Boss On Notice

He can’t trust himself...

Josh Sanders just wanted to help. After all, Mickie Phillips is a struggling single mom who needs a job...and a friend. Fortunately, her administrative skills are perfect for the new branch he’s running of the Cleaning Crew—a company of guys who clean houses. The downside? Mickie’s a petite, blue-eyed temptation he definitely needs to resist.

Their arrangement was not supposed to include simmering attraction—or deeper, decidedly unprofessional feelings. But Josh’s traumatic past has convinced him he can never be the man Mickie needs. Trust will only expose them to the most dangerous thing of all...love.

Her fingers closed lightly around his biceps and traced down his arm to his hand.

“We haven’t known each other very long, but I think of you as a friend, Josh. You’ve helped me so much. I just want you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help you, I’m here.”

Josh pulled her close so she wouldn’t see the sudden flood of emotion he felt. She had no idea. If he told her the truth, she would go—should go—running far away. “Thank you,” he managed to say.

“I mean it.” Mickie’s words vibrated against his chest. The feel of a warm body against his. The scent of her hair. The touch of her hands as they skimmed around his waist to link together, holding him in place. For a moment, all the confusion and regret and pain faded away. Being with her felt like stepping out of a shrieking wind and into a quiet moment of peace.

“I know,” he whispered in her ear. “Thank you.”

She leaned back to look up at him. He couldn’t meet her gaze. Instead he focused on her lips. Pink. The lower lip fuller than the top. Pretty. He wondered what it would be like to kiss them.

“Josh,” she said.

He kissed her.

Whatever she wanted to say, he didn’t want to hear.

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to The Cleaning Crew! We’ll be leaving beautiful Charleston to follow Josh to Columbia, SC, where he is setting up a new Crew. DeShawn is there to help him get the new branch up and running.

I was eager to write Josh’s story because he is, in many ways, much more damaged than Sadie. He’s just better at hiding it. In spite of everything, he’s a nice guy and deserves his happily-ever-after.

Mickie is the young single mother next door. She has secrets of her own. She and I also have one big thing in common: nursing school. She is clinging to the hope that once she becomes a nurse, she can stop running from her past and provide a good life for her son. Attending nursing school is extremely stressful and I was able to share some of my insane study/coping mechanisms with her. Hint: index cards.

It was a tall assignment to get Josh, who is terrified of family and commitment, and Mickie, who has serious trust issues and comes with a toddler, together. They are both rather mule-headed but also people with a lot of love to give. They just need to learn to accept love.

I hope you enjoy their journey.

Janet Lee Nye

Boss on Notice

Janet Lee Nye

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JANET LEE NYE is a writer by day and a neonatal nurse by night. She lives in Charleston, SC, with her fella and her felines. She spends too much time on Twitter and too little time on housework and has no plans to remedy this.

In dedication to all the romance writers who helped me, cheered me on, gave me critiques. I’m not going to name names because every person I talked to, every workshop I attended, every book I read, gave me a little bit of knowledge and insight. Thank you all.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WAS A kid in his kitchen. Not a regular kid but a baby-size kid. Josh stopped in the doorway and stared at him. The kid, in blue shorts and a white shirt with a sailboat on the front, stood a few feet from the sliding glass door that led to the patio. He was rubbing the bottom of his nose with the back of a fat little hand, staring at his own reflection in the glass and scratching his bottom with the other hand.

“Uh...um, hey? Who are you?”

The kid’s eyes opened wide as he turned to look at Josh. He pulled the hand away from his nose and a string of snot followed, stretching long and low, before dripping down onto the floor. The kid stood there, mouth moving, looking too startled to speak. Josh put his hands up like, “okay, okay, it’s good, we’ll figure this out,” but it was too late. The kid’s face crumpled into something that resembled a boiled troll’s seconds before an ungodly screeching wail began.

What the hell? This kid could give an ambulance siren some competition. Tears began to run down his face and he shuffled his feet in a kind of awkward dance.

“Hey. Hey. It’s okay,” Josh said, taking a step forward and extending a hand, not knowing if he was supposed to extend the hand. “Sorry. You scared the sh—You scared me.” He gave his best shot at a friendly smile.

How it was possible for the screech to get louder, Josh did not know, but, yep, the volume shot straight from ambulance siren to aircraft-taking-off territory. Josh glanced around the small apartment. He’d left the sliding glass door to the back patio open to air out the kitchen after he’d accidentally set fire to a bag of microwave popcorn. The screen had been pushed open. The kid had wandered in. Which meant that whoever the kid belonged to was out there, somewhere. Okay, this was a problem with a solution.

“Hey, come on,” he said. “Let’s find your mom.”

Josh took a few steps in the direction of the door but the kid didn’t follow. Nope. Not that easy. What the kid did was fall over on his butt and...get louder? Was that even possible? Yes, it was.

Josh started to cover his ears, then forced himself to let his hands fall back to his sides. How did parents deal with this? He tried a smile. Made what he hoped was a comical shrug. What did they do on Sesame Street? There had to be some kind of kid code, a universal sign for “all is cool,” but hell if he knew it. “Where’s your momma, little guy?”

The shriek seemed to have maxed out, but now there was a bubble of snot expanding, expanding...from one of the kid’s nostrils. At the point Josh thought surely it was going to pop, the snot bubble shrank back down when the kid remembered to breathe. Then, it began to grow again. Okay, really? The thing about snot bubbles was—How do you look away? Josh felt his own face going red. A train wreck of a house he could handle. That was all in a day’s work. Nasty grout that needed scouring, a floor that hadn’t been mopped in months, greasy kitchen grime—all that he could put right with or without the rest of the Crew. But a wailing kid? There were people for that. Parents. Again, he gave it a try. “Hey, little guy, your mom? Where?” Nope, not going to be that easy apparently.

He crossed the kitchen, put his hands under the kid’s armpits and lifted. He turned his face to the side so he wouldn’t get puked on and could at least spare one eardrum. That snot bubble was an issue, too, now about a big as a bubble in a Hubba Bubba gum ad. He slid the screen door to the side and walked outside holding the kid as far from himself as possible. Wasn’t there a character in an X-Men movie that could knock down brick walls with his superpowered scream? This kid could be that guy.

He crossed the small concrete patio and stepped out into the grass, already feeling the weight of the kid in his shoulders. He looked both ways. There were four apartments lined up. Two duplexes and a parched strip of St. Augustine grass between the two buildings. What he did not see was anyone that could help.

“Hello?” he said.

Now the kid was kicking his legs and wiggling in Josh’s grip. He caught a couple of baby-shoe kicks in the ribs. Geez, put this kid in martial arts, he’d be dangerous.

“Ian?”

Josh turned toward the sound of the voice. Frantic. Female. Mom? Could this be Mom? Ian screamed and wiggled and blew more snot bubbles. Please, God, let that be his mother. A woman snatched the baby from his hands. She sank down into the grass, clutching the baby. Petite, young, blonde. When she looked up at him, as if still wondering what to think, he saw the panic in her eyes. Blue eyes, pupils wide, shining with tears.

“Oh, my God, Ian. Ian, baby. Don’t ever scare Mommy like that ever again.”

She hugged him and kissed his face. Josh wanted to look away when the snot bubble popped right on Mom’s cheek, but if she even noticed, there was no sign of it. Okay, yeah, maybe moms don’t care, but gross! Josh shifted his feet in the grass and stuffed his hands in his back pockets. “Uh. Sorry. The sliding glass door, on my patio, it was open, he wandered in. I think I scared him.”

She stood, keeping the boy clutched tight against her. “He... Wait, what? Oh, God.” She looked at the boy, shook her head and then looked back at Josh. Tears welled at the bottom of her eyes. She ran a hand through her hair, brushing it back, and let out a great big breath. “Thank you. Oh, Ian. Don’t do... Don’t scare me like...” She cleared her throat, turned her head, seemed to compose herself. “I didn’t realize our back door was unlocked,” she said. “I went in the other room for one second and...” Her face went pale and Josh could see in her eyes all of the nightmare scenarios that were playing out in her head. She hugged Ian to her. “Thank you. He’s not getting out of my sight again.” She looked at Ian. “No, sir, you are not.”

“At least now I know where to return him. I’m Josh, by the way. Josh Sanders.”

She jiggled the baby to her hip and held out a free hand. “Mickie Phillips. Nice to meet you.”

“Moving in?” He tried to look her over with being too obvious about it. Her laser focus on the child in her arms helped in this regard. She was busy finger-brushing his messy hair and cleaning the snot off his cheek—finally!—with a tissue that seemed to have materialized out of thin air. Was that some kind of secret mom power? She looked like she might be halfway through her twenties. Slim, but he could see the strength in her, in the way she held that boy. Good cheekbones, cute nose. Blond hair and ice-blue eyes. Dang. She looked like she could have some Viking shieldmaiden in her gene pool. There was a slight trace of an accent he couldn’t place, but it wasn’t Southern.

“Yeah.”

“Welcome to the neighborhood. Let me know if you ever need anything.”

He said it as he was already turning around and starting to walk back to his place. The spot on his arm where her hand had brushed him tingled with a little rush of heat. Cute little blonde? Maybe. Cute little blonde with a baby? Oh, hell no. He and babies did not mix. Would not.

Once he got back to his place, he slid the glass door shut and made sure to lock it behind him. He washed his hands at the kitchen sink in case there were any lingering baby germs.

Well, that had sure been something. He snagged a paper towel, wiped his hands dry. Ice-blue eyes... He glanced toward the patio. Nope. Popped open the fridge but surprisingly, nothing had magically appeared there that could be properly considered food. Jars of mustard, mayo. Some bologna maybe a smidge past sketchy. Bottles of water. Why was he hungry all of a sudden? Blonde. Blue eyes. He scooped up his motorcycle helmet and made a beeline for the door.

The thing about it was that Columbia didn’t feel like home yet. He felt like a visitor. Still felt like it was all temporary. He missed Charleston more than he’d thought he would. He missed Sadie and the guys. He pulled the cover off his restored ’68 Harley Sportster. So, he’d kill a couple of hours exploring the town, see if he could work this out. Maybe pick up a few groceries—or, let’s be real here, take-out—and come back to get ready for the next day.

As the bike rumbled out of the small parking lot to the street, he caught a glimpse of blond hair turning the corner. He turned in that direction. Mickie. She was walking briskly down the street, pushing the baby in a stroller. He lifted a hand as he rode by, but she didn’t see him. Maybe that was okay. Maybe that was better. He gunned the accelerator, hit the road, twisted and turned through the maze that was this strange new place.

Blond hair, blue eyes, hey, come on. Geez. Look around you. USC. The statehouse. Liberty Tap Room and UFO, like he’d ever get up and sing karaoke. At least having a bike meant he could find parking somewhere, maybe. That was different from downtown Charleston. And even this was only the tight little downtown area. Never mind all the outlying areas he hadn’t ventured out into yet.

This was a much bigger city, sprawling out into a confusing jumble of suburbs. The move had come sooner than expected. Josh was running the expansion of Sadie’s all-male cleaning company, the Cleaning Crew. The plan had been to run it out of Charleston for several months before committing to a move. But the client list had grown more quickly than expected. He was gaining more respect for what Sadie had built. Between hiring employees and making sure clients understood that house cleaning was the only service provided, he was currently only one of two guys doing the cleaning. Add in all the paperwork and he was pretty sure Sadie was a freaking genius and a saint for never having throttled anyone, at least not anyone that Josh knew of.

He rode until he remembered that he was hungry. That popcorn was supposed to have been breakfast. Hey, the Five Points shopping district was straight ahead. Starbucks to satisfy the immediate urge for caffeine and something solid, maybe a bagel, with a follow-up at the Food Lion for some grown-up shopping. He did exactly that. After he finished, the grocery store was right there.

He grabbed as much as he could fit in the saddlebags on the bike and headed home. The ride home put his head straight. That was a lot easier now that there was food in his stomach. When he turned into the duplex, he saw her again.

Mickie. She was pushing the stroller. A bulging backpack was strung across her shoulders, while shopping bags dangled from the stroller handles and a cardboard box balanced on top of the handles. Wait, why? Moving in like that? From where?

He shook his head as he pulled around back, parking the bike on his patio. None of your business, man. You need to get into those applications. Find some guys.

A couple of hours later, there she was again, pushing the baby stroller, loaded down with shopping bags. What was she going back and forth for? Didn’t she have a car? Could she only carry small bits at a time? Kind of like him and his saddlebags when he wasn’t driving the SUV? He stepped out on the front porch.

“Do you need some help?” he asked.

Her cheeks were pink and there was a faint sheen of perspiration on her forehead. It was well over 90 degrees. Hello, South Carolina summer. The baby...boy—wasn’t there another word? Toddler!—looked toasty, also.

“No. I’m fine.” There was slight emphasis on the fine. A back off emphasis.

He hesitated. Because she clearly wasn’t fine. She was hauling stuff with a baby in this heat. That didn’t seem to be fine to him. He shrugged. Not his problem. “Okay. But if you need help, I’m right here. Ask.”

She nodded as she pushed the stroller over her doorstep and closed the door. Whatever. I offered. A minute later, he heard her door open and close again. He frowned at the sight out his front window. She was heading off again, empty backpack and empty stroller. Well, the kid was still in there. He stood there for a long minute. She doesn’t want your help, dude. Let it go. He let it go.

Until she repeated the process. He opened his front door again. “Hey. Wait up.”

She stopped on the sidewalk and turned back to him. “I’ve got this.”

“I’m sure you do. But I’ve got an SUV. Might cut down on the number of trips you have to make.”

She let go of the stroller to lift her hair off her neck as she contemplated him. He hated that his offer of help had to be considered with such a concern for safety, but that was the world today. “I told you my name. I’m Josh Sanders. I can call references for you right now. I want to help. I can’t stand watching you run back and forth in this heat with the little guy.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. “See, I’ll call my boss. Sadie Martin.” He tapped through, hoping Sadie would answer. She did. He put the call on speaker and moved closer to Mickie.

“Hey, Josh, what’s up?” Sadie asked. He couldn’t get over how happy and relaxed she sounded. Love was agreeing with her.

“Hey. Listen, I’ve got my new neighbor Mickie here and she needs some help moving her stuff. Tell her I’m a good guy.”

“He’s a great guy, Mickie. Let him help. Don’t let him cook for you, but let him help you move heavy things.”

Mickie smiled but was still shaking her head. “You could be anyone,” she said.

“But I’m not,” Sadie said through the speaker. “I’m Sadie Martin. I own the Cleaning Crew down in Charleston. Josh is my number-one guy. He’s up there getting our second location started. You can look us up online. He was the only person I trusted on this planet to do that for me. Let him help you move some boxes.”

“I really do have an SUV,” Josh said. “If you have a car seat, we can put it in there and be done in, what? One or two trips?”

She looked down at Ian and then up at the sun. It was well past noon. She pressed her lips together. A sigh flowed out of her. “Okay,” she said.

He would have been relieved if not for the tone of her voice. The way she said it, it sounded as if she’d failed at something.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE COULD NOT believe she was doing this. Getting in a car with a strange man. Worse, putting her baby in a car with a stranger. She looked at him, looked him right in the eyes, trying to gauge if she could trust him. He didn’t try to convince her. He held her eye contact and gave her a smile that seemed to say “I understand.”

They made it happen. Somehow, awkwardly. She wrestled the car seat in place in the backseat. Once she had it in and secured—even tugged on the seat a few times to make sure it was strapped in correctly—she lifted Ian out of the stroller. “Up, big man,” she said and Ian climbed in, squirming around as she buckled him.

“Go! Go! Go!” Ian said. He slapped both hands together each time he said it.

“Yeah, we’re gonna go, go, go,” Mickie muttered under her breath as she shut the back door and climbed up front into the passenger’s seat. Hopefully not to our most gruesome end.

Josh smiled at her from the driver’s seat. “All set?”

“Sure.” She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. Tired. She was so damn tired. Of every little thing being an obstacle. Of keeping a smiling face and happy voice for Ian. Of hiding the tears and her fears from him. None of this was his fault. The car didn’t move and she opened her eyes.

“Where are we going?”

“Oh. Yeah. That’d help, huh? That garage a little ways down on Devine Street. Next to the Jiffy Lube?”

He dropped the car in Drive and pulled out into the light Sunday traffic. “You lived at the garage?”

“No. My car is at the garage.”

Actually, her car was dead. She should have been grateful that it decided to pop its transmission out onto the road so close to her new place, but still...this was the new place that she couldn’t afford anymore since the job she’d counted on had crapped out. Then the car crapped out. She rubbed her eyes. It’ll be okay. You have some left in savings. The apartment is on the bus line. You’ll find another job. She twisted in her seat to look at Ian. He was passed out. Poor baby. This guy must think she was the worst mother in the world, dragging him around in the heat.

“How old is he?” Josh asked.

She looked over at Josh, this strange man. Cute, but really? From the way he’d carried Ian out of his apartment that morning, a sight she’d giggled long and hard over once her fright had diminished, she knew he had zero to no experience with children. Good-looking, with curly, black hair, and a bit shaggy, but that was okay. Blue eyes. No rings on his fingers, she could see that as he held the steering wheel. And they were nice hands. Strong-looking hands. She looked away. “Almost two,” she said.

“Oh.”

Silence followed. So much silence that when he hit the turn signal, it startled her. “Why did you ask?” she asked as they pulled into the garage’s parking lot. She pointed to her poor dead car, parked to the side.

He shrugged. “Aren’t you supposed to ask things like that about people’s kids?”

Instead of answering, she unhooked her seat belt and opened the door. She glanced back at Ian. He was still sleeping. Good.

“I’ll leave the AC running,” Josh said. He pulled the parking brake, slid out, popped open the back hatch.

Mickie frowned. Part of her was screaming to not leave Ian alone in a running car, but what else could she do? She left her door open just in case she had to jump in and save him. Her eyes scanned the parking lot as she walked to her car and unlocked the back door and the trunk. Everything she owned in the world was crammed in there. Well, everything that would fit anyway. She’d left some furniture behind. Well, hey, it wasn’t like it had been Queen Anne antiques. Mostly Wal-Mart and sidewalk-salvage, chipboard, snap-together stuff. Hey, you could afford what you could afford. She reached into the backseat and hauled out a box. She’d replace it. Right. With the money from the job that you, oh, yeah, no longer have.

“All of it?” Josh asked as he started moving boxes from the trunk of her car to his SUV.

“Yeah, everything that will fit. Guy here told me he was having the car hauled to the junkyard in the morning whether I had my stuff out or not.”

“What a dick. Seriously?”

She nodded and swallowed down the lump in her throat. Yeah, the guy had been a dick. But he’d given her two hundred dollars for the corpse of her car and a day to get her stuff out. She could sleep on the floor. She could eat ramen noodles. But Ian needed real food and the money, well, that would get it for him. It took a depressingly short amount of time to move everything out of the car.

“Where’s your furniture?” Josh asked as they got back in his car.

She felt her cheeks burn hot. “It’s coming,” she lied. There was nothing coming. She couldn’t afford to rent a U-Haul. She certainly couldn’t afford a moving company. It wasn’t like they were family heirlooms. She hoped the next tenants would have use of it, maybe for kindling in the fireplace when winter began to make its way south.