IN LOVE WITH HER BOSS Page 7

  Melissa was silent a moment. "Wyatt hurt me too, Lori. But I learned that I couldn't let the past overshadow my life. I couldn't let it jeopardize my future happiness."

  Lori wondered what Melissa would say if she confided that the way her ex-husband had hurt her had broken more than her heart. She opened her mouth, but then closed it as Wyatt and Josh trooped into the kitchen.

  "Are you ready to hit the road, Lori?" Josh asked. Lori stared up at him. Stacked in his arms, all the way to his chin, was a lifetime's supply of rolls of gift wrap and spools of ribbon. As she watched, the topmost cylinder of red curling ribbon wobbled, and he used his chin to stabilize it.

  "What's all that?" she asked.

  His expression looked a little embarrassed. "It's wrapping paper. Ribbons and stuff."

  One of the rolls appeared to be pink, and decorated with baby-blue sheep. "There's your scary man," Melissa murmured. "He bought one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of stuff from our son Tim. I don't think he even looked at the boxes he checked off on the order sheet."

  She rose from her seat and approached Josh. Standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, she tucked a roll farther back in the stack. "The next time I need to wrap a present for St. Patrick's Day, I'll know who to call."

  "Give me a break," Josh muttered. "It was a fund-raiser. Tim was wearing his 4-H uniform."

  Melissa smiled at him. "You are one dangerous man," she said, then shot a meaningful look at Lori. "One dangerous man."

  The dangerous man drove Lori home, the gift wrap and ribbons rolling around in the back seat of his SUV. When he pulled up in front of her apartment building, he cast her a hopeful look. "You wouldn't happen to have some baby showers or bridal showers or St. Patrick's Day parties in the offing, would you?"

  And despite everything that had happened between them, despite every resolution she'd made and every warning she'd given herself, Lori laughed.

  She was still grinning as she let herself into her apartment. It was so hard not to, even though at the sound of her laughter Josh had gone suddenly serious instead of joining in.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

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  Damn, Josh told himself, driving away from Lori's apartment. This was no laughing matter.

  The woman could knock the air out of him with a look, or even a chuckle, as easily as she did with her forearm against his windpipe. He'd thought he was smarter than that.

  But his reaction to Lori wasn't coming from the vicinity of his brain. His brain knew that he didn't want the complications of a relationship with someone who worked for him. With someone who'd been hurt by another man. With someone who made him feel so protective, which in turn made him feel so damn…

  Vulnerable.

  He conjured up his late wife's face. Kay had brought out similar feelings in him and look where that had led. Kay had laughed at his attempts to protect her, laughed at all his warnings and admonitions.

  Then she'd broken his heart with a wedge of grief when she'd died taking a foolish risk.

  But Kay wasn't Lori.

  More important, Josh wasn't the same. He wasn't going to fall in love again.

  So, didn't that make things safe between him and Lori? He thought she was beautiful and sexy, no doubt. He admired her strength, her courage in moving to a new place and making a life for herself after what must have been a difficult – Lord, the understatement! – experience. Why shouldn't he want to help her?

  He was patient. And after growing up with three sisters, he had a more-than-healthy respect for women. He had always possessed a certain rapport with them as well. Put like that, it was almost his duty to play Good Samaritan and bring Lori out of her shell.

  Neither one of them wanted to risk their hearts, he was sure of that. But for Lori to find passion in a man's arms – wasn't that something worthwhile to aim for? Okay, it might be a little arrogant that he thought he knew what was best for her, and more than a little arrogant to think she could find aforesaid passion in his arms, but he'd kissed her.

  He knew what mutual arousal tasted like. He also knew when it was an arousal worth pursuing.

  And as he'd noted before, he was a patient man.

  * * *

  The following week at work, Josh found himself calling upon that patience a dozen times a day. Lori's perfume would drift by the door of his office and he'd lift his head like a dog on the scent. She'd hand him some papers, and he'd be forced to stare at her long, slim fingers instead of giving away his attraction to her by meeting her eyes.

  The sound of her smooth Southern accent could tie him in knots.

  Her smile caused him to break pencil leads.

  One morning he watched her lick stamps, and his biological response forced him to stay behind his desk and think of ice baths for the next half hour.

  He'd never considered himself a man with a limited tether, but now he was worried he was nearing the very frazzled end of his.

  The notion that he didn't know himself as well as he'd thought put him in an extremely bad mood. The men on his work crews sidestepped whenever he came near. His foremen recommended he remain in the office instead of visiting the job sites, when the whole reason he was visiting the damn job sites was so he could stay away from the office.

  It was after one of these frustrating trips – this time Jim, his foreman on the Hip Hop project, had virtually ordered him out of his hair – that he returned to an empty receptionist's desk.

  Lori was bound to be about somewhere, but he checked through his messages before seeking her out. He was expecting to hear from a particularly cantankerous inspector, but the man still hadn't returned his call. Josh's foul mood growing even fouler, he stalked toward the coffee room, thinking more caffeine would probably kill him – putting them all out of his misery.

  On his way there, movement in the one-person-sized supply room caught his eye, and he strode in without thinking. "Lori—"

  She gasped, then spun around, her back against the metal shelving. Her mouth opened on a scream, but then "Josh," came out instead. A little strangled, but his name all the same.

  "Sorry for startling you," he apologized. His mind on the pain-in-the-butt inspector, he lingered in the doorway, lifting his arms to grip the ledge of the doorjamb. "Did we hear from—"

  He broke off as he noticed her retreating farther into the shelving. "Honey," he said. "You're going to have a spine full of staples if you don't move away from there."

  Her body froze, though her gaze darted to his face. Her eyes were wide, almost panicked he would think, if he hadn't been working so damn hard on his patience. He hadn't tried to kiss her or touch her all week, thinking she'd climb another step on the comfort-level scale if he backed off following that scorching kiss in the snow.

  "What's the matter?" he said gruffly. "Did something … someone frighten you?"

  She inhaled a deep breath, then she inched away – a scant inch – from the shelving. "I'm sorry, Josh. But it's … it's you."

  He blinked. "Me?"

  She swallowed. "You." She lifted a hand and waved it up and down, indicating his body. "You're blocking the exit. It makes me a little nervous."

  He instantly dropped his arms. "Hell, Lori. I'm sorry."

  She hugged herself, rubbing her arms with her hands. Josh looked down at his body, realizing that even with his hands at his sides, his six feet five inches of two-hundred-plus pounds filled the doorway. Blocked it.

  He stepped back into the hallway.

  She immediately exited the supply room, putting a good two yards between them. "Now," she said, pasting on a half-baked smile. "What do you need?"

  A brain transplant. An infusion of high-caliber patience. Maybe, God help him, the good grace to forget this whole idea of rehabilitating the beautiful woman in front of him.

  Lori wasn't just nervous around men, wary of passion, cautious of relationships, though she was all those things.

  She was genuinely afraid of a man of his size. Of him. Of Josh
. How, how the hell, was he supposed to get around that?

  * * *

  Lori smiled at the bank teller who handled the business transactions and thanked her for her time. After she'd confessed to Josh that he'd scared the dickens out of her in the supply room, he'd gruffly asked her to run out and make the Friday deposits.

  She knew she'd hurt his feelings. The poor man couldn't help being built like a mountain, but she'd seen the regret in his eyes. She knew he finally understood.

  When it came to kissing, he'd caught on immediately. Not once had he tried to hold her, touch her with his hands. Instead, he'd used the power of his mouth to paralyze her. Which had worked pretty darn well all by itself.

  Lori returned to her car, gulping in great breaths of the cold, clean Montana air before ducking inside. It was a big country. Big mountains, big sky, big beauty. But for a woman who had to rely on her own strength to feel safe, big men toppled her sense of security.

  David himself wasn't so large. She hoped – prayed – that after two years of what she considered "training," she had the skills to stop him if he found her again. She thought she could run faster than him now. And if he came up behind her, she could use her self-defense skills – including every dirty trick she'd been taught – at least to give herself a moment or two to get away.

  She counted on her strength and willingness to fight back to surprise the heck out of her ex-husband. She'd been so passive the two times he'd hurt her before she left him. The first time because she was so shocked that such a thing was happening to her; the second time because she was so fiercely focused on getting it over with so she could get out of the house. Forever.

  But Josh – the sheer size of him – deflated a lot of her confidence. Yes, she'd managed to overturn him that day on the track, but this wasn't about the logical, sensible side of her brain. Her wariness of his bigness was about instinct. It was about the fear that had eaten a hole in her heart.

  She sighed as she opened the office door, wishing she could start the day over. Now not only was she uncomfortable with Josh's size, but she'd made him uncomfortable with her discomfort.

  "I'm back," she called out, stepping into the reception area. Her feet halted and she stared at her desk. Something wasn't right, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Josh?" she called out, her gaze darting toward his office.

  Through the doorway, she saw he was on the phone. He caught her eye, sketched a wave, then glanced back down at the yellow tablet on his desktop.

  Lori frowned, rubbing her forehead. Something wasn't quite right in Josh's office, either, but she had no idea exactly what.

  Deciding she was imagining things, she headed toward her desk, skirting the office chair that sat opposite it. She paused again, glancing down at the cushion's familiar, cheerful red plaid upholstery. Familiar, yes. But exactly right? No.

  Shaking her head, she walked around to the open side of her desk. The top drawer slid out with its usual squeak, and she set her purse inside. Then she pulled out her chair and sat down.

  Her feet dangled four inches off the floor.

  "Lori, I need you to make a few calls, please." The yellow tablet in his hand, Josh exited his office to drop into the chair across from her desk. His brow furrowed as he stared down at the scrawled figures on the top page of his tablet. "Hell, if I can't read my own writing sometimes," he muttered.

  Lori looked down at his bent head. She stilled.

  She was looking down at his bent head. Really. She was. She could see that the part in his hair was crooked where it dead-ended into a springy cowlick at the very top of his head.

  The cowlick was boyish. Endearing. But she shouldn't be able to see it. Not when she was her height, and he was his. Even when they were both sitting down, he towered above her.

  "Lori?"

  She blinked. "What?"

  Josh looked up. He had to, to meet her eyes. "I asked if you would call Don Sheffield over at the lumberyard. Ask him to go over with you the order I made last week and get an estimated time of arrival on each item."

  "Okay." As she dragged her own pad across her desktop to make a note, the heels of her shoes dropped off the backs of her dangling feet. Lori finished writing, then glanced over. "Um, Josh…"

  But he was already back in his office.

  Determined to get to the bottom of what was going on, she slid off the seat of her chair, her shoes clacking against the hardwood floor as her feet slipped back inside them. Then she paced around her desk, past that office chair Josh had just vacated.

  The very low office chair. She paused, peering at it, then looked about to compare this particular chair to its matches scattered about the reception area. The chair was missing something – parts of its legs were gone. On this chair, on this one alone, the large rolling casters that made the big chair easily moveable – and taller – had been removed.

  She tried to think of what it had been like that morning. Casting her mind back, she tried remembering if the chair behind her desk had been different then, too. Had the cleaning crew who worked over-night somehow raised the height of her adjustable steno chair, while lowering this one? Why?

  Shaking her head, she approached Josh's office. His head was down and he was still muttering over whatever he'd written on the tablet. When she lightly rapped on the doorjamb, he gestured her in without looking up.

  "There's something fishy going on around here," she said.

  He didn't look up right away, so she crossed her arms over her chest and came closer to stand between his desk and his visitor's chair. "Josh?"

  "Just a sec," he said, scratching some figures on another sheet of paper.

  Lori lowered herself to the chair across from his desk. When her seat encountered its seat sooner than expected, she swallowed a little hiccup of surprise.

  Her feet were dangling off the floor again.

  From her unfamiliar height, she had another endearing view of Josh's irregular part. Okay. For sure, this chair was higher too. The chair Josh was sitting in, again, was lower.

  When he looked up, grinning at her, she thought she at least understood who had engineered the perplexing changes.

  "Okay, Cheshire Cat," she said, though still puzzled about the why of it all. "Alice isn't quite clear on what this little adventure in Wonderland is all about."

  He shrugged, his smile fading to an expression infinitely more serious. "I thought if I gave you a chance to be bigger, you wouldn't mind so much that under most circumstances, I am."

  Lori felt her heart swoop, sliding down another unexpected rabbit hole. She made a mental grab for it, astonished that it would go off on its own like that, without the permission of her head, without its usual, instinctive watchfulness.

  But, as if her heart knew that Josh – funny, sweet, sexy Josh – waited to cushion the fall at the other end, it continued on its path. Her toes on the brink of something deep and scary, Lori just managed to keep the rest of herself from tumbling heedlessly after it.

  No, no, no. She wasn't going to fall.

  * * *

  That evening after work, however, she baked. Staring at the cooling apple pie, it took but a second to think of the best way to get the tempting treat out of her apartment – and off her thighs. She'd take it to Josh.

  Though she still searched the shadows of the lit walkway between her apartment and the adjacent carport, she found herself smiling at the idea of what she'd do if someone accosted her. A pie in the face, no?

  She was still smiling as she used her elbow to knock on Josh's front door. He lived not far from her own apartment, in a small but charming house that had the air of an alpine lodge. Under the cheery light beside the door, the apple pie she held in both hands gave off the delicious smell of cinnamon as steamy tendrils curled into the night air.

  No one answered the door. Lori used her elbow to knock again.

  "Can I help you?"

  The female voice had Lori whipping around. Another young woman came up the walkway beh
ind her, carrying a platter of cookies. Her expression was surprised. "Are you here to see Josh?" the other woman asked.

  Lori nodded dumbly. The unfamiliar woman facing her looked younger than Lori, diminutive and beautiful. She had medium-brown hair that swept her shoulders in a wealth of bouncy layers. In jeans, parka and suede boots, she looked perfectly dressed for Montana … and perfectly at home.

  The at-home woman stepped past Lori and juggled her cookies so she could press the bell. "He probably has the stereo up too loud," she said.

  Lori stepped back, unsure what to do. Then the door swung open, and a sock-footed Josh smiled at the sight of the cookie-bearer. "Julie!" In a smooth move that bespoke long practice, with one hand he swept away the cookies. With the other, he dragged the young woman toward him for a warm embrace.

  He has a girlfriend, Lori thought. Of course he has a girlfriend. She stepped back again, farther into the shadows the outside light didn't reach. As soon as the other two went inside, she'd skedaddle back to her car.

  The apple pie was looking tastier and tastier all the time.

  As Lori took another step back, Josh held the young woman in his arms away. "I smell apple," he said, sniffing appreciatively and looking down at the plate she'd handed him.

  Julie shook her head, her voice amused. "Those are chocolate. You've got an embarrassment of riches tonight, big guy."

  Frowning, Josh looked at Julie, then past her, squinting into the darkness. "Hello?"

  Her face burning, Lori was forced to come forward. "I, um, I'm sorry to interrupt." So what that she'd considered New Year's Eve and the day after a date of sorts? Josh hadn't touched her since, and the reason was obvious. His girlfriend had returned to town, or was back in the picture. Whatever.

  Lori thrust the pie toward Josh's midsection. "This … this is for you. Not for any particular reason," she added hastily, casting an apologetic glance in the direction of the other woman. "But I made it and I don't want to eat it."