanks to Jake.

  He nodded his acknowledgment, but was clearly focused on his call. “Damn it, Stew,” he said into the phone. “It’s your job to handle people like that.”

  Stewart Hall was the manager of the shop in San Diego. He was new to the role and still rather insecure about his ability to handle problems, so Jake had to do a lot of hand-holding.

  “No,” Jake said. “This is too important. You can’t let him—”

  He broke off, shaking his head and muttering, “Lost the connection. Damn thing.”

  “It’s not the phone’s fault.” She tried not to smile at the way he was glaring at the phone, as if it had disconnected him on purpose. “We’re in an elevator.”

  He shot her a suspicious look, as if he guessed she was trying not to laugh at him.

  Jacob Woodward had been a professional surfer with an impressive reputation for ten years until he’d busted his knee. Handsome and talented, with a laidback charm, he’d gotten a number of a big commercial endorsements. The knee injury had cut his career abruptly short, though. She hadn’t known him back then, but everyone said he’d had a bad few months, drinking himself into a stupor and acting out with dangerous stunts. But he’d eventually pulled himself together and opened a surf shop in Malibu.

  Instead of easing his way through the rest of his life, resting on his laurels, he’d thrown himself into the new enterprise, treating the shop like a real business venture instead of just a beach hangout like some other retired surfers she knew.

  He’d done so well that he’d opened two more shops on the California coast a few years ago, and he was currently working on national merchandising opportunities.

  Anne had been with him for seven years, and she’d been in love with him for at least two.

  Jake was thirty-nine, with dark hair, gray eyes, and a powerful build which was evident even beneath the business suits he always wore so people took him seriously.

  Not that he’d ever told her that was why he dressed so professionally, even in a beach culture that didn’t require it. But Anne knew him very well, and she understood that he didn’t want anyone to think he was just some washed-up old surfer. So he wore expensive suits, he drove an expensive car, and he leased an expensive office suite instead of setting up an office near his first shop at the beach.

  “We might need to go to San Diego this afternoon,” he told her now, glancing over with gray eyes that always saw more than his characteristically laidback demeanor indicated.

  She tried not to make a face. She’d been experimenting with online dating recently, as one of her efforts to get over Jake, and she had a first date this evening. “Okay.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  For the twenty-thousandth time, she silent cursed his acute powers of observation. He could obviously tell she didn’t like the idea of the trip. “No. It’s fine.”

  “How’s your car?”

  “It’s working fine now. Your guy did a good job.”

  She’d had a clatter in her engine that no one had been able to figure out until Jake recommended an out-of-the-way mechanic he used.

  “How much did he charge you?”

  “Not very much. Thanks for recommending him.”

  “Sure.” The elevator doors slid open just then, so he stepped out into the hall and immediately reconnected the phone call with Stew.

  By the time they’d reached their office suite, Anne suspected the trip to San Diego was likely to happen.

  Her date would have to be rescheduled.

  A year or two ago, she’d entertain daydreams about their work trips turning into romance, but she’d stopped torturing herself with those kinds of fantasies

  When Jake was working, he was all work.

  And he was always working.

  She was trying to juggle the tray of coffees and dig her keys out of her satchel when Jake reached over to take the tray from her hand. He was still talking on the phone, but he held the coffees as she unlocked the suite.

  It was a little gesture. No big deal at all. Certainly nothing to feel soft about.

  Any halfway decent person would have done the same thing.

  But her chest was feeling overly full when she took the tray back from him.

  He was distracted with his call, trying to give Stew some advice about handling a difficult vendor, and he didn’t immediately release the coffee.

  So, for a minute, they were standing about two inches apart, both holding onto the tray. Anne could feel the heat from his body, smell the scent of his soap and his clothes, see the faint stubble on his jaw, even though she knew he’d shaved this morning.

  He met her eyes, and she lost her breath, suddenly wanting to touch him so badly she could hardly hold herself back.

  He trailed off his sentence and lowered the phone slightly, gazing at her with an expression that looked deep and almost awed.

  Then he asked, “Did you w
ant something?”

  She almost slumped in disappointment at the prosaic question, but managed to murmur, “The coffee.”

  “Oh.” He released the tray and returned to his conversation.

  She handed him the coffee she’d bought for him—Colombian, black—and went over to her desk to get ready for the day.

  Damn, she was an idiot, always letting herself hope for no reason at all.

  She’d worked for him for years, and he’d never showed her the slightest sign of real interest. An intense look now and then didn’t mean anything. Besides, he was her boss, and he would never make a move on her—simply because of that.

  Maybe a lot of men had no qualms about having affairs with members of their staff, but Jake was not one of those men.

  So she kept trying to put her feelings for him aside and find another romantic interest, one there might be a future with. She’d asked her friends to set her up, and she’d be doing the online dating sites, but so far she hadn’t had much luck in finding someone who even came close to Jake in her mind.

  She knew Jake dated, but he hadn’t had a serious girlfriend in a few years. She suspected he just didn’t want to invest in a relationship, since work took up all of his time and energy. One day, that would change, though, and she dreaded the day he fell in love.

  Of course, it might end up being a good thing. It might finally drill into her head the reality she should have accepted long ago.

  There was nothing in the world wrong with her. She was smart and nice and competent and pretty enough on most days.

  She had dark hair and eyes, a slightly-too-curvy figure, and a generally healthy appearance with clear skin and pink cheeks. Someone in college had called her appearance “wholesome.” Anne would have preferred to be sexy and glamorous, but that just wasn’t going to happen.

  It wasn’t the issue anyway. The issue wasn’t that she didn’t measure up. The issue was simply this.

  Jake Woodward wasn’t the man for her.

  ***

  A couple of hours later, she was staring down at a printout of a new marketing proposal and trying to decide whether she should tell Jake that some of these ideas just sucked.

  She’d gotten her degree in marketing and, out of college, had made an intensive effort to find a job in the field. That was right around the time when the economy had tanked, though, and marketing was one of the costs that businesses were cutting. There were no entry-level jobs to be had in this area. Not for her, anyway, since her résumé was good but not great. Plus, she couldn’t move away since her mother had just been diagnosed with cancer

  So she’d applied for the job as administrative assistant with Jake, thinking it would just be a year or so before she could find the kind of job she wanted. She’d liked Jake in the interview and thought she could work well with him. Jake’s business had been starting to grow so fast he couldn’t keep up, and he’d needed her to bring order to the chaos.

  She was good at it, and she even enjoyed her job most of the time. He was a hard worker and he expected the same from his staff, but he was intrinsically kind and he treated her well.

  But she’d always wanted to go into marketing. And here she was, a couple of years from thirty, and she was still hesitating about whether to give her opinion to her boss about the plans from his marketing people.

  This was not at all the career she’d thought she’d have.

  Caring for her mother had been her priority for four years, until she died. Then Anne had thought she was really satisfied as Jake’s assistant and hadn’t felt the need to move on. A few months ago, however, after a pep talk from her friends, she had started sending out résumés again. She’d had an interview with a marketing firm two weeks ago for a job that was exactly what she wanted, but she hadn’t heard back about it, so she assumed she hadn’t gotten it.

  She was hardly a dream candidate, after having spent seven years as an administrative assistant.

  The phone rang, distracting her from her brooding. It was Jake’s lawyer, so she told him Jake would call him right back.

  Jake had left his office a half-hour ago, when she’d been on the phone. She’d thought he was just heading for the restroom, but he must have gone somewhere else.

  She didn’t like not knowing where he was, so she got up and started to look.

  She knew he hadn’t left the suite, since her desk had a view of the main door. Max, his financial guy, said Jake wasn’t in the men’s room, so she checked out the conference room and the lounge area, where he sometimes moved to stretch out his legs if his knee was bothering him.

  He wasn’t there either.

  He also wasn’t in Janice’s or Melanie’s office, which left only one place in the suite.

  Anne was shaking her head as she opened the door of the file room.

  He wasn’t supposed to be in here.

  But there he was, kneeling down to search through the bottom drawer of the file cabinet on the back wall.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, feeling a familiar wave of annoyance. Had he been in here looking for something in a file for the whole thirty minutes?

  He jerked in obvious surprise and looked at her over his shoulder. “I need the sales receipts from last February.”

  She let out a breath and walked over toward him. “Well, you’re in the wrong cabinet.”

  “I am not.” He looked frustrated, rumpled, and absolutely gorgeous, kneeling on the floor in front of her in his suit and red tie. “This drawer is for February 2013.”

  “I know that, but the sale receipts aren’t there.” When he looked like he was about to argue, Anne went on, “Would you please stand up? You’re going to hurt your knee like that.”

  His shoulders stiffened, and his square jaw clenched. “My knee is fine.”

  “No, it’s not. You were limping yesterday because you were at your desk for sixteen hours on Tuesday. How long have you been kneeling here looking in that drawer? You can’t do that to your knee.”

  She knew her tone was too tense and urgent, so she tried to dial it back. There was no reason to react this way, anyway. She just got so upset when Jake refused to make the most obvious steps to take care of himself, as if he thought work was more important than his health or his needs.

  “I told you my knee is fine.” His voice was guttural, almost a growl, and his eyes looked like steel in the florescent light.

  She reached down for his arm. “I’ll get the file for you. Would you please get up off your knee?”

  With an exaggerated sigh of impatience, he hauled himself up to his feet, not quite managing to hide the wince as he straightened his bad leg. Now he was looming over Anne, even in her four-inch heels. “Fine. Happy?”

  She wasn’t happy. Sometimes he was so stubborn he made her want to scream. “Why didn’t you ask me to get the receipts for you?”

  “You were on the phone. Am I not allowed to search through my own files?”

  “No, you’re not. I’ve told you over and over again. You end up putting things in the wrong place, and it takes me hours to find them again.” She grabbed the file from his hand, glanced at it, and then leaned over to slide it back into place and then push the drawer closed.

  “I still need the—”

  “They aren’t in that drawer. They’re over here.” She walked over to the opposite wall, her heels clicking on the floor. She smoothed down her skirt, since it felt like it had gotten twisted slightly. She vaguely hoped her ass didn’t look as big as she’d thought it did this morning. She leaned down to open the correct drawer and rifled through files quickly until she found the right one.

  Jake had followed her over, and she could feel him bristling behind her as she turned around to hand him the file.

  He stared down at it. “Why aren’t the receipts in the February drawer?”

  “Because the receipts are all over here. If you would let me keep the records electronically, we wouldn’t have this argument every other week.”

  “Do you
really think I’m going to trust the last ten years of my life to a computer? You’ve got to be crazy. I could lose everything with a key stroke.”

  He’d always been kind of a Luddite. A lot of the time she found it adorable.

  Not today.

  It bothered her unreasonably that he evidently thought the last ten years of his life were only about building this company. As if he was nothing but his work.

  She cleared her throat. “Keeping paper records means you could lose everything to a fire.”

  “The cabinets are fire proof.”

  She shook her head. “Fine. It’s your business. Your files. You can keep ancient paper records if you want. But you aren’t allowed in here. If you want something, ask me.”

  He stepped a little closer and braced his arm on the cabinet next to her shoulder. “Who’s the boss here anyway?”

  She could tell his mood had changed. He wasn’t angry. He was still bristling, but also almost dryly amused. The transformation of his expression left her breathless, as did his proximity.

  Her eyes were right at his chin level, so she had to tilt her head up to meet his eyes. “I’m not trying to be the boss.”

  His mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. “You’re pretty bossy, to not be trying to be the boss.”

  She swallowed hard, clenching her fists to keep herself from putting her hands on his chest. When he was like this—clever, dry, focused on her—she always seemed to want him the most. “Well, I’m the boss of this room. You’re the boss of everything else.”

  “Is that how it works?” He braced his other hand on the cabinet, trapping her between his arms.

  “Yes.” She was flushed all over and suddenly conscious of the ache of arousal between her thighs. She had no idea when that had happened. “That’s how it works.”

  She could see that he was breathing quickly too, and he looked as hot as she felt. Something new had blazed up in his eyes, and for a moment she was sure he would kiss her.

  But he didn’t.

  Of course, he didn’t.

  She was his assistant. Not his girlfriend.