by Noelle Adams
It felt like it was all she had left of him.
Before she could say anything, there was a knock on the door that made her jump.
Frowning, Meg walked over to look out the peephole. Then she leaped back like she’d been burned.
“It’s him,” she hissed in a stage whisper.
Anne blinked at her. “It’s who?”
“It’s Jake! He’s here!”
“What do you mean, he’s here.” Anne jumped to her feet, slammed with shock and bewilderment. “What is he doing here?”
“I guess you’ll have to open the door and ask him.” Meg was grinning as she grabbed her water and skittered out of the room, closing her bedroom door behind her. Then she popped her head out and said, “Don’t do anything stupid,” before she closed the door again.
Anne stared at the closed door until there was another knock.
She walked over to stand in front of it.
“I know you’re in there,” Jake said through the door, sounding impatient, exasperated. “Anne, open the damned door.”
There was nothing Anne could do. She opened the door.
Six
Anne stared at Jake standing in front of her, just over the threshold of the door.
He was a mess—unshaved, with hair sticking up in all directions, and wearing the trousers and wrinkled shirt he’d worn yesterday.
Minus the t-shirt, since she was wearing that.
She blinked, vaguely bewildered, since she’d thought he’d gone to his own room this morning to shower, dress, and get ready for the day.
But he sure didn’t look like he’d taken a shower. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, since they were the only words that came to her lips.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, his gaze searching her face with an intensity she’d only occasionally seen in him before.
“I’m sorry.” She ran a hand down her hair, instinctively trying to smooth it down because it was probably as messy as his was.
When he just stared at her, looking almost broken, she realized with crystal clarity that she’d done everything wrong. Leaving the way she had this morning was the worst thing she could have done.
For everyone.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have left like that. But you didn’t have to come after me. It wasn’t an emergency. You should have stayed to meet with Stew. Now you’ve wasted the whole trip.”
“What?” His voice broke on the one word, and his expression was baffled. Shocked. Hurt.
Hurt.
Her chest ached so much she could barely breathe. “Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry about everything.” She looked down at her feet in her highest heels, which she was still wearing. She desperately tried to think of something to say that would start to fix things.
“May I please come in?” Jake asked in a more composed tone.
“Oh. Yeah. Of course. Sorry.” She stepped aside and let him into the apartment. Then slowly shut the door behind him, listening to the sound of the soft click. “Jake—”
“No,” he interrupted, stepping toward her with a new urgency. “Let me talk first. I’m not sure what you’re running away from, Anne, but I don’t think it’s as bad as you think.” His gray eyes held hers without breaking. “I think there’s more to keep you with me than there is to push you away.”
She cleared her throat, blinking at the earnestness in his tone. She’d never heard Jake like this before. He’d always managed to be both laidback and professional. Not at all like this. It left her feeling shaky, but this was too important, so she made herself summon her courage to tell him the truth. “I know you want me to stay, Jake. I’m really sorry, but I can’t.”
“Why not?” He reached out to hold one of her upper arms, dragging her a little closer to him. “Tell me why you don’t think you can stay. Tell me why, so I can fix it.”
Her emotions were such a turmoil that her vision was blurring, but she pushed through it, holding onto her composure. “There’s nothing to fix.”
His expression twisted. “That’s not fair, Anne. You can’t just leave me without at least telling me what’s driving you away, without giving me a chance to make it better.”
She made a frustrated sound in her throat, since—after everything—they still seemed to be having the same conversation. She gently pulled her arm out of his grip because she could think more clearly when he wasn’t touching her. “I know it doesn’t seem fair to you, but you’re only thinking about yourself—about what’s good for you. And—”
“I can be good for you, Anne.” His voice was even hoarser now than it had been last night, like it was breaking on every word. “I know I’ve been blind and stubborn and…and I haven’t given you any reason to believe me, but I swear I can be good for you.”
Anne was almost in tears again, since his words were so close to what she wanted to hear.
Close, but not everything. And she knew she couldn’t settle for less than everything.
She cleared her throat again so she could speak with more composure. She took a step toward him this time and held his gaze. “Listen to me, Jake. I need you to really hear me.” She paused before she said the words. “I can’t—there’s absolutely no way I can work for you anymore.” When he started to interrupt, she talked over him. “Please hear what I’m saying. I know you think you need me in your company, but you really don’t. You’ll learn to work with someone else. I saw the notes on that position you were trying to put together for me, and I’m telling you I’m never going to take it. After last night, there’s no way I can work for you again, and it really wasn’t good for me to be working for you this whole last year. I can’t do it. I won’t do it anymore.”
The words felt right—really hard but the true thing, the thing that needed to be said. And they seemed to have a profound effect on Jake. He stared at her, intense emotions passing over his face in sequence.
Then he turned away from her abruptly with a rough sound in his throat, his shoulders shaking a few times.
She stared at his back, every instinct in her body screaming at her to go to him, to help him somehow. “Oh, Jake, I’m sorry—”
He whirled around, and his face was transformed. Whatever had been tearing at him earlier seemed to have completely disappeared. It almost looked like he’d been laughing.
“What—” she began in utter confusion.
He reached out to take her face in both of his hands. “Now you listen to me. Hear what I’m saying right now.” He paused, and she was rocked by the passion and tenderness clearly evident in his expression. “Anne, you’re fired.”
“What?” she breathed.
“You’re fired.”
“I don’t understand.”
He stroked her cheek with one of his thumbs. “You can’t work for me anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would be completely inappropriate for me to feel for an employee the way I feel for you.”
She was almost choking on her joy and astonishment. “It would?”
“Of course, it would. When I said I wanted you to stay with me, I meant stay with me for real—not stay in your job. When I said I could be good for you, I didn’t mean I could be a better boss. I don’t want to be your boss. I want to be your…”
“My what?” She was shaking so much she could hardly get the two words out.
He cleared his throat and said with just a tinge of self-deprecation, “Your man.”
She choked on a laugh, the way he had earlier when he’d realized they’d been talking at cross-purposes. It was almost too much to take in.
“Laugh at me if you want, but I’m telling you the truth. I’m absolutely crazy about you. So you’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me,” she managed to say. “I already quit.”
“Okay.” A little smile was playing on his lips now, as if he could read the tender emotion in her face and realized she fe
lt the same way he did. “Then I accept your resignation.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” His hands got a little tighter as he searched her face one more time.
“Yeah. Okay.”
With a groan, he pulled her into his arms, into a hug so hard she couldn’t breathe for a moment. She hugged him back, though, feeling like things were exactly right between them for the first time…maybe ever.
The embrace went on for a long time—just them holding each other with matching need. Then finally Jake pulled away and asked, “Do you think we could sit down now? I feel like I might pass out after the morning I’ve had.”
Anne went to sit on the couch, and he followed her, collapsing beside her with a low groan.
“What do you mean, after the morning you’ve had?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“What do you think I mean? I came to find you this morning, and you were gone. You’d run out on me without a word. So I had to jump in the car and come after you. Damn, those might have been the worst hours of my life, thinking what I’d finally found was just going to slip through my fingers.”
It took her several moments to process his words, but when she did, she leaned back in a slump. “Oh.”
He slanted her a look. “Why did you run out on me this morning, Anne?”
“I thought…” She was suddenly afraid to admit it, since she’d clearly jumped to conclusions that were completely wrong, and it was a little embarrassing. “I thought you’d left me.”
“What? What did you think happened last night?”
He looked so surprised that she blushed hotly. “Last night was…amazing. But I woke up and you were gone. Then I saw your notes on the new position for me, and I thought it was a sign that you’d never think I was as important as your work, and I knew I couldn’t take anything less than…having you for real. So I just…ran.”
He reached over and pulled her against his chest. “You little idiot,” he said, tenderness obvious in his voice. “I had just gone down to get us some breakfast.”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment and realized how completely wrong she’d been. She hid her face in his shirt. “Oh God.”
He was laughing as he wrapped both of his arms around her again.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she told him, without any real heat. She pulled away enough to look up at his face. “I had good reason to think you’d pulled back and prioritized your work again, since you’d been doing it for years.”
“I know,” he said in a different tone, gently stroking her hair. “I’ve been more of an idiot than you could ever be. I’m sorry it took me so long. Work was always safer—the one thing I felt like I could control. When you told me you were quitting, I was almost out of my mind. I kept thinking you wouldn’t be my employee anymore, so there would be nothing holding me back. But I was so used to putting my feelings on hold, I didn’t think I could let myself act on them. I didn’t think I could ever have you. Have you and keep you, I mean.”
She understood exactly what he meant. She knew him as well as she knew herself. “I didn’t think I could ever have you either,” she admitted.
“So we were both wrong.” He leaned down to gently kiss her lips. “I always knew I needed you in my life, but for a long time I pretended that having you at work was enough. But it’s not. And, just so you know, now that I have you like this, there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to let you go.”
She beamed up at him. “Sounds just about right to me.”
They kissed for a minute—emotional and a little clumsy—until a voice startled them from the other side of the apartment.
Meg called out, “I’m coming out. I’m sorry, but I need to go to work.”
“That’s fine,” Anne replied, straightening up a little although Jake wouldn’t let her out of the circle of his arms.
“I’m closing my eyes so I won’t see if anything untoward is happening in there.”
Both Jake and Anne started laughing, and Anne said, “Nothing untoward is happening. You can open your eyes.”
Meg emerged from the hall, dressed for work and grinning at both of them. “So you guys finally worked everything out?”
“Yeah.” Anne was smiling just as broadly as her friend was, feeling sheepish and giddy both.
“Excellent. I’m leaving now, so you can do whatever untoward things you’d like to do without being interrupted. Just please tell me that I get to be the one to tell Raney.”
“You can tell Raney.”
Meg cackled as she grabbed her purse and headed to the door. “She’s going to be so jealous that I knew before her.”
Anne called out a laughing farewell as her friend left the apartment. Then she turned back to Jake, who was gazing at her with a softness that turned her into emotional mush. “So what now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What do you think?” He pulled her against him again, so she was leaning against his chest.
It wasn’t a bad position at all.
“You left poor Stew in a lurch. Will you go back to San Diego to help him out?”
“I don’t think so. I can talk him through things on the phone, if he can’t figure it out on his own.”
“Then I guess you should probably start looking for a new assistant.”
“I guess so. Although I’m not sure we have to start that immediately. I mean, not right now.” He shifted their bodies slightly so she could look him in the eyes.
“What else did you have in mind for right now?” she asked, although she was pretty sure she could read the hot expression in his face.
He leaned down and said against her lips, “Right now, I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do for ages, but didn’t think I’d ever be allowed.
She wrapped her arms around him. “And what’s that?”
“This.”
He eased her down so she was lying on the couch, and he showed her.
Epilogue
Two months later, Anne was popping up on a surfboard, early on a Sunday morning, trying to get her stance right.
She didn’t seem to be naturally talented at it.
The board wasn’t even on the water—it was just on the sand so she could practice—but she still couldn’t seem to get her feet placed right when she hopped up from the paddling position.
Jake laughed when she tried to jump again and ended up with one foot off her board completely.
She groaned and glared at him.
He walked over with a grin. “It’s not as hard as you’re making it. Push with your arms and pull your feet up under you. Don’t worry about doing it really quickly yet. Just stand up in the right way and make sure this leg is out front when you do.” He patted her right thigh.
She sighed and got down again on her stomach on the board.
“Don’t worry about being fast this time. Just stand up.”
Without the pressure of doing it quickly, she stood up just fine.
“Good,” he said, coming over again and sliding his hand down her thigh to change her stance slightly. “Bend your knee a little more.”
“Like this?” she asked, looking over at him. He looked gorgeous in the morning sun, relaxed, happy, and in need of a shave. It had taken her a few weeks to convince him to teach her to surf—since he knew exactly what her real motive was in the request—but he’d relented eventually.
He’d gone out on the water yesterday to show her the basics, and she knew he’d go out again once she was ready to get off the beach herself.
He hadn’t yet surfed on his own yet, but she was pretty sure he would.
He’d never be able to surf like he used to—not with his bad knee—but he could surf some. He could have a little of what he’d lost.
She wanted that for him.
It wasn’t like the last two months had completely changed him. He still worked like a maniac during the week, but he was doing better about taking the weekends and evenings off.
Anne was loving her new job, and she was loving Jak
e even more.
He seemed satisfied with her stance, but his hand lingered on her upper thigh.
“Watch the hands,” she teased, glancing back at him.
He gave her a wicked grin and slid his palm back even more inappropriately so it was cupping her ass.
“Hey,” she objected.
“I thought I was allowed to do that now.”
She playfully swatted his hand away. “Not in public.”
“There’s no one else around. And you know how irresistible I find your delectable ass.”
She made a face at him but was smiling when he leaned over to kiss her. After he pulled away, she said, “Seriously, though, I want to learn how to do this.”
“Right. Then why don’t you try it again?”
It took her about ten more times, but she finally got the pop-up right, jumping up from her stomach in a fast, smooth move with her feet and body in the right position.
When she finally got it right, she squealed in excitement and launched herself at him in a hug. He caught her, the momentum causing him to spin around once as he held her tightly.
“I love you, Jake Woodward,” she burst out, when she raised her head to smile at him, joy and affection overflowing into words.
They hadn’t said those words to each other yet, but she wasn’t even afraid. She gazed up at him, knowing—knowing—he felt the same way.
He froze for a moment, before emotion broke briefly on his face. But then he drawled, “I’m sure you already know how much I love you too. And, seriously, if I’d known it would get me this reaction, I would have taught you to surf ages ago.”
Sometimes she couldn’t believe this miracle had really happened to her, that someone she loved so much could actually love her back.
But it had happened. And it was real. And it wasn’t going to go away.
Maybe it had happened gradually, and over the course of seven years, Jake had changed from her boss into the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
Or maybe it had happened in only one night.
***
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed One Night with her Boss, please consider leaving a review and telling others about it. I’ve also written three more One Night novellas, which are available in a discount boxed sex for just $1.99. You can find more information here.
