Emmy And The Boss

Emmy didn’t find her voice until he was long gone and she heard someone shouting at her.

“Emmy? Are you there? Emmy?”

She stared at the phone in her hand, wondering how it had gotten there and when she’d dialed. “Lindy?”

“Emmy. What’s going on? Are you all right?”

“No. Why did you give Nick Porter my address?”

“So that’s why I hear panic in your voice. I thought that would be your reaction to him.”

“Then why—”

“Because you can use his kind of panic.”

And that was why Emmy heard smugness in Lindy’s voice. “He tried to kiss me.”

“Tried?”

“I almost let him.”

“Why didn’t you, Emmy? I think this guy is the guy for you. Your soul mate.”

“You don’t believe in soul mates.”

“For me. I think they’re fine for everyone else. And even if Nick Porter isn’t your soul mate, it’s about time you had some fun. You deserve it after Roger.”

“Fun is highly overrated. You have fun all the time, Lindy, and frankly you don’t seem completely satisfied with your life.”

“Oooh, the claws are out.” Lindy laughed, but there was a note of strain beneath the amusement.

“I’m sorry,” Emmy said. “That was mean.”

“It was also true, but we’re not talking about me. You’re afraid of Nick Porter, and you have good reason to be.”

“What good reason?”

“You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself.”

“Thanks, Lindy. Someday I’ll return the favor.”

She broke the connection, but she wasn’t really angry with Lindy. Because Lindy was right. Nick Porter scared Emmy. A lot. And it wasn’t as much of a mystery as she claimed. She liked the way he looked at her and the way he smiled at her, as if she were special. She’d never been special to anyone but Lindy—not to a man, anyway. Definitely not to Roger. Roger had left her each morning with a dry peck on the lips and a list of tasks he expected her to perform. Pick up the dry cleaning, reschedule his dental appointment, and wouldn’t it be nice to have meat loaf for dinner.

When Nick smiled at her, she could tell she was the only item on his list, and he didn’t want anything from her. Okay, he wanted something. The problem was she wanted it too. But she couldn’t have it. Getting involved with Nick would be a mistake for too many reasons to itemize.

She popped the yoga video out of the VCR and put in the most frenetic aerobics tape she could find. As tense as she was, it would take the Dalai Lama himself to meditate her into a state where she had any hope of sleep. Since she doubted he’d come down from his mountain to help her work off a case of hormonal overload, a couple of hours of exhausting exercise might do the trick. Or it might not. Maybe the only thing that could help her work off this much tension was the man who’d caused it.

Nick Porter, however, was the one remedy she didn’t dare try.

Chapter Four

Most of the week passed in a blur. Emmy spent it hunched over her clipboard, nose to the grindstone, observing Nick’s employees and ignoring their commentary. Nick spent it behaving himself. Their paths crossed every now and again, but he made himself scarce to the point that when Friday afternoon arrived, and her weekly progress report was due, she had to go in search of him.

For the first time in her life, Emmy saw the advantage in procrastination. There really wasn’t any progress to report, she told herself, unless she counted the rise in the hostility level. She’d worn jeans and an oxford shirt, hoping she’d fit in better. The only way she’d attract more attention was if she’d decided to show up naked.

She’d ditched her clipboard in favor of her briefcase, laying it open on the high table where the shipping clerk signed in raw material and checked out finished goods. She ought to at least pretend to be busy, she decided, maybe take notes or something. So she retrieved a pen and pad of paper from her case and meandered aimlessly, stopping to lean one hip against a pallet of boxes, watching the activity and letting her mind wander. The employees were bustling around, pausing every now and again to shoot her fulminating glares. They didn’t bother her. What bothered her was Nick, and not in the way she’d expected.

The last four days had been all about business. The few times she and Nick had interacted, he hadn’t mentioned the night at her house. Neither had she. He wasn’t making passes, he wasn’t trying to kiss her, or touch her hair or anything. He even listened politely to what she had to say about the company, although he didn’t do anything to implement change, and his employees had only become more sullen and resistant. But at least he was listening.

Emmy was the one whose mind kept wandering.

“Emmy.”

She jumped, spinning around, one hand plastered over her suddenly pounding heart. Nick was standing a bit behind and to one side of her, just out of her peripheral vision before she’d turned around. The sight of him didn’t do a lot to calm her down, the upheaval just affected different parts of her. “How long have you been there?” she asked when she could manage to string words together and make them sound normal.

He shrugged, smile polite, eyes distant. “Couple of minutes.”

No wonder the death glares she’d been getting from the employees were worse than usual.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.

She turned and set the pad on top of the pallet. Bad idea.

Nick came over to stand beside her. He wasn’t touching her, or looking at her, or smiling, but the parts of her that hadn’t gone all soft and melty were tensed so tightly she was on the verge of a head-to-toe charley horse. Not that she was complaining, because the tense parts of her were keeping the other parts from jumping him.

His comment about kissing her when she least expected it was getting to her. Not only was she expecting it constantly, she was on the verge of kissing him so she could get it over with before she went completely insane. Okay, that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to kiss him. The more she thought about it…

And that was exactly what he wanted. Her thinking about it, wondering, giving in to the inevitable. He had no idea just how stubborn she could be.

She blinked a couple of times to get her eyes to focus, unlocked her jaw and opened the file. “R-raw materials,” she stuttered out, her body slower to get with the program.

Nick moved closer, still not touching her. But she could tell he was amused. And smug.

It was that last reaction that put the steel into her backbone. “I’ll need a list of your raw materials, where they come from, how they’re ordered, how much at a time and how they’re delivered.” She made the mistake of looking up at him. Eye contact had always been big with Emmy, but she forgot that eye contact with Nick was dangerous to her self-control.

Nick wasn’t immune, either. “Emmy…” he said, leaning in, voice low, all his employees stopping what they were doing to gawk like commuters at a traffic accident.

“You’ll need to increase sales,” Emmy continued, writing down Increase Sales next to 1 on her pad. “Either spend more time yourself or hire someone to focus exclusively on selling.”

“Can’t afford that,” Nick said, frowning but not moving off.

Emmy cut her eyes to their audience, and Nick got the idea. More importantly, he took a step back.

“If you don’t want to increase your payroll, you could send out a mailing,” Emmy said. “Or you could do it yourself. Face-to-face is best anyway, and you’re so personable and persuasive, all you have to do is waltz in with that face and that smile—”

Nick grinned wider with each compliment.

“—and you shouldn’t have any trouble increasing your sales,” Emmy finished. “Especially if you’re selling to a woman.”

The grin only got wider. “Is that jealousy I’m hearing?”

Emmy caught herself on the verge of denial, and shrugged instead. “If it increases your sales, do whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“So if I wanted to flirt with them?”

She looked him straight in the eye, and so what if she didn’t like the thought of him flirting with other women. “No harm in that.”

“What if I take them out to lunch?”

“Lots of people do business lunches.”

“And dinner?” He eased toward her, crowding her back between the pallet of boxes she’d been leaning against and another about two feet away.

She held her ground—okay, there was a wall behind her, but refusing to back off was more of a statement that she could resist his charm. So what if he’d come so close she was practically nose-to-chin with him, and she caught herself thinking about how easy it would be to raise up onto her toes, lay her mouth on his and put herself out of her misery? She looked around but the place was devoid of workers, break-time being more attractive than spying on the boss and his loathsome efficiency expert.

“And business dinners,” she said, telling herself to get a grip. “And sporting events, and concerts, although those are kind of expensive undertakings with your current budget constraints.”

“What if we had dinner at my house?”

Her gaze shot to his, but she was seeing him in candlelight, with another woman. Mere feet from his bedroom. “Do you always have trouble drawing a line between business and personal?”

“I was trying to get a rise out of you,” he said.

“I know.” And she’d been trying to deflate him. They’d both been successful. She was still struggling with resentments toward strange and completely innocent women, and for once Nick looked something other than laid-back and foolishly happy with life. He looked angry.

Emmy started forward. He stepped in front of her, trapping her in the narrow aisle. She couldn’t go around him, and she couldn’t get by him. She wanted to keep right on going until she ended up against that nice, firm chest she remembered—or at least her palms remembered, judging by the way they were tingling. And the tingle was spreading so fast she was in danger of becoming one big mess of quivering nerve endings.

There’s a remedy for that, a little voice whispered, a little voice she wouldn’t shush because she was a realist. She wanted him to kiss her, there was no getting around it. But you didn’t always get what you wanted, and even if you did, what you wanted wasn’t always good for you. She’d learned that a long time ago. Apparently, what she hadn’t learned was how to hide her feelings.

“You want me to kiss you,” Nick said.

“No. Absolutely not. No way.”

“All week you’ve been waiting for me to try to kiss you, but I haven’t and you’re disappointed.”

“I am not disappointed,” she said with absolute conviction because what she was was ticked off. Maybe when she got past that she’d have room for disappointment, but at the moment she was riding high on outrage and pure unadulterated lust. Who did he think he was anyway, getting her all stirred up and then not coming through? “I don’t want you to kiss me.”

“But you want me to try.”

She huffed out a breath and crossed her arms. Yeah, absolutely she wanted him to try. But that was only ego. And libido. And she certainly wasn’t telling him that.

“You don’t want me to try?”

Emmy stayed mum, but the reason she didn’t have an answer was because Nick sounded so…hurt. And she felt guilty. Even though she hadn’t exactly welcomed his attentions, outright rejection just seemed cruel.

“Nick—” Emmy began.

This time Stella saved her from saying something she’d regret, which was probably the last thing Stella would have wanted to do. Emmy caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she turned around there Stella was, standing by the shipping counter where Emmy had left her briefcase.

“Can I help you?” Emmy asked her.

Stella’s hands shot to her hips, and her eyes narrowed. Clearly she wasn’t happy, and she wasn’t talking to Emmy. “You have a phone call, Mr. Porter,” she said to Nick.

“Take a message.”

Stella downgraded her expression to sour-pickle. Emmy considered throwing herself into Nick’s arms just to see how cranky Stella could get, but she’d probably give the woman a stroke. And she probably wouldn’t be able to stop at just being in Nick’s arms. And Nick would definitely misconstrue her motives.

Stella scuttled back into the office. Emmy took advantage of Nick’s distraction, slipping by him and walking over to check out her briefcase. She didn’t know what Stella had hoped to find, but there were no big secrets in there, no clandestine meetings, no international spying. No secret plans outlining her designs on Nick. Just the file containing the progress report, lying half on top of her day planner, which was still open to that day, work at Nick’s, dinner with Lindy.

“What were you going to say?” Nick asked, coming over to join her and craning his neck to see over her shoulder.

Emmy snapped her day planner shut. “Nothing I haven’t said before, and you didn’t listen any of the other times.”

“I listened. I didn’t believe you.”

And in case she didn’t get the message, he was crowding her again. Emmy refused to back off. She was a mess of physical and emotional agitation, the scant inch of air between them was scorching with heat and humming with tension, but retreat would be the same as admitting he was getting to her, and that would be as good as telling him he was right to keep pushing.

“If you really want me to give up, I will,” Nick said.

Emmy handed him her progress report, shut her briefcase and headed for the big door that led out to the parking lot and her getaway vehicle.

“Fine, just walk away,” Nick snapped at her.

Emmy couldn’t resist a look over her shoulder. Yep, Nick was angry. He was frustrated too, and there was something else on his face. It took her a moment to recognize it as determination, and that was new for him—well, not new, but she’d bet it was pretty damn rare.

Chapter Five

Men were slime, Emmy thought. And for once she wasn’t thinking about Roger. Or Nick.

She was sitting in a crowded restaurant in the Leather District, a conglomeration of old leather factories that had been turned into businesses, lofts, restaurants and any other trendy, touristy use that could be found for them. Emmy would have preferred neighboring Chinatown, less fashionable but more relaxing. But here she sat at her best friend’s insistence, nursing a cranberry martini, avoiding eye contact, waiting for Lindy to arrive. The prevailing demographic of the place seemed to be men, ranging in age from barely legal to one-foot-in-the-grave. She’d always considered men another species anyway; tonight she’d classify them as homo erectus rather than homo sapiens. That brought a smile to her face, and she had to drop her eyes to her drink before any of the Neanderthals took it as encouragement.

What was it with men anyway? When you wanted one to stick around, he left, and when you wanted one gone, you couldn’t get rid of him. She looked around. And when you swore off men in general, they all seemed hell-bent to change your mind. Hopefully Lindy would show up soon. Or she could just leave, and the more she thought about it, the more appealing that sounded. She signaled the waiter, dug her cell phone out of her purse and speed-dialed Lindy, keeping a wary eye on the mood of the crowd in case any of these guys suspected she was about to bolt and worked up the courage to do more than ogle.

“I’m not really up for dinner tonight,” she said when Lindy picked up.

“Uh-oh, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m not hungry, and the only reason we were having dinner anyway is so I’d have an excuse for Nick.”

“And here I thought it was my sparkling wit and sunny personality.”

“You know what I mean, Lindy.” They’d been out every night that week just in case Nick fell off the wagon and showed up at her house. “I appreciate you putting up with me all week, but I’m sure you have things to do. Or should I say men?”

Lindy snorted softly. “The only briefs in my life lately have been the legal kind, but you have been kind of cranky the last few days. Tonight you just sound depressed. Wouldn’t be because of Nick, would it?”

“Nick isn’t bothering me anymore.”

“Yes, he is. Maybe not in the way you expected, but he’s bothering you.”

Emmy sighed.

“See? Case closed.”

“Okay, so he’s bothering me. He’s not going to be the only one in a minute.” Emmy had accidentally made eye contact with one of the cavemen and there was a definite shift in the mood of the crowd. If she didn’t do something drastic…

Lindy walked in, took one look at Emmy’s face and said, “if you kill me, who will represent you at the murder trial?”

“Actually I was thinking about giving you a big, wet kiss.”

Lindy did a double take, then looked around, rolling her eyes as she took her seat. “If you’re trying to put these hounds off with a little girl-on-girl action, think again,” she said, shutting off her phone and dropping it into her purse. “You and your tongue come anywhere near me and we won’t be able to beat them off with a stick. And what am I saying? I’ve been trying to attract a little male attention.”

Emmy disconnected and put her phone away, too. “Is that why you picked this meat market?”

“Of course. You may have taken yourself out of the game, but I haven’t. And speaking of games, what’s the deal with Nick?”

“I don’t want to talk about him.” Emmy opened the menu and pretended she had an appetite. “You’re just going to argue with me.”

“Fine, let’s talk about Roger. We agree about him.”

Emmy looked up, caught Lindy smirking. “He called today. How did you know?”

“It was only a matter of time, Emmy. He wanted you back didn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t return his call.”

“Good, don’t. And since we’re through with Roger, we can get back to Nick.”

Emmy sighed again before she could catch herself. “I’m just tired,” she said before Lindy could put the look on her face into words. “It’s been a long week.”

“You’re not tired, you’re lonely. I’m not the solution to that problem, Em, but I’m here so you’re stuck with me…Hello.”

Emmy shifted in her seat so she could take in Lindy’s field of vision. The busboy was heading for them, or rather for the circular booth next to their table. He bent to retrieve dishes and clean the tabletop, giving Lindy an up-close-and-personal shot of his really excellent backside. And she was enjoying it.

“He’s about twelve,” Emmy whispered behind her menu.

“He’s at least twenty.”

“And you’re not really interested in him.”

Lindy shrugged. “I can look can’t I? It’s never good to take life too seriously. I learned that the hard way—and you’re changing the subject.”

“You changed it first.”

Lindy waved that off, which was just like her—now. She’d been nose-to-the-grindstone in college, all work and no play, until she’d broken under the weight of her own expectations. She’d had to go away for a while, to learn how to depressurize her life. Now she worked when it was time to work, and had fun everywhere else.

To those who didn’t know Lindy, she’d seem like one of the most well-adjusted people in the world. The breakdown had left permanent damage, though. Lindy figured if she was such a perfectionist that she got that messed up over her career she’d better not risk love, let alone marriage and family. So, she’d become a serial dater, never hanging on to a relationship long enough to let it get serious. Emmy was one of the few who saw through her act, to the sadness and loneliness beneath.

“We were talking about Nick,” Lindy reminded her.

“We were talking about me,” Emmy said, because Lindy wouldn’t thank her for turning the tables.

“It’s the same thing, since he’s the problem you’re having.”

“He’s not a problem. He hasn’t tried to kiss me again, and today he snapped at me.”

“Oh, this is good.” Lindy sat back in her chair and grinned—which was hardly the reaction Emmy had been going for, but the waiter arrived, and she decided to let it go.

“I’ll have the chicken pasta.”

“I’ll have a double martini,” Lindy said.

“You’re not eating?”

“There are olives in the martini.”

Emmy rolled her eyes.

“All right, I’ll eat.” Lindy smiled dazzlingly up at the waiter. “You choose for me,” she said to him. “I’m sure whatever you give me will be incredible.”

He froze for a few seconds, his eyes on Lindy, but Emmy had to give him credit for hanging on to his professionalism because he finally nodded and said, “Of course, ma’am.” His words were a bit strangled, he wasn’t breathing quite right, and his upper lip was sweating, but at least he didn’t trip over his own feet the way she’d seen some men do after Lindy unleashed herself on them.

Emmy shook her head, but she was smiling, and it felt good. Trust Lindy to pull her out of the doldrums. “That man is never going to be the same.”

“But my meal will be fabulous. Now, where were we? Oh, right, I was enjoying your upheaval.”

“And I was about to call you a b—”

“Don’t say it, you’ll only feel terrible later.”

“Not this time.”

Lindy laughed off Emmy’s scowl. “You have no reason to complain,” she said. “Roger was considerate enough to go away before getting rid of him involved, well, hiring me. And five minutes later a drop-dead-gorgeous man walked into your life, stumbling all over himself the minute he laid eyes on you. If that wasn’t lo—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Fine,” Lindy huffed out, “but I’m using the other L-word because at the very least it was lust at first sight, and that’s a pretty good place to start. If you had any sense you’d drag Nick Porter home, lock yourself in the bedroom with him for the next couple of weeks and see where it goes from there. My money’s on happily ever after.”

“No such thing,” Emmy said.

“Then why were you marrying Roger?”

Emmy thought about that a minute, then did a hands-up. “The reason escapes me now.”

“It doesn’t escape me.” Lindy took her martini out of the waiter’s hand, barely sparing him a glance this time in favor of taking a big, fortifying swallow. “You don’t want to be alone, but you don’t want to take any emotional risks. You didn’t love Roger, so he wasn’t a threat. If you came home one day and found him gone, you wouldn’t care.”

“I’d care if he took all my furniture.”

“And doesn’t it mean anything to you that you’d miss your end tables more than your fiancé?”

“They’re really nice end tables.”

“Give me one good reason why you can’t get together with Nick,” Lindy said, the soft, wistful tone of her voice more compelling than all the exasperation that had gone before it.

Emmy picked up her drink and took her time fishing out the cherry.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking,” she said. But everything she came up with was either ridiculous or something she couldn’t say out loud. There was nothing wrong with Nick, unless you counted his low ambition quotient, and that was only a flaw to an overachiever like her. The only real problem she had with him was that he made her want things she hadn’t wanted in a long, long time. If she said that to Lindy, they’d be right back to exasperation because Lindy was a stop-griping-and-deal-with-it kind of person. Emmy didn’t want to deal with this. She’d been lugging around her emotional baggage for years, and it hadn’t gotten in her way. She didn’t see any reason to unpack it now.

“You can think all you want,” Lindy said, “but you won’t come up with anything.”

“Roger is gone, and Nick isn’t taking his place.”

“That sounds really convincing, but what are you going to do about you?”

Emmy shrugged.

“No, you don’t,” Lindy said, not letting her duck the subject. “Being a foster kid—”

“That’s the past.”

“Not if you keep letting it affect the present.”

“I’m not going there tonight,” Emmy warned.

“You never go there and it’s unhealthy. One of these days you’re going to wake up in a rubber room, missing a few months of your life.”