The Boss's Mistletoe Maneuvers (4 page)

His inner musings on how this might go ceased abruptly when she leaned forward over the edge of the table. His eyes dipped to the sight of the dewy top of her rounded breasts and the fact that she wore nothing beneath the red dress. Nothing visible, anyway.

Although the sight doubled his heart rate, a thought occurred about this sudden closeness potentially being a purposeful move on her part to distract him, an enactment of the power of her all-too-obvious feminine wiles. Of which she had plenty.

Hell, maybe he just got turned on by the promise of a good fight. In his family, close as they were, fighting had become a sport.

The truth, though, was that he had grown tired of women who assumed they were owed something because of their looks. That aside, he had a short span of time to get this agency working better, and a Wonder Woman could help him do that.

Working this out would be the decent thing to do. The best outcome for everyone.

“Anyway, as I was saying, it’s a special event,” he continued. “If you’ll hear me out, I’ll explain.”

She had no immediate reply to that, and continued to absently fondle the fragile stem of her glass in a way that he found extremely appealing.

At the same time, he was nearing his limit on patience. He noticed Brenda looking at him intently, and that look served to clear his mind.

“I’ll find someone to help you,” Kim finally offered. “I can find someone who will do a good job and is an ace at spur-of-the-moment stuff.”

“Who would that person be?”

“Will you excuse me a minute?” Brenda broke in. “I have to, well, you know.” Her exit was abrupt.

Kim didn’t seem to notice her friend’s departure. She didn’t lean back or try to make her own escape.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll hear you out since I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter, and then suggest somebody to help you. What is this special project?”

Chaz tried really hard not to grin. Kim had just given in, and an inch was better than nothing.

“It’s a party. A Christmas party, and as much of an extravaganza as we can pull together this late. Nothing huge, really, and more indicative of a big family celebration. We’ll need decorated trees, live music and a couple elves.”

“Elves?” she repeated with a touch of sarcasm in her tone.

Chaz nodded. “Can’t have Christmas without elves. Then we’ll need packages. Large boxes, small boxes, all with big red bows. And snow.”

“Snow?” Kim offered up an expression of surprise that overrode her former skepticism about elves.

“Sure. We can bring some snow inside a building, can’t we? Aren’t there snow machines? We can bring in some of the real stuff on trays and carts for the buffet table, as well as ice sculptures.”

She winced, probably unwilling to tell him what an idiot he was for suggesting real snow inside a building. It likely cost her plenty to hold that chastisement in.

“We’re not party planners,” she said calmly. “You do know that we’re a respected advertising agency?”

Chaz couldn’t address that. He didn’t dare. This was a test. A silly one, true, but he had to make it sound as if he needed her help. He couldn’t say that it was his family’s party he’d invade with all those Christmasy things if Kim actually agreed. In the meantime, he’d try to find out what irked her about the holiday stuff. He’d use all the holiday terms to push her buttons.

“Candy canes,” he continued. “Mounds of them. Also anything and everything else that could make an indoor fantasy come true for the company and its top tier of stockholders.”

McKinley’s lush lashes closed over her eyes. Her hand stopped caressing the glass. She seemed to have stopped breathing.

“This must be a big deal,” she said at length.

“Indeed, it’s very big. For you.”

McKinley’s expression changed lightning fast. She sat upright on her stool, taking most of her deliciously woodsy scent with her.

Chaz’s grin dissolved. Had he accidentally put the wrong spin on that last remark, making it sound sexual? Hell, he hadn’t even thought about it, and sure as heck hadn’t meant it that way.

“It’s a potentially huge contract,” he rushed to say, thinking that if she would merely agree, this would be over. One little “yes” and she’d be on her way to the metaphorical Oval Office. She just had to be willing to circumvent that stubborn mind-set and get down to business.

She didn’t have to set one red-hot foot in his apartment. She didn’t have to breathe in his goddamned ear. Those were daydreams. Man stuff. Wishful thinking. Most men were wired with those kinds of thoughts. All she had to do was cave on one little point, encapsulated by a single paragraph on paper.

But again, and to her credit, Kim didn’t run away.

“Who is offering the contract?” she asked politely.

“I’m not at liberty to say. Not until you agree to help out.”

“I did mention that I’m on vacation next week?”

“I’ll give you a longer vacation at another time.”

“I can’t help you,” she declared. But contrary to sounding smug about this persistent refusal, Chaz heard in her voice something else. Sorrow? Wishfulness? A silent desire that she didn’t have to be so stubborn and inflexible?

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Are you really of a religion that shuns this holiday?”

She shook her head. “Irish. Completely. Three generations back.”

“Ah.” Chaz’s breath caught in his throat as one of her hands rested lightly on top of his hand on the table, flesh to naked flesh, and cool from her grip on the martini glass.

The urge to tug at his collar returned.

“I’d like to be honest with you.” As her eyes met his, Chaz couldn’t help but feel as if he were drowning. The look in her eyes made the crowd around them disappear.

“I’d appreciate it if you would,” he said, slightly shaken by the intimacy of her touch and her sudden change of expression. Truly, it wasn’t a normal occurrence for him to be affected by the antics of a woman. He wasn’t sex starved. He didn’t need to count on Kim for those fantasies when the pretty brunette at the next table continuously looked his way.

“It would be better for me if you didn’t pressure me into this,” she told him in a carefully modulated tone that deepened her accent.

“Explain, and maybe I won’t. I am human, you know.”

When she frowned, the delicate skin around her eyes creased.

“I have a problem,” she said.

Her fingers moved on his as if trying to stress a point he didn’t see. Chaz found himself listening especially diligently for whatever excuse she’d come up with next. He could hardly wait to hear what she had to say.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, a provocative, erotic action.

“It’s embarrassing to speak of, so I don’t,” she began. “If you were to fire me because of sharing this very personal confidence, I don’t know what I’d do.”

She hadn’t removed her hand from his. His gaze lingered on her mouth.

“I have a problem with Christmas.” As she spoke, earrings buried somewhere in her fair blond hair tinkled with a sound like stardust falling.

“It’s not the holiday itself that bothers me,” she went on. “An objection to the commercialism of Christmas would be funny in our line of business, wouldn’t it?”

Kim’s wan smile lifted the edges of her lips. “That’s not the source of my problems.”

“I’d sincerely like to know what is,” Chaz said.

In another surprising move, she slid closer to him, inching her stool sideways and leaning in so that she didn’t have to shout. With her mouth all but touching his right ear, she said, “Santa is my problem.”

When Chaz turned his head, their lips almost met. He felt the soft exhalation of her breath. “Santa?” he echoed, his abs shuddering annoyingly beneath his shirt. “As in Santa Claus? You have a problem with Santa Claus?”

“Yes.” Her reply was devastatingly breathy.

Was she making fun of him?

“How can Santa Claus be a problem?” he asked.

“I want him,” she whispered.

He waited for the meaning of this to hit. Then he began to laugh. She wanted Santa? This was so much better than her shunning the holiday for religious reasons, or thinking Christmas too commercial as an advertising executive, that it came off as completely unique. Kim McKinley deserved a crown for this excuse.

She had put him on, of course, and she’d had him going for a minute. Her acting skills were applause-worthy. This was another point for her, well played.

But she didn’t look so well, all of a sudden. Her smile had faded. Her face paled. The hazel eyes gazing into his were glazed and moist, very much as if she had just disclosed a terrible secret and was awaiting a dreaded response. As if she’d been serious.

And he had laughed.

Sobering, rallying quickly, he said, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I must have misunderstood your meaning. In what way do you want Santa Claus, exactly?”

“I...”

“Yes?”

“Well, you see, I...”

Her eyes held a pleading, haunted cast. She didn’t want to explain herself, couldn’t find the words. As he watched her, she began to look less like a mistress of fire, and more like a young, lost waif.

Chaz was moved by the change. Without thinking, he reached up to cup her face with his hands in an automatic reaction of empathy, sensing real trouble in her past. She stared into his eyes, and he stared back, groping for what was going on here, and what she might mean.

When her lips parted, they trembled enough that he could see the quakes. She wasn’t acting or kidding around. Kim had been deadly serious about needing to shun what was going on with this holiday.

Wanting to ease the pain reflected in her eyes, and needing to fix what he had set in motion, Chaz pressed his mouth to hers before even knowing what had happened. When realization hit, he kept very still with his mouth resting lightly on hers as he sized up what he had just done.

Her lips were soft, slick and completely, heartbreakingly tender. Way better than anything he could have imagined. Light-years beyond better. But the biggest surprise of all was that he hadn’t gotten close to her out of lust or the lingering effects of the dress and the shoes. It had been an unconscious need to comfort her, protect her.

He had just glimpsed something sad curled up in McKinley’s core beneath the glamour and efficiency. He had wanted a confession, and instead had stifled that confession with a kiss.

He didn’t move, draw back or try to explain. Neither did she. His pressure on her lips remained slight but steady, in a connection he had desired from the first time he’d seen her. He supposed she might scream when he let her go, and he completely deserved the slap he’d receive, though in this circumstance, his intentions had been honorable.

Her lips, her breath, her taste, fascinated him and moved him further, stirring emotions tucked inside. Strands of her blond hair tickled his cheek in a way that suddenly seemed right and completely natural. And since it was too late, anyway, and the damage had already been done, he added more pressure.

As the illicit kiss deepened, Kim’s lips parted beneath his. She let a sigh escape and didn’t pull away. The slap Chaz expected never came. Their bodies remained motionless, inches apart, as their breath and mouths explored the parameters of this very public forbidden kiss.

Her breath was enticingly hot, deliciously scented and as seductive as anything imaginable. Reeling from the sensations and spurred on by those seductions, Chaz dared to draw his tongue slowly along the corners of her mouth. As he breathed her in, tasted her lipstick, felt the moistness of her tongue meeting his, she joined him in this unexpected faux pas.

For a minute, for Chaz, they were no longer employer and employee, or adversaries; only a man and a woman acting on a primal attraction that they had tried unsuccessfully to ignore. Giving in, ruled by feeling, Chaz tossed away all thoughts about the possible consequences of such a public display, and went for broke.

Four

K
im gripped the table with both hands. She heard the sound of her glass tipping, rolling, and couldn’t reach out to stop it from crashing to the floor. She was locked to her new boss in a battle of bodies and mouths and wills. In a bad way. A physical way.

And it was sublime.

It was...beyond words.

With her eyes closed, she could sense Chaz Monroe’s body in relation to hers and knew it was too far away for the flames to be so hot and all-encompassing. After several seconds with her lips plastered to his, her hands left the table as if they had a mind of their own. She was only vaguely aware of curling her fingers into the front of his beautiful blue shirt.

He tasted like beer, desire and of plans gone south. They weren’t supposed to be doing this, like this. They were enemies of a sort, which made their actions run contrary to everything she had planned. How could she actually like the kiss she was supposed to hold against him if the harassment case idea became necessary? And was that plan necessary now?

Then why didn’t she run away?

She hardly thought of anything but Monroe’s mouth, and the result had her floating in a sensory fog. The kiss seemed to go on forever. Some distant part of her mind warned that she had to get out of this situation. She had to get away right that instant. This kiss could prove her downfall as well as his.

Yet her breasts strained against the red silk, her nipples hard and aching. The dress seemed much too tight and restrictive. Between her legs, she quaked with a new awakening.

She wanted more than a kiss. Her body demanded more.

Damn. She really hated this guy!

As his tongue teased and taunted and his lips became more demanding, Kim struggled to think. She had to keep it together. Plans A and B had failed miserably in the very fact that they were a success, but she could still turn this around. She could use this.
Would
use this...as soon as he stopped doing whatever the hell he was doing that felt so good.

His tongue swept over her teeth and across her lower lip, urging more participation. She tore at his shirt, tugging him closer with treacherous fingers, seeking a way inside his clothes.

His warm hands remained on her face, holding her while she drowned in his essence, his heat and the intensity of what they were doing. Chaz Monroe really was the epitome of everything masculine and powerful, right down to his kissing talent. He didn’t ravage her or threaten to overpower. The kiss had started off tender and exploratory, without being tentative, then quickly escalated.

These feelings were a first, and they were outrageous. She wanted Monroe to throw her on the table and slide his heated palms over her thighs. She had never felt this out of control, had never been attracted to a man in such a fierce, feral manner.

But other than his warm hands on her cheeks, he made no further move to touch her. No illicit fondling, nothing that would have earned him a shove and a sharp reprimand if she had been thinking properly.

Kissing was supposed to be like this, yet for her, never was. No man had ever moved her in this way, making her want to surrender her hard-won hold on control.

And just when she had started to weaken further, he tugged lightly on her lower lip and withdrew. The pressure on her lips eased. He removed his hands from her face slowly, as if reluctant to do so, leaving chills in their wake.

He remained close. His eyes bored into hers questioningly, offering a hint of a new kind of understanding that was so foreign to Kim, she misread it as sympathy. He spoke from inches away.

“What about Santa? Exactly?”

She expected to see a flicker of amusement in his eyes. Her stomach seized up as she waited for it, wondering if Monroe had merely been proving a point about being an experienced playboy able to get whatever he wanted from his latest acquisition.

Bastard!

Her heart tanked. Her mouth formed a steely line. She had almost fallen for that kiss, and for him. She hadn’t been the one to put a stop to it.

“Kim?” Monroe’s tone was a silky caress with a startlingly direct link to her trembling lower regions.

“I’m sorry,” she replied breathlessly. “I just can’t.”

The words were forced, pitched low, angry. Kim got to her feet. Her knees felt absurdly weak and unsupportive.

“Kim,” Monroe said again, standing with her, using her first name as if the kiss had earned him the right to be familiar. “Help me here. Give me something.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “I thought I just did.”

It was too late for confessions and explanations. There would be no laughing this off as a simple mistake. Dread filled Kim, so heavy it made her stomach hurt. Following that came a round of embarrassment.

She had worn the dress and the shoes, and those things had worked their magic, just as Brenda had predicted they would. Going beyond distraction, they had seduced Monroe into unwarranted intimacy. And though she had liked that moment of intimacy, in the end, Monroe had successfully manipulated her. As her boss, he would continue to push for answers.

She steadied herself with a hand on the edge of the table. Telling the truth was out of the picture now for sure, as was remaining in Monroe’s presence for one second longer.

The ridiculous harassment case idea wavered in front of her as if it were written in the air. They had made out in the bar, surrounded by people, some of which were her fellow employees. Hopefully, none of them had noticed that she hadn’t shoved Monroe away, and also the fact that she could no longer breathe properly.

After a kiss like that, so completely mind-numbing and seductive, she saw no other way out of this mess but to play the damsel in distress in order to save her traitorous ruby-covered ass. She hated that; despised the thought. But Monroe was a master at games.

With the hazy lingering imprint of his mouth on hers, Kim lifted a hand. She slapped Monroe across the face, hard, and said loudly enough for others to hear, “What were you thinking, Mr. Monroe? That I’d jump at the chance to bed my boss?”

Pivoting gracefully on her absurdly expensive shoes, she headed for the door, feeling the burn of Monroe’s inquisitive gaze on her back and thinking that if she’d wanted to cry in frustration before, she had just taken it to a whole new level.

* * *

Shell-shocked, and beginning to get a bad feeling about what had just happened, Chaz smiled at the people at the next table and shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t quite believe this, though. He’d been completely helpless in resisting Kim McKinley. Once again, his plan had backfired.

He had locked lips with her. In public.

And he knew what that meant.

Waiting out several agonizing seconds before throwing down cash for the drinks, he started after her, deciding that he wouldn’t apologize if he caught up with her, since she had provoked that damn lip-lock.

That dress...

Those shoes...

The sudden waifish expression in her eyes.

There was no time like the present to get to the bottom of this charade and find out what Kim had up her sleeve. Certainly she had something up there.

He had taken the bait in what might have been a ploy to catch him off guard. Possibly a public seduction had been her goal all along. If so, this made McKinley a real master at manipulation.

He had believed, with his mouth on hers, and with her throaty moan of encouragement, that she wanted closeness as much as he did. That she enjoyed the kiss as much as he had.

Bottom line—he had believed her. He’d fallen victim to the flash of pain in her eyes and the acceptance of her lush mouth. He thought those things were real, as was the sorrow that had overtaken her saucy demeanor. He’d been sure the real Kim McKinley was facing him for the first time.

And she had played him?

What a sucker he’d been. Only one reason came to mind for an objective like hers—either the threat of a harassment case against him, or out-and-out blackmail.
A kiss for a clause.

He didn’t like his new title, which was Chaz Monroe, fool. People in the bar were looking at him. The brunette who had handed over her phone number winked knowingly.

Did Kim have any earthly idea what he’d like to do to her, now that he knew the score?

How could he have been so completely wrong? Because he would have sworn, testifying with one hand in the air and another on the Bible, that she had kissed him back and meant it.

Oh yes, she was good. Damn good. It had been a great performance. Perfect, actually.

“But it isn’t over,” Chaz said through gritted teeth as he moved through the crowd.

* * *

Kim strode past the bar’s doorway and into the corridor beyond that led to the building’s marble lobby. When she reached the bank of elevators, she punched a button with her palm and stamped her feet a couple of times in disgust. The wrong plan had worked. She felt terrible, sick.

All that evocative talk had done her in. Snow. Elves. Presents and candy canes. She hated the slinky red dress and the shoes she couldn’t return.

The fact that she’d almost blurted out the truth about her family simply added fuel to the fire of an already demented situation. Now there was no going back. She’d have to nail Monroe to the wall by using that very public mistake if he continued to bug her about the contract.

To hell with Chaz Monroe for making her feel guilty about having to force her to use bribery and revenge to get him off her back. She cursed him for bringing up her dark past and causing her to become someone else, someone who would do such a thing for their own personal gain.

Darkness bubbled up inside her, coating her insides.

Once upon a time, she had wanted to trust a man for his good and magical qualities. She had wished hard for Santa Claus to bring her father back. On each anniversary of her father’s exit, she had prayed for something to stop her mother’s crying jags and all those days when her mom couldn’t get out of bed.

She had secretly written to Santa once, and mailed the letter. But Santa hadn’t bothered to respond or grant her that wish. Her father never returned, and her mother’s depression got progressively worse until relatives had threatened to take Kim away.

The emptiness in her past was riddled with fear and loneliness and a young girl’s angst. Her mother’s rants and monologues had followed Kim everywhere, and guilt had made her stay close. Her mother didn’t need another disappointment; couldn’t have withstood her daughter leaving, too.

There had been no escape until college, and even there, while testing her wings, guilt had been part of Kim’s existence. She had fled some of that darkness, while her mother had not. She was okay, and her mother stayed sick.

Tonight that sickness had become hers. She had become a player, against her will, as if her mother had risen from the grave to goad her on. She had been willing to hurt someone, a man, so that her secrets could go on being secrets, and her hurt stayed tucked inside. She had wanted to trust, and had been shot down.

“Kim?”

The voice was close, deep and too familiar for comfort. A wave of chills pierced Kim’s red dress. The elevator was too damn slow, and she hadn’t expected Monroe to follow her.

Now what?

Wobbling on her weakened knees, Kim whirled to face Monroe in all his gorgeous male beauty. The persistent bastard wasn’t going to let her off the hook, but he wouldn’t touch her again if he knew what was good for him.

He leaned toward her before she could voice a protest, and placed both hands on the wall beside her. It took him several seconds to speak.

“There’s no need to run away.” His tone seemed too calm for the expression on his face. He pinned her in place, within the cage of his arms, as if knowing she’d bolt at the first opportunity. The front of his shirt showed creases from where she had greedily tugged at it in a moment of blissful mindlessness.

Kim didn’t reply. She could not think of one appropriate word to say.

“I really don’t see the need for an all-out war, or whatever you imagine this is,” he said. “I asked to meet in good faith to discuss the problems facing us. I was trying to find a way out of this mess.”

Kim tried to hit the elevator button with her elbow. Though there’d likely be a hint of snow on the ground outside tonight, the corridor felt stiflingly warm. Part of that heat came from Monroe, who acted as if he knew exactly what she had done, and what the outcome had to be.
Clever man.

“I believed we could work something out,” he said. “For a minute back there, I thought you might honestly want to.”

She had to fight for a breath. Monroe’s closeness was a reminder of how far she had strayed. That kiss, in public, would be career doom for her if rumor of it got around. She wasn’t the one with the VP spot. He was.

She tried to touch her lips, to wipe away the feeling of him, but couldn’t raise her arms. Monroe’s inferno pummeled at her, overheating her from the inside out, rendering her excuses for her behavior useless.

“I tried to explain,” she managed to say.

Maybe he hadn’t gotten the picture, after all, about the blackmail. His mouth lurked a few millimeters away from hers. Dangerously close.

“But you didn’t explain. Not really,” he said. “None of that was the truth, right?”

“More than you know.”

“There’s still time to explain, Kim.”

She shook her head.

“I wasn’t the only one who wanted that kiss,” Monroe remarked. “And it wasn’t planned.”

“How dare you presume to know what I want?”

“Well, at least one of us is honest. I’ll admit that it wasn’t the goal of tonight’s discussion, but I will also confess that I liked it. I liked it a lot.”

“It was business suicide for me, and you know it.”

“So, you’ll use the kiss against me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Well, if it’s a lawsuit you want, we might as well make the best of it. There’s no need to slap me this time. What good would it do if no one is watching?”

Each time Kim inhaled, his shirt rubbed against the red silk of her dress, sending pangs of longing through places she hadn’t focused on in a long time. The closer he got, the more of his disarming scent she breathed in.