In Love with Her Boss

Chapter Two

“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 himself 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 resumé,” 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 resumé. 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 resumé. 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 construction 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 resumé, 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 he 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 hands through her hair and frown 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.

She pretended the heat on her cheeks was from the cold night air, not her embarrassment. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m in a new place…it’s unfamiliar—”

“Don’t apologize,” he said shortly. “I should have thought of it myself.”

It wasn’t his fault. “It’s me. The dark parking lot…”

“I’m going to get one of the men to install a light out there tomorrow,” he said.

Halting on the brick walkway, she turned to him. “Oh, no—”

“Lori.” In the darkness, his body was a massive shadow, but his voice was gentle. “It’s done. But to ease your mind even more, remember this isn’t the big city. You’re in Whitehorn now.”

“Yes.” Looking up, she took a deep breath of the clean, icy air. Whitehorn, Montana. “The stars seem so clear, so close here,” she said. “It’s as if someone polished the sky.”

“Someone did,” he answered lightly. “We like things to look their best when Southern girls arrive.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m impressed. I didn’t expect it to be quite so beautiful.” With a hand, she gestured toward the building they’d exited. “I didn’t expect a construction company office to look like an old schoolhouse either.”

Josh started toward the parking lot again. “It is an old schoolhouse. Miss Lilah Anderson’s schoolhouse, as a matter of fact. Dad and I rescued it a few years ago.”

“Lilah Anderson? A relation?”

“Yep. An aunt. I forget how many greats,” Josh answered. “My sister Dana knows, though, she’s the genealogist in the family.”

“Your roots go deep in Whitehorn, then.” Lori had roots here too, roots that she wanted to reconnect to. Roots that she hoped would help her build a new life. “It must be nice.”

“Are you rootless, Lori?”

She figured he was thinking of her resumé and the many jobs she’d had and cities she’d lived in over the past years. But she didn’t want to go into that. “I don’t have a big family like you do,” she said instead. “My mother died when I was twenty-three, after a long illness. We were…alone in the world.”

And how alone she’d felt during her mother’s illness. So alone that she’d made a mistake she’d been paying for every day since.

They reached her car. Though Lori had her keys in her hand, Josh leaned against the driver’s-side door, blocking her way. Goodness. His shoulders had to be twice the size of the average man’s.

“You make me realize I shouldn’t take so much for granted,” he said. “My family’s always been there for me. And the business was always there for me, too.”

Lori dipped her hands in the pocket of her coat. “So you always wanted the business? You always wanted to build things?” She could see him, she thought, a tall gangly kid following his father around with a hammer and a hundred questions.

His grin sliced whitely through the darkness. “I wanted to be a cowboy until I was nine years old and I fell off my friend’s horse and onto my keister. Then good ol’ Smokey stomped all over my hand. Couldn’t sit down or make a fist for a week.”

“Poor baby.” Lori shook her head, amused by the picture he painted. “Though you’re ruining Montana’s image for me. I thought all western men were horsemen.”

“Yeah,” he said dryly. “Just like we all smoke Marlboros and drag our Christmas trees behind sleighs through snowy fields.”

“Wearing ten-gallon hats,” she added.

“And sheepskin jackets.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t have a sheepskin jacket? I think I’m going to cry.”

“I’ll get one tomorrow,” he said promptly. “Just so you won’t.”

The teasing note in his voice made her nervous again. “Well…” she started.

“Well?”

“I guess it’s time for me to take myself and my fractured preconceptions home.” She drew her hand and her car keys from her pocket.

He moved away from the door so she could unlock it. “It’s not that I don’t like horses, Lori. Just that I like them best when they’re standing and I’m standing too.”

When she opened the door, the car’s overhead light pooled on Josh’s heavy construction boots but didn’t come close to illuminating his face, somewhere above her. “You seem to have bad luck with things falling on you,” she said, daring to tease a little about their meeting in the gym.

“I wouldn’t say it’s bad luck at all.”

With just those words, her pulse quickened again. She looked up at him, then swallowed, because he was so big and because there was that current running between them, that hot, tingly current she’d worked so hard to ignore all day. She had no business feeling this. For Josh, or for any man. It was too easy for her to become dependent on one. The wrong one.

“Josh.” She meant to say the word as a warning, but instead it came out uncertain.

“Lori.” He took a step closer, and she automatically shrank against the car. He froze. He muttered to himself. He turned away from her. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

But before she had the door shut, he turned back. “Lori.”

“Yes?”

His face was still in shadow, but it didn’t take night vision for her to know he was battling himself. “Are you…is there…” He broke off, muttering again.

“What do you want, Josh?”

His voice was rueful. “For the moment, the answer to a question.”

“Yes?”

He sighed. “Did you come to Whitehorn to be with someone?”

To be with a man, he meant. “No, Josh.” Lori almost laughed. “Good night.” Shutting the car door, she wondered what he’d think if she told him she’d come to Whitehorn for precisely the opposite reason. She was here to get away from someone.

To get away from a man.

Chapter Three

Before work a few mornings later, Josh sat on a weight bench at the gym, pushing himself through another set of bicep curls. Sweat ran down his neck and glistened on his arms. He worked his muscles to the failure point, knowing that he wouldn’t make it through the day without burning off some of his restless energy.

Dealing with Lori Hanson wasn’t getting any easier. She continued to be a distracting, enigmatic presence in his office. He still didn’t know if he had his signals crossed or if she sent out hot and cold messages on purpose.

Though he’d been spending a lot of time out of the office, he still made it back by five o’clock every day to walk her to her car. As he’d promised, the parking lot was brightly lit now, but he felt better seeing her off himself.

Someone dropped to the bench beside him. Josh kept pumping the weights, thinking about how Lori had looked beneath the new light the night before, her nose pinking with the cold, her dark hair curling against her cheek. He’d had to hold himself back from placing his palm there. Worse, he’d yet to shake the feeling that part of her wanted him to do that very thing.

“Hell, Josh,” said a familiar voice. “I said ‘good morning’ and I’ve been sitting here for five minutes waiting for a response, but you haven’t done anything but grunt and sweat.”

Jerked from his reverie, Josh turned his head. “Oh. Andy. Hey.” He’d known Andy McKenna for a dozen years.

Andy picked up a couple of nearby dumbbells and started his own set of curls. “What’s eating you?”

Josh let his weights slip to the floor. His arm muscles burned. “The usual.”

Andy looked over. “A work problem?”

“Woman problem.”

Thud-thud. Andy’s weights dropped. So did his jaw. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Why would you say that?” Josh asked.

“Because, buddy, you haven’t let yourself have a woman problem, not once, in the last five years.”

Since Kay’s death, Andy meant. Josh shifted on the bench, stretching out his legs to inspect the laces of his cross-trainers. It was true. He hadn’t felt the need for anything more than the most casual relationships with women since then. Nothing heavy enough to be classified a problem. He grunted. “I have one now.”

“Well, hallelujah,” Andy said. “Good ol’ Josh has a woman problem.”

Josh shot the other man a look. “Gee, thanks.”

He grinned. “Misery loves company and all that. So tell Dear Andy the problem. Is the lady married? Does she have a boyfriend?”

“No.” As he’d walked her to her car that first night, Josh had wondered that himself. But she’d said she hadn’t come to Whitehorn to be with a man. He ran a hand over his damp hair. “Andy, you know when a woman’s interested, right?”

“Hmm.” The other man reached for the dumbbells he’d dropped. “Well, I’ve made my share of blunders over the years, but I’d say that now I’m pretty good at distinguishing between a smile and a, well, smile.”

“And how old are you?” Josh asked.

“Thirty-five.”

Younger than Josh, which meant he couldn’t rule out that pre-midlife crisis condition.

“Geez, Josh.” Andy stopped lifting again. “You look serious. What the hell’s the matter?”

Josh shook his head. “I—”

Andy’s low whistle interrupted him. “Wow. Would you look at that.” With his chin, he gestured toward the glass wall in front of them, the wall through which they could see the basketball courts and the running track surrounding them.