If You Can't Stand the Heat... (Harlequin Kiss) (24 page)

His gaze drifted downward before returning to her face. There was the most annoying little twinkle in his eye. She was seriously tempted to see if a right hook could dislodge it, but that would just get her arrested. And, more importantly, fired.

Her soon-to-be ex-boss cocked an eyebrow. She assumed he was trying to look appealingly naughty. This guy was not taking her seriously and that was really starting to tick her off.

‘Or else what?’ he asked and matched her position, placing his palms on the wooden desk top and leaning in close so their mouths were only inches apart.

Kelly just smiled a slow, sweet smile, and then she leaned forward and showed him.

* * *

Jason Knight balanced a minibasketball on the fingers of one hand and fixed his focus on the equally small hoop on his office wall. There was a moment of complete stillness then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent ball flying towards hoop. It sailed through the air then dropped neatly through the ring. He smiled at the satisfying rustle of knotted string as the ball passed through it and landed on the floor. He went to retrieve it, then repeated the process a few more times.

If anyone had been watching, they’d have thought he was goofing around, killing time in the middle of a busy business day, but that was far from the case. Some people got their best ideas doing mundane, repetitive activities, like ironing or walking the dog. Shooting hoops helped him think.

Back home they’d had a hoop secured above the garage door in the front yard. It was the one thing he really missed about home, but this side of the Atlantic it was all about soccer, something he’d never really gotten into. He sighed and lined the ball up again. He’d already shot twenty times and had only missed three, yet he still was no closer to solving his problem.

Dale McGrath was proving to be a very hard man to get hold of, and he really, really wanted to set up a meeting with the guy. Jason knew he could find another athlete to endorse his new range of high-performance running shoes if he really wanted to, but Dale’s face had appeared in his mind during his
other
good thinking activity—swimming laps—and he knew the straight-talking Olympic gold medallist was the right figurehead for the product. If McGrath took his shoes seriously, then everyone else would too.

And not only would it be a coup for the company, but it would prove once and for all to his father that he wasn’t just ‘messing around’ in the family toys and games business.

Eight years ago the old man had sent him here to head up the struggling London-based sports equipment company he’d just bought out. Jason suspected his father had just given up trying to get his wayward son to do things his way and had shipped him off to keep him out of his hair. But, hey, who needed Jason when his younger, golden-haired brother was around to worship? He released the ball again, but this time he put a little too much force behind it and it bounced off the wall, wide of the hoop.

He grunted and placed his feet firmly on the floor so he could go and retrieve it but, before he could stand up, his office door banged open. He looked up to find his HR manager marching towards him. She slapped a crisp-looking white envelope down on the desk in front of him.

He frowned. ‘What’s that?’

Julie was looking seriously flustered. One hair on her neatly groomed salt-and-pepper head was standing to attention. It was the untidiest he’d ever seen her look.

‘My resignation letter,’ she said, crossing her arms.

Jason stared at it. Julie threatened to resign at least three times a month, but she’d never got as far as producing stationery before. ‘Okay...’ he said slowly.

‘No, it’s not okay! Down in my office, I’ve got yet another temp in tears. You can’t believe the amount I’ve spent on boxes of tissues in the last two months!’

‘Ah.’ Jason peered round Julie to the anteroom where his PA normally sat. He’d wondered why it had been so quiet out there. He guessed the ‘little chat’ he’d had with Felicity last night hadn’t gone down well.

‘Yes,
ah
. It’s been a nightmare since Katrin resigned! You’ve been through six temps in just over two months. Six! And I can’t spend all my time trawling the employment agencies of London just to keep you in dates on a Friday evening. I’ve been with this company twenty years and never before have I felt my job description involved being the boss’s pimp!’

Okay, so this wasn’t just another idle threat. Julie was really upset. Which was a pity, because he’d been having quite a good time since his girlfriend and permanent PA had decided to leave both him and the company. He’d been working long hours and there’d been a steady parade of pretty young women flowing through his office. Who
wouldn’t
have taken advantage of such a gift?

It wasn’t as if he’d done all the running, either. One or two had practically launched themselves across the desk at him. It was just that they hadn’t wanted to hear he wasn’t interested in turning the job—or the relationship—into a long-term fixture that had got them all weepy. But he’d never broken a promise or led them to believe otherwise. It was hardly
his
fault if women decided to get all kinds of strange notions in their heads.

Julie was tapping her foot. ‘Well?’ she said, raising one eyebrow, the only part of her that wasn’t starched and stiff. Julie had surprisingly mobile eyebrows. All the more noticeable for their slight bushiness...

Jason smiled at her, turning it on full beam. He knew Julie was the one woman in the universe who seemed to be immune to it, but it couldn’t hurt to try and buy himself a couple more seconds of thinking time. ‘Will “I’m sorry” do?’ he asked hopefully.

Julie just snorted.

That caused Jason to get a little more serious. She’d been with Aspire for more than two decades, and when he’d arrived off the plane from New York as a clueless twenty-something, annoyed his only option had been to cave in and do what his father had told him for once, Julie had taken one look at him and told him to stop acting the poor little rich kid and get over himself. His father had sent him half a world away and he didn’t like it much—so what? There was a whole company nervous about the takeover, and they’d needed him to step up to the plate and turn it around. Their jobs, their families, depended on him, she’d said. It was Julie who’d given him a much-needed kick up the pants and made him realise that proving his father wrong about being a waste of space might be much more satisfying than proving him right.

So, while his HR manager might have battery acid for saliva, Jason couldn’t afford to lose her. She’d been both his harshest critic and his biggest cheerleader, and what she didn’t know about the UK sports equipment industry wasn’t worth knowing. Without Julie, Aspire wouldn’t be the up-and-coming company it was today, which meant he owed her. Big time.

For a second, just a second, he let down the permanent sheen of ‘nothing sticks’ he always wore and softened his gaze. He looked Julie in the eye. ‘You can’t leave,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

She rolled her eyes, but dropped into the chair on the other side of his desk and looked away.

He nudged the envelope towards her. ‘Please?’ he said. ‘Take this back and shred it.’

She reached for it and pulled it towards her, but drew her hand away again when the envelope was half off the edge of the desk. ‘Not so fast.’ She folded her arms across her considerable cleavage. ‘There are some conditions to the destruction of this letter.’

Jason slumped back in his chair and sighed. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like these ‘conditions’ much. ‘Fire away,’ he said wearily.

The hint of a victorious smirk played on Julie’s lips. ‘One...no more flirting with the temps—that’s how the whole mess begins.’

Jason tried not to smile. Okay, so he’d calm down a little. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be receptive if an attractive woman flirted with him, now, did it? However, Julie spotted the microscopic twitch of his lips and her eyes narrowed.

‘Two...’ she said slowly ‘...no encouraging anyone employed by Aspire to flirt with you.’

You’re a statue, he told himself. Don’t react.

‘Or letting them flirt with you unprovoked.’

Dammit.

‘And definitely no physical contact with your employees.’

He raised his eyebrows and tried to look wounded. ‘What? Not even a friendly clap on the shoulder between buddies, a handshake at the beginning or end of a meeting...?’

Julie’s scowl intensified. ‘Don’t push it, Jason! You know exactly what I mean. I’m talking about female employees—unless you’ve worked your way through the whole office and are thinking of going a different direction?’

He grinned and shook his head. Nope. Definitely not tired of women yet. ‘So are handshakes allowed?’ he asked innocently.

Julie peered at him a little more closely, as if she was trying to work out what was going on in his head. ‘Handshakes are allowed,’ she finally said.

Jason nodded. A concession. No, a victory. It was always important to win something in negotiations; he just didn’t know how he was going to use this to his advantage. Yet.

Julie uncrossed her arms and let out a breath. ‘Good.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know why you can’t just find one woman you like enough to stick with for more than a weekend.’

Jason stood, then went and retrieved the minibasketball from where it was still resting against the window. ‘It’s not liking them enough that’s the problem,’ he said as he rolled it into his palm and turned to face her. ‘It’s liking them too much. There are so many amazing women out there—’

She made a face. ‘Spare me.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun while I’m still young.’ Then, just to make her feel better, he added, ‘But maybe I will settle down...one day.’

‘My Jonathan is three years younger than you and he’s already got a toddler and another one on the way. Now, if that’s all,’ she said, swiping her letter off his desk and heading for the door, ‘I’ve got one soggy temp to deal with and another who’s asked for an appointment. She sounded spitting mad...’

She stopped at the doorway and peered over the top of her glasses at him. ‘That hasn’t got anything to do with you, has it? Two in one day is a record, even for you.’

Jason just chuckled as she turned and marched out of the office.
Oh, Julie. If only you knew...

* * *

‘She did what?’ the HR manager stuttered as her underling repeated the story Kelly had just told her. She swung round to face Kelly. Julie was wearing the look of a woman who was not having a good day. ‘You did
what
?’

Kelly folded her hands in her lap and looked the woman straight in the eye. ‘I stapled his tie to the desk.’

Julie’s mouth moved but no sound came out.

‘It was the only way I could make him stay where he was supposed to,’ Kelly added helpfully. ‘I’m sorry about the desk, but Mr Payne wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I made him.’

That would teach him to not take her seriously.

The underling had to turn away and stifle her giggles behind a hand. Julie blinked a few times then seemed to recover herself. ‘Well, of course we’ll investigate your complaint, Ms Bradford, but there are ways to go about this kind of thing. Ways that don’t involve office equipment....’ She lowered her chin and looked at Kelly over the top of her glasses.

Kelly nodded, the picture of innocence. No point telling the woman she’d have liked to staple something else of Payne’s to the desk and the tie had just been a poor substitute. ‘Thank you.’

The underling sighed. ‘You know, a lot of girls think Will is a bit of a hottie.’

Well, a lot of girls needed their heads read.

Kelly didn’t say that, though. She was busy proving she could be calm and professional and that she could keep control of her runaway mouth—and her stapling arm. She settled on something much less inflammatory. ‘But I’m just not interested. In him, or anyone.’ She frowned. ‘Isn’t there a company policy against that kind of thing?’

‘Mr Knight did away with that,’ Julie said starchily, as she and the underling exchanged a cryptic look. ‘He says he doesn’t want the company stuck in the Dark Ages, and that as long as his staff do their work well he doesn’t care what they get up to in their personal lives.’

On any other day Kelly would have applauded the boss’s decision heartily. Today, however, a medieval dating policy—maybe involving male chastity belts?—might have made her life a little bit easier. ‘Well,
I
have a personal policy about dating colleagues,’ she said.

Julie gave Kelly a sceptical look then sat back down at her desk and leafed through her file. When she’d finished, she looked at her over her glasses again. ‘You’ve been with us just under a month and this is the third time we’ve moved you....’

‘I can explain about—’

Julie just raised her eyebrows. ‘It seems you don’t have a problem speaking your mind, Ms Bradford, which I wouldn’t normally consider a bad thing, but you do manage to rub people the wrong way. I’m wondering if we even have anywhere we can usefully place you immediately.’ She squinted at the computer screen and reached for her mouse. ‘We
might
have another position for you....’ However, the tone of her voice suggested she was just going through the motions.

Kelly’s smile remained fixed, but inside her stomach dropped. She couldn’t let them send her back off to the temp agency and give someone else the position.

The other woman shook her head. ‘No...sorry. Nothing suitable, really.’ She looked up and gave Kelly a tight smile. ‘Of course, we’ll contact your agency if anything opens up.’

Kelly stood up. ‘Look, this just isn’t fair! I’d have happily worked hard for Will Payne if he’d acted appropriately. I shouldn’t be the one who’s penalised!’

Julie looked at Kelly’s recently vacated chair, and it took all Kelly had to plant her bum back down on it.

‘It’s not about punishment, Kelly,’ Julie said, a hint more sympathy in her tone. ‘You know how temp work goes... We do need some short-term cover for a couple of the senior management team, but those posts require a certain level of skills—’