The Boss and Miss Baxter

by Warren, Wendy

  Nina shook her head. She hadn't been acquainted with Samantha long before the layoffs and knew little about the other woman save for the fact that she was dynamic, creative, a strong businesswoman and in love with David's nephew, current CEO Jack Hanson. Samantha and Jack couldn't be more different, but their relationship appeared to work.

  “The Hansons never seemed particularly…close,” Nina said, treading onto territory she would have avoided had she still been working at the office. “It was nice to see Jack step in and work with David after George died. And they seem to get along.”

  “Jack respects David,” Samantha agreed, examining a bottle of zinc-and-elderberry lozenges. “Although you're right. The Hansons aren't as tight as other families. I know Jack is working harder than he should have to in order to persuade his brothers to come home for the reading of George's will.”

  Unscrewing the lid on the zinc tabs, Samantha shook two lavender-colored lozenges into Nina's hand. “Let them dissolve in your mouth, one right after the other. Fact is,” she said, recapping the bottle, “Jack would love to pass some of the responsibility for Hanson Media over to Andrew-he's the younger Hanson bro. Have you met him?”

  Nina frowned, but in thirteen years with the company, she couldn't recall meeting Andrew. George hadn't been the kind of father who brought his sons to work with him. She shook her head.

  “Well, Jack can barely get Andrew to return a phone call these days. He's pretty ticked. I think David's going to lay down the law about the reading of the will. Demand that all the boys haul their handsome Hanson tushies home.”

  Nina smiled. She liked the way Samantha talked. Popping a lozenge in her mouth, she quivered at the first tart taste then spoke around it. “Do all the Hansons have 'handsome tushies'?”

  Samantha's smile turned mischievous. “I can certainly vouch for Jack's.” She tilted her head. “David's too, come to think of it.”

  Nina's eyes bugged wide, and Samantha winked. “Fully clothed, fully clothed.” She wagged a finger. “Shame on you. Although I must say if I were living with him I'd make sure to take at least a little peek.”

  Nina almost swallowed the lozenge whole. She started coughing and felt her face flame at the same time. Samantha reached over to wallop her on the back. For a reed-slender woman, she had quite a punch.

  “Are you all right?” The outspoken executive appeared a bit worried for the first time today.

  Nina pressed one hand to the base of her throat and used the other to wave away Samantha's concern. “Fine,” she rasped. She pointed to her neck. “Piece of the lozenge…went down the wrong way.”

  “Ah.” Samantha shrugged. She allowed thirty seconds of silence then said, “I can be a little too plain-spoken, or so I've been told. At the risk of not being able to walk out of here because I have both feet in my mouth, let me state for the record that when David told us he'd hired you to be his personal assistant and that you were living with him, Jack and I thought maybe you two had a thing going.”

  Nina opened her mouth immediately to refute that notion, but she started coughing again. Samantha hastened to add, “David set everyone straight. He said the setup between you two is strictly business.”

  Nina's mouth went so dry, the lozenge felt like it was super-glued to her tongue. “Yeth,” she lisped around it, “thtrickly bithneth. Thtrickly.” She tried to work a little moisture back into her mouth. “What do you mean 'everyone'?”

  Samantha looked uncomfortable. “Oh, no. I meant a few people…in the boardroom. Shiguro Taka is coming to town-are you familiar with Taka Enterprises?-and David's going to do a little entertaining, so he mentioned at the meeting this morning that he'd hired you to help out with that.” She handed Nina a bottle of chewable Cs. “And about how helpful it'll be to have you and your kids living in the condo, too, because Shiguro's wife and children will be coming with him. That's all.”

  Samantha futzed with the homeopathic remedy in her hands, twisting the cap to see how many pellets emerged at once. “There were only three…maybe four…I think six of us, not counting me and Jack, who heard him say it. It's no biggie.”

  “Eight people? He announced to eight people that I'm living with him? Oh, my God! Does the entire office think David and I are having an affair?”

  “No, no!” Samantha shook her head vehemently. “Not anymore.” She gave Nina's knee a reassuring pat. “I told you. David set the record straight.”

  She handed Nina the homeopathic remedy. “Follow the directions on this. But wait thirty minutes after the lozenge has dissolved before you take it.” Rising, Samantha glanced toward the kitchen. “Something's starting to smell good. I'm sorry I have to go.”

  Nina rose, too, and the two women walked to the door. “I'd love to get together sometime when you're well and settled in here,” Samantha added graciously before she left. “I've been trying my hand at cooking. Nothing fancy.” She frowned. “The lasagna I made the other night was a little…crisp. Maybe I'll try a quiche, and we can brainstorm a few creative parties to woo the press. Hanson's could use a little lighthearted PR.”

  Nina agreed, thanked Samantha for the cold remedies and shut the door. Her head was beginning to feel fuzzy and overly full again, but she wasn't sure that was due to her cold.

  Plopping on the couch, Nina realized she still had a zinc tablet in her hand. She set it on the coffee table and curled up on her side.

  Holy moly, she was shaking, and something told her she didn't have the chills.

  The conversation with Samantha replayed in her head.

  What had shocked her was not so much Samantha's comments as her own reaction. What Nina had realized immediately was that she wanted to take a peek-just a tiny, quick one-at David's tush.

  Curling into a tighter ball, she buried her face in her hands.

  Yep, even now she felt an as-of-late unfamiliar warmth spread through her body when she imagined viewing David's nude backside. His nude shoulders, back and legs featured themselves prominently in the fantasy, too.

  She rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling. When she pictured David showing up at her apartment and at the hospital and at the senior center… when she imagined his gaze, so steady, so penetrating…and when she realized that he thought of her even when she wasn't in sight, she wondered if another man had ever made her feel that…held.

  She released a shuddering sigh. Long ago she had decided that being a good mother meant putting her sexual and romantic needs on hold until her children were grown and less likely to be affected by her choices. She'd promised herself she would wear white cotton underwear and avoid dating until her children were twenty.

  Was it wrong to change her mind in the course of a morning? To know suddenly that she had missed love-making? That she had missed feeling loved by a man?

  Was it wrong to want sex with David so she could discover if making love was different in the arms of someone who knew how to care for a woman, not merely about her?

  Because David's bedroom suite was on the opposite end of the condo, a tryst or two would also be fairly convenient. They could get together when the kids weren't even home, and no one would be the wiser.

  Nina wrapped her arms around herself. This is what happened when your mind was idle. It was all hypothetical, of course. She wasn't even close to making a decision of such magnitude. But she did wonder….

  Now that David had defended her honor, would he mind very much besmirching it a little?

  Dimly, as if from very far away, Nina heard someone snore. Because she was perfectly comfortable for the first time in days and because she was having a lovely dream in which she was naked with no cellulite on a tropical island, she ignored the sound.

  Instead, she felt her lips curve at the edges as an equally nude David Hanson licked her sun-kissed shoulder. It tickled. All over.

  “She must be dreaming.”

  “I'm going to have to make a potato poultice. She'll have a crick in her neck when she wakes up.” “Potato poultice. D
oes that work?”

  “Of course.”

  Nina's brow puckered. The Yiddish and British-inflected conversation did not belong in her dream. Brushing it aside, she refocused on David. He was broad-shouldered…beautiful…his skin glowing in the sun…. He was tracing figure eights now over her shoulder. He smelled like pheromones and coconuts….

  “Shake her harder, David. God forbid, she could be in a coma.”

  “I don't think it's a coma, Bubby.”

  In the dream, David's voice was rich and low, but he stopped licking and started jostling her shoulder. The dream Nina frowned and shimmied, hoping he'd go back to licking, but he kept on shaking her. Peeved, she scooped up a handful of sand and chucked it at her ill-behaved lover.

  A deep, loud Ooof! finally woke Nina from her dream. She opened her eyes to see David, fully clothed and bent at the waist. He was not smiling. In fact, his face, mere inches from hers, was screwed into a very tight grimace.

  “Nope. Not a coma,” he announced, squeezing the words through gritted teeth. Slowly, he backed away from the couch and tried to stand.

  “It's going to take more than potato plaster to fix that,” commented Johanna, who was standing on the other side of the glass coffee table, next to Bubby, whose blue eyes were the widest Nina had ever seen them.

  “I'll get you a nice castor oil pack, Mr. David. Don't you worry.”

  “Castor oil? That works?” Bubby's eyebrows jerked up. “I work at a senior center. You got anything for prostates?”

  Johanna and Bubby adjourned to the kitchen while David attempted to straighten.

  Nina sat up and rubbed her eyes. Everything seemed a bit vague and discombobulated at the moment. Tilting her head at David as he tried to take a deep breath, she asked, “What's wrong?”

  With his hands on his hips, he looked at her like she was crazy. “What's wrong, Miss Baxter, is that since you were fired from Hanson's, my life has been in an uproar.” Finally, he took the breath he'd been after. “I think you're fired again.”

  A half hour later, Nina poked her head around David's half-open bedroom door. “Knock, knock.” He'd retreated to his bedroom-limping-shortly after he'd suggested that she might need to look for work again posthaste. “May I come in?”

  David stood at his dresser, putting on his watch. He'd showered and changed into lightweight brown corduroys and a round-necked ivory sweater that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. When he heard Nina's voice, he turned and narrowed his gaze.

  “Are you armed?”

  Standing half-behind the door, Nina shrugged. “I wasn't armed last time.”

  “True. All right, come in. But don't hurt me.” Nina, who had also changed out of the work clothes she'd put on earlier, took a few steps into the room. “This is for you.” She held up the castor oil pack Johanna had thrust into her hands.

  “I thought you said you weren't armed.”

  “This is supposed to help you feel less, um, however you feel. Johanna says it's an old family remedy.”

  Accepting the dubious first aid, he weighed it in his hand. “Old family remedy, huh?” Cocking a brow, he glanced at Nina. “Do you think Johanna's family gets kicked in the groin a lot?”

  “Maybe by Johanna.”

  David grinned. “She can be a little strong-willed. Did she give you a hard time?”

  “Not really.” Nina slid her hands into the back pockets of the Levi's 501s she'd donned after her shower. “She and Bubby looked like they might rumble at first.”

  “They seem to be getting along well now.”

  Nina rolled her eyes. “Too well. After I deliver your castor oil, I'm supposed to head back to the kitchen for my cold cures.”

  He gestured to her expression. “And you are dreading this why?”

  “You're holding a towel soaked with enough oil to fry Big Bird and you can ask me that?” David's easy laugh broke some of Nina's tension. “Bubby's cure is chicken soup,” she said, “which would be all right except that she insists we eat the chicken neck. She thinks it prevents pneumonia.” David winced, and she nodded. “I have no idea what Johanna uses to cure a cold, and I'm afraid to find out.”

  “Raw lamb.”

  “I could be in denial, but right now I'm telling myself I heard you wrong.”

  “You didn't. She keeps my freezer stocked with raw lamb all winter.” He glanced to the door and lowered his voice. “Defrosts it in the microwave then grinds it into little meatballs. Nasty.”

  “I'm going to gag just thinking about it.”

  “Don't. If she hears you cough, you're a dead woman walking.” Taking her wrist he pulled her farther into his bedroom then softly closed the door. Conspiratorially, he whispered, “You'll be safer in here.”

  Nina felt like a teenager, alone in a “guy's” bedroom when she shouldn't be. “I can't stay here, forever,” she said, wondering if the statement sounded as flirtatious to his ears as it did to hers.

  Apparently not because David seemed completely relaxed when he sat on the bed. “No, but you may be able to hide out long enough for Johanna to leave the kitchen. Once she's busy doing something else, I'll show you my disappearing meatball trick. Works like a charm.”

  He studied the towel Nina had brought him. “It's still hot.” Looking up, he mused, “I wonder what effect castor oil is supposed to have on groin injuries?”

  It would be humiliating to blush because he said the word groin. However, because David's crotch had recently figured so prominently in her fantasies, Nina found total composure difficult to maintain.

  “How is it?” She pointed in the appropriate direction.

  David looked down, then up again. A mischievous glint lit his eyes. “It's mighty fine.”

  “I meant your injury!”

  He composed his features into an ingenuous mask. “So did I.”

  Did not. Nina knew this was probably the most opportune moment she would have to discover whether David was as attracted to her as she was to him. They were alone in his bedroom…having a conversation about his groin. A woman at ease with her own sexuality, a woman who had the sophistication and chutzpah to honor her own desires, would look him in the eye and say simply, David, I like you. There's no reason we can't explore a physical relationship if you like me, too.

  That was so proactive, she felt empowered just thinking it. Unfortunately, she was an unsophisticated woman with limited chutzpah.

  David's eyes had fine crinkles at the corners. As he gazed at her, she had the impression that he was in a very good mood. His king-size bed was roomy, but his height and the breadth of his shoulders suggested that a woman would not get lonely on the big mattress. She had nothing to lose, really, and perhaps a lot to gain by finding out how he felt.

  “David,” she said, trying to speak above the thunderous roar that rushed to her ears the moment she opened her mouth. She could feel her heart begin to sprint as if she'd run a mile in seven minutes. “David, Samantha mentioned that a few people in the office might have gotten the impression we're having an affair.”

  She watched him closely. His reaction would tell her a great deal. A man who was interested in a woman would maintain eye contact, smile suggestively and murmur something ambiguous, like, Does that bother you?

  David bowed his head, pressed a thumb and forefinger to his brow bone and said, “My fault.” Lowering his hand, he looked at Nina with patent regret. “My fault entirely.”

  Not a good sign. Nina felt her heart sink as he stood and walked toward her.

  She looked up-way up-into his face as he put his hands on her shoulders. Regret sobered his expression.

  “I mentioned that I'd hired you and that you were living with me. I thought it would be better for all of us if I put that fact on the table right away. I've got to host a business dinner sooner than I thought, and I didn't want the party to ignite speculation.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I intended to de-fuse interest, not stir it. You have my word that I won't compromise your integrity i
n any way.”

  She felt his hands tighten once more and then release her. “On that note,” he said, moving to the bedroom door and opening it, “hiding out in here probably wasn't a great idea.” His smile returned, along with the wry tone. “If your grandmother or Johanna wanders this way, they'll have us married before the sun sets.”

  Stepping aside, he waited for her to exit the room ahead of him.

  Defeated, she moved forward and caught a whiff of the clean, light cologne he used-or perhaps it was the pheromones she was starting to go nuts for. This wasn't right. Thirty-two, and she couldn't unearth the simple question Are you attracted to me? with both hands and a shovel.

  Stopping directly beside her boss, she looked up and smiled at him a little weakly. Then she reached over, put a hand on the door and pushed it closed.

  Chapter Eleven

  The thing about bold moves, Nina realized, was that once you made one you had to follow it up with something equally bold. Otherwise, you wound up looking like a schlemiel.

  So after she closed the bedroom door, she stood schlemiel-like while David gazed down at her in question.

  “I'm not upset that people thought we were living in-” She stopped herself right before she said sin. How archaic was that?

  Apparently she didn't stop herself soon enough. David's deep brown eyes widened. “Living in…?”

  Wishing she'd bitten her tongue a sentence ago, she fumbled. “Living in… Dating.”

  David hooked one brow and deadpanned, “Living in dating.”

  “No, I mean, dating. Just dating. Never mind. I wasn't upset when Samantha told me what people thought.” Because she wasn't used to telling fibs- even harmless fibs in the interest of seduction- Nina's mouth started working on the truth before her mind had a chance to orchestrate it. “Well, I was a little upset. I was pretty upset. It bothered me.”