Winning the Boss's Heart

by Hayson Manning

  “Forty-Two?”

  At the use of her nickname, she arrived back in the room with a thud. His eyebrows were raised. “What’s on your mind?”

  She dabbed her mouth with her napkin to cover her lapse. “Well, Septimus, I was thinking about the periodic table and its positive benefits on mankind.”

  For some reason he looked pissed off. Totally pissed off. “Funny, I didn’t take you to be the lying kind.” His eyes narrowed, and she had the distinct impression he’d just dismissed her.

  Really.

  Her spine straightened and her hands rested on the table. “You think I’m going to tell you everything that’s going on in my head at a given time?” She paused. “Actually, back that up. You think any woman is going to tell you what is going on in her mind whenever you please? There will be times she doesn’t want you to know what she’s thinking. Maybe she’d be thinking, ‘That guy standing over there, is one juicy specimen, and I’m mighty thirsty right now.’ There’s no way on this earth she’s ever going to tell Mr. Juicy she’s thirsty. She’d rather catch bubonic plague.”

  His forkful of frittata halted halfway to his mouth. He put down the fork, sat back in his chair and regarded her.

  She balled the napkin and placed it carefully on her plate “I thought you had a handle on women. You’ve probably dated a million of them.”

  Peeved morphed into totally pissed off. His blue eyes turned stormier than a Pacific cyclone. “I do have a handle on women. I like to think I know women quite well. I’ve dated enough to write a manual with a glossary of terms and a table of contents.”

  She returned his glare. “A glossary and a table of contents? Seriously, women actually date you?”

  “I don’t date them, per se. I set out the terms at the beginning. No ties. It’s a mutually acceptable agreement. So yes, glossary.”

  “Oh, so they’re takeaways? To be eaten later that night, but not memorable until you get the craving again.”

  He scratched his head, a smile teasing his lips. “Interesting choice of words, but yes, pretty much. I’m their takeaway menu as well.” His gaze drilled holes through her. “How about you? Are you going to write a table of contents, there?”

  The man should be used for interrogations. His stare was so intense she’d bet alien life-forms would give up the secrets to the universe.

  She mashed her teeth against her bottom lip. She had to move this conversation to safer ground as there was no way she was going to admit to the one-line entry in her table of contents. Hell, it didn’t even classify as a table. More a footnote. She straightened the knife and fork on her plate.

  “I think that’s out of the boss-secretary range.” She went to stand.

  “You didn’t answer the question?” The hard tone to his voice just plain annoyed her.

  “Why are you pushing this?”

  “I wanted to know what was going on in your head, and I thought you’d give me an honest answer, but…” A smile spread across his face. Slow to start, it curled his lips, continued upward and settled in his eyes. It was the first time she could remember him looking approachable, real, and open.

  “What?” she asked, obviously missing his joke.

  “You think I’m juicy?”

  What! “No.” Hell no.

  Her face flamed. If she put a piece of bread to her cheek right now she’d bet she could layer it with butter and preserves.

  He chuckled, and the businessman fell away, leaving essence of the man underneath. For a second she glimpsed what he must have once been like before ambition and whatever it was that drove him took over his life.

  “We’re done for the night. You’re on your own,” he said, his voice almost…warm.

  She stood and collected her plate, refusing to look at him. “I brought a bunch of DVD’s with me on the off chance I’d get a night off, so tonight I’m going to watch one of my favorite movies of all times.”

  “Which is?”

  She jolted, and the knife rattled on the plate and stared at him. “You’re asking me a question that isn’t work related?”

  He shrugged. “I thought I was being polite.”

  She schooled her features. Polite? Mason? Not even. He wasn’t rude, and he treated everyone the same, be it her or a contractor. Something had changed though. He didn’t swear at her. He still spoke like a trucker to the contractors, who returned the same.

  “The DVD?” His voice was once again sharp.

  “Oh…It’s called Truly, Madly, Deeply. An oldie but goodie. I’ve seen it a hundred times, and I never get tired of it.”

  “Never heard of it. Has it got bombs, hot chicks in leather bikinis, or bad-ass bikers wanting to take over the world?”

  How manly of him. She tried not to roll her eyes. “None of the above.”

  “What’s it about?”

  She scowled. Was this a ploy? She was going to get halfway through, and he’d come waltzing in demanding that he needed a four hundred page report stapled. She just knew it.

  “What’s it about?” He asked again, impatience curling through his voice.

  There we go. “It’s about love.”

  “Oh, hell no. I’d rather be probed.” He stood and left the room without a backward glance. To think for just a second there’d been a glimpse of humanity to him.

  After doing the dishes and getting a “Council holding fast” text from Sarah, she gazed out the kitchen window. A howling wind whipped through the trees. She smiled at the payload of cones a line of massive pine trees just dropped. Mason would be so irritated. Looked like the trees were in on her secret plot to save the land and themselves.

  Yeah.

  And yet guilt sat uneasily on her shoulders. Every day she saw a man just making a business decision and a town relying on her to try and save their sacred grounds. She couldn’t begrudge him his disinterest in the loyalty of the town. The man didn’t have roots anywhere and didn’t grasp the significance. She doubted that even if she worked with him for the next millennium she would ever know the man, he had locked himself so far away from everyone.

  She bit her nails, something she hadn’t done in years. She needed to escape for a while. Get out of the mess in her head. She grabbed the DVD from her bag and took it to the lounge. The couch there, a buttery leather monstrosity, was like sitting on a cloud. She dimmed the lights, popped the DVD into the player, and curled up on the couch.

  Soon she was lost in the haunting notes of the piano and the character Nina walking in the middle of the deserted London street.

  She was dimly aware of the couch moving and a wall of warmth beside her. Unable to stop the tears in free-fall when Nina looked up from the piano to find her dead lover standing there, Billie dragged her sleeve across her cheeks. And when Nina fell into her lover’s arms, Billie grabbed a cushion and squeezed it. Her jaw ached and somehow she was now burrowed into Mason, his T-shirt sopping up the tears. She wondered when he’d changed from his business suit. Not that it mattered. He was warm and solid and real. She hadn’t held anyone this close in a long time, and the realization brought fresh tears. For a moment, she let his strength and warmth envelop her. Just for a moment, she felt wanted.

  “Did you like it?” she whispered as the credits filled the screen.

  “Awesome score,” he replied, not moving away.

  She nodded. “I love that Jamie came back to enable Nina to move on, and that what she thought was perfection, in reality wasn’t.” He was silent beside her.

  She looked up at him through watery eyes to find him staring down at her with a look she couldn’t fathom. “Why’d you move down to my end of the couch?” she asked, surprised.

  “I didn’t. You did your sidle thing.”

  She looked up at him, confused. “What do you mean my sidle thing? I don’t sidle.”

  “Yeah, you do. All the time. Standing, sitting, you sidle up.”

  She looked to where she had been on the sofa and where she was. He was right. She’d moved right on al
ong until she was flat against him.

  “Well, add that to my list of faults. Serial sidler.” She unfastened herself from him and backed away, her face impossibly hot.

  He shrugged. “Not such a fault. Just figure you like being close to people. Kind of your thing.”

  She blinked in surprise. Well, he had that about her pegged. It was her thing. Her mother hadn’t been big on giving affection, and James hadn’t been comfortable with it either. She liked being around people, feeling their energy, their warmth. “Right. Well, I apologize for the sidle.” Her eyes flicked to the credits. “I love that movie. Gives a girl hope.”

  “Hope?”

  She stared at his perfectly flat stomach, for once not wanting to see his closed and disinterested face when she talked about something that meant a lot to her. “Yeah, that Jamie cared about Nina so much that he’d come back and kind of be the annoying guy she didn’t acknowledge when he was alive. It was a beautiful sacrifice. Maybe,” she said finally, looking at him with misty eyes, “maybe she always thought she’d found perfection and couldn’t move on until he found a way to help her.”

  Eyebrows rose on his head. “Seriously, you got all that out of ‘The Dead Woman’ poem?’”

  “Yeah,” she said on a breath. “It’s beautiful.” She glanced at her watch. “What are you doing here anyway? Isn’t there a permit that needs your immediate attention? A letter dictated? A contractor to berate?”

  He shrugged. “I heard the score. I used to play the piano when I was younger. That piece of Bach is haunting. I was curious, nothing more.”

  She stood, feeling wobbly both physically and mentally. “I’ll take out Stan the Man here.”

  The stormy clouds that she’d been racing in her car opened. Rain landed with the intensity of cannonballs. Lightning flashed so bright it punched the back of her retinas. She blinked and held her breath to stop a whimper. A sonic crack of thunder rattled the bones of the house, followed by another lightning strike so close she put a hand to her head to discharge the static. The house plunged into inky darkness.

  “What the fuck?” Mason shouted over the cacophony.

  The whimper she’d been holding escaped. Even to her own ears, she sounded like a wounded animal.

  “Forty-Two? Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “No, Sherman, not really. Me and thunderstorms are not besties,” she muttered. Her heart slammed into her ribs, and she fought the overwhelming need to go to the bathroom.

  A warm, strong hand wrapped around her frozen, shaking fingers. How he’d found her in the dark, she didn’t know. Or care. She had an anchor, and she wasn’t letting go.

  Stanley leaned against her legs. He always sensed her fear during storms and never left her side. His body trembled.

  “Thanks, baby boy,” she whispered.

  “Are you able to wait here while I look for candles?” The warmth from Mason’s body soaked into her.

  She nodded in the darkness and barely made out a “yeah.”

  “You’re fine.” He squeezed her hand and then he was gone.

  No, she was not fine. Panic and the need to hide swept through her. She was only able to pull in short puffs of air. Fear expanded in her chest, pushed past her ribcage, through her vital organs, and wrapped around her throat, strangling her. Her legs were as steady as bags of water and refused to hold her upright. She slumped to the ground and clutched Stanley’s collar as if he were an island and she was adrift.

  She closed her eyes and struggled to find her happy place, the one image she could always rely on. Being on the school bus, Shirley the driver taking her charges to the Ridge Park primary school. She didn’t know where Ridge Park was—her mum was in her don’t-stay-longer-than-a-couple-of-weeks phase. Shirley had bought everyone a small sweet. Billie had never tasted anything like it. The sweet, creamy custard of a vanilla square oozed across her tongue. The sweet pastry and the icing on top of puff pastry. The pie was so illegal in her world, where the commune didn’t eat it if they hadn’t grown it. She pictured that square and held onto the memory, but it was fading and slipping fast.

  Another crash of thunder snapped her back to reality, and tasty treats disappeared. At the back of her mind she knew the fear was irrational and there was no way the storm could get her. But her heart and her lungs didn’t give a shit about rationality.

  “Forty-Two! Where are you?” Mason’s voice sounded from across the ages.

  “Down here, Barnaby.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded like it came from a distant galaxy. She cleared her throat. “Down here.” It sounded better, but the thread of fear and anxiety was wrapped around every vowel.

  In the inky blackness and with the wind beating the outside of the house like a weapon, she felt his nearness when he knelt beside her. “What are you doing on the floor?”

  “Trying to find my happy place.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her up.

  God, he was warm. So warm. For an illegal second, she melted into him, tucked her head below his chin and held on.

  “Christ,” he muttered and wrapped his other arm around her, pulling her totally into his body.

  It felt good to be held by a man. Really held, like she was his and he was never letting go.

  She’d never been held like this. Never like this.

  Her ex wasn’t big on affection. He’d hold her hand if she asked him to, but his fingers didn’t wrap around hers, just stayed loose. She’d be the one hanging on, until one day she’d caught the exasperated look on his face. When she let go, he’d immediately put his hand in his pocket. He hated spooning. Even in the beginning of the marriage, when they should have been getting it on every single night, they didn’t. She’d tried the sexy nightwear, bought books that had her flustered and sticky, but when she tried to carry it over with James, zip. It hurt to admit, but she wasn’t attractive. She’d given up asking and he’d been …relieved.

  “You okay if I step back?”

  Oh, crap. For a moment, she’d lost herself in a slice of delicious pie she had no right to be sampling. She jumped back, swallowing rapidly, and put her hand to the back of her scorching neck. With her other hand, she gripped Stanley’s collar.

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry, didn’t mean to grab hold of you like that,” she murmured, her voice sounding ridiculously breathy as if she’d just come in first at an Olympic marathon. She fanned her face with her free hand, gripping Stanley’s collar tighter. “Right. I’m overstepping the boss-secretary boundary here. Did you find the candles? Because if you did, I’ll take one and I’ll…um…read to Stanley or something in my room.”

  Anywhere. Anywhere was better than being here, mortified and wanting to run away, and the real stupid threat of tears clogged her throat.

  Nothing. Not a sound. Just the storm taunting her, the lightning flashes not so close now, but the thunder still rattling the windows and shaking the walls. She’d rather be called Forty-Two right now than listen to the silence between the storm’s taunts.

  She staggered back, slammed straight into a chair, and bit back the pain.

  “Good-o, I’ll be off then, goodnight.”

  The flash of a match being struck made her squint in the darkness. Mason lit a candle and held it aloft. It cast enough of a glow that she could see the concern still etched on his face. “Stay and don’t move.”

  “I’m not Stanley,” she whispered. Even in a thunderstorm, scared out of her wits, she didn’t like that he’d just barked at her.

  His eyes locked on hers. “Stay where I know I can find you, okay?”

  She gave a tiny nod. He snagged a bag from the table, lit several thick churchy candles, and placed them on saucers until the room was ablaze in a parade of swaying orange. Rain ran down the glass in silver rivers. Stanley had pulled to follow Mason, a silent soldier, and she’d let him go.

  “I hope the electricity won’t be out for too long.” She could hear the tremor vibrating through her voice and rubbed
her hands down her arms. Outside, there was no moon, no stars, just a vacuum of black.

  He grasped her hand, his fingers curling around hers and they walked to the sofa. He sat, but she pulled back slightly. He tightened his grip.

  Clearly this wasn’t a good idea, getting all cozy with her boss on the sofa. Yeah, she might have an irrational fear of thunder and lightning, but that didn’t mean she could lean on him. If her mother had taught her anything, it was you made your own exit plan, but right now she didn’t have one.

  “I’m not going to bite.” He tugged on her hand, effectively pulling her down beside him. “What’s with the fear of weather you’ve got going on here?”

  She licked dry lips. “Well, Grover, I put it down to tepee living for a month when I was little.”

  She felt more than heard his chuckle in the darkness and could have sworn he murmured, “Grover.”

  God, he was warm. Heat poured out of his solid wall of muscled body. After the movie had ended and she’d stood, she realized how much heat and power the man gave off and how safe she felt curled against him.

  Thunder threw another mace-ball explosion at the house.

  “Tepee living?” he asked when she clenched.

  “Yeah.” Her teeth chattered, and she put her hands between her knees to try and thaw them out. The wall of warmth appeared to be getting closer. “Mum was experimenting with living off the land, so we lived in a teepee when I was seven or eight. She went away for the weekend.” She sighed looking inward at a whittled old clothes peg that she’d loved like it was her little sister. “It was just me and my doll Wanda. I don’t even know who made her for me. She had orange wool hair and a natty red jacket made of velvet and a happy face drawn on with black marker.” She smiled at the memory. She’d tell Wanda her dreams of the future. Wanda was a constant in her life, for a while. “Anyway, Mum went away to a spiritual retreat, and there was a mother of a thunderstorm, and let’s just say my mother’s teepee building skills lacked a little in the basics. I lost Wanda. I searched and searched for her.” An embarrassing hitch stole into her voice. “I loved that little doll.”