The Boss's Urgent Proposal. SUSAN MEIER
it. He tried to reason it away. In the end, he tossed the linens to the bed and grabbed the fitted sheet and snapped it open.
“Josh, really, I can do this,” Olivia protested, but she giggled as if seeing him doing housework appealed to her.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m fine.”
“Josh, I want to make the bed and take a shower,” she said, then walked over and tried to yank the sheet from his hands. “If you go I can have this done in two minutes.”
“What? And with me here, it will take longer?”
“No,” she said, but she laughed again. At his stupidity, no doubt, because Josh knew he was acting stupid. But whatever her reason for laughing, Josh recognized he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard her laugh. More than that, though, he liked the sound. It warmed him all over.
With that thought, he realized he was staring down at her. She turned her beautiful green-blue eyes up at him, and he noticed that they were standing so close that with one lift of his hand he could be touching her. If he lowered his face just a couple of inches he could be kissing her.
He swallowed.
Two minutes ago he had his first ever thought of kissing her. Now, suddenly, he felt he would die if he didn’t.
Chapter Three
When his gaze stayed on her mouth, Olivia realized Josh was going to kiss her and her breath froze in her throat. Her blood tingled through her veins. Her knees weakened. For four long years she had been waiting for this man to kiss her. Now that the moment had arrived, she savored every second of the exquisite torture of anticipation, stunned that her dreams were about to come true.
But when he returned his gaze to hers, she also saw from the look in his eyes that he was confused about why he wanted to kiss her—confused enough that he didn’t follow through. He didn’t kiss her. He took two paces back and spun away so quickly, Olivia felt a breeze.
“Well, I guess you can handle putting these sheets on by yourself. Good night, Olivia,” he said as he bent to grab the old linens from the floor, and nearly sprinted out of the room.
Olivia collapsed on the bed, wondering what the heck had just happened. He seemed to be seeing her differently, but since he didn’t follow through it also confirmed that he was fighting the fact that the way he saw her was changing. Which meant she couldn’t let the near miss with kissing cloud how she felt about him or her decision to leave. She might have had twenty seconds of glorious anticipation, but for him that “almost kiss” was nothing more than a fleeting, confusing thought.
If she were a silly woman, she might be insulted that he was rebelling against viewing her as anything other than a loyal employee. But she wasn’t a silly woman. She was a realist, on her way to a new life and only detained in her old one because she didn’t want to leave any loose ends. It would be horrible if Josh called her for assistance a few weeks after she was gone, on a day when she was homesick, because she might be lonely enough to return. Then she would be right back where she started. She needed to teach him her job, so she could move to Florida knowing they would have no more contact. She wanted to go and not look back.
The next morning, Josh peered over his bowl of cereal at Olivia as she entered the kitchen. Though he had tried to cover his mistake, he wondered if she realized he had considered kissing her the night before. That in and of itself would have made facing her hard enough. But much to his consternation he had dreamed about her while asleep.
The dream, more than the near miss with kissing, was what really made this first encounter difficult, because in his dream Olivia was dressed in something filmy and sexy, close enough to touch, but always eluding him. That was the good part of the dream. The bad part, the part that woke him with shock and a feeling of bewilderment, was that she also told him that she was leaving him because he didn’t love her. Which was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
Actually it was wishful thinking. Every time they talked last night, first at her apartment, then at his house over pizza, he discovered there was more to like about her beyond her good looks, which were sufficient reason to grovel at her feet in most male circles. He could understand himself wishing she were interested in him. Any normal man would want this woman yearning for his affection. But given that she was leaving, it was fairly obvious that she wasn’t longing for his love, so the second half of the dream was pure fantasy.
“Hi, Josh.”
Glancing up, Josh swallowed hard. Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway with her voluminous hair pulled into a ponytail and her body encased in cute jeans and a fitted top, both of which were perfectly innocent. But when he looked at her, he imagined her dressed in the red filmy thing from his dream. In his mind’s eye, he saw the swell of her breast caressed by what appeared to be see-through chiffon. He saw the curve of her hip shift against the lightweight material. He saw the long length of her legs.
He would have been mortally embarrassed, except Olivia didn’t know about the dream and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Particularly since her chipper greeting proved she wasn’t holding that “almost kiss” against him.
“Hi.”
“You got any Frosted Flakes?” she asked, ambling into the room like they were best friends who always had sleepovers. As if she wasn’t troubled or titillated by the fact that they’d spent the night under the same roof.
“Turntable below the microwave. Bowls are in the cupboard by the sink.”
“Thanks.” She walked into the room, her ponytail swishing around her.
Josh rubbed his hands across his face as if he was attempting to awaken himself, but, really, he was stifling a groan. It was pretty damned hard to miss the fact that this woman was gorgeous. He blamed her conservative work wardrobe for his not seeing any of this before, but even that excuse only went so far. She never hid her hair, those eyes or that soft-looking skin. He had to have had his head in a cloud. God only knew what else he missed about her in the past four years. But that didn’t worry him as much as the fact that he couldn’t seem to be in the same room with her without having thoughts that were definitely inappropriate. Some even bordered on downright lusty.
“What time are we going in to the office?” she asked, bringing a bowl to the kitchen table.
Josh leaped out of his seat. “As soon as I shower,” he said, and chuckled a little nervously. “That’s why I just jumped up like that…I need to go shower.”
“Good.” She poured Frosted Flakes into the bowl. “You go shower and I’ll eat while I catch the morning news.”
“Good.” He began backing out of the kitchen. “Let me know if anything interesting happened while we were sleeping.”
For some reason or another that comment struck her as funny and she started to laugh. Josh took advantage of her preoccupation with giggling to get out of the kitchen, but also to remind himself that that was the kind of relationship they had. Buddies. Friendly coworkers. Gumbas.
Otherwise she would have noticed and reacted to the fact that he was only wearing a robe. Sure, it was a long, commonplace—all right, ugly—robe, but it was only one layer of material. She could have at least tried to peek around in an attempt to see if he wore other clothes beneath it. Instead, she acted as if she wouldn’t care if he were stark naked, sitting beside her.
He frowned. Now that he thought about it, that really rubbed him the wrong way. He might be older than she was but he wasn’t unattractive. Ignoring him shouldn’t be so easy. In fact, since she made it look like such a cakewalk, Josh had to wonder if she wasn’t somehow faking. Maybe the real deal was that she was attracted to him, but pretending not to be since he had never seemed to be attracted to her?
He knew that was reaching, but the truth was it felt out of balance to be this captivated by her when she didn’t even notice his handsomeness, his innate goodness or his sexuality. Women were always telling him he was handsome,