The Boss's Christmas Proposal

Kimi was not so sure. Yes, she knew there were hundreds of things that went on behind the scenes of a hotel. She had just never before been part of it.

Their footsteps were silent on the carpet as they approached the opened entrance to the training room through which Kimi could see the backs of dozens of people already sitting at the narrow rows of tables facing the front of the room.

Facing Greg Sherman, who was witnessing their noticeably tardy arrival.

His gaze barely paused on Kimi and Grace as he continued speaking to the crowd, his deep voice easily carrying throughout the large room.

There were a few empty chairs there at the back of the room, and Kimi slipped into one as silently as possible while Grace headed toward the front of the room to take up a standing position near Shin Endo and another man whose face Kimi did not recognize from her research in Helen’s files. A ponytailed Asian girl sitting to Kimi’s right was busy taking notes in a three-ring binder. To Kimi’s left, a dark-skinned young man was holding a microcassette recorder.

For a moment, she felt as if she were back in a lecture hall where every student was focused on the professor who could make or break their academic career with a swipe of his red pen.

“You’ve all been issued your security codes,” Greg was saying. “Beginning Monday morning, you’ll be required to use them when entering or leaving through the staff entrance. Some of you who’ve been here longer than a week have had plenty of time getting used to moving around without them. As of now, that ends.” His gaze settled on Kimi’s face as the order was met with a few groans. “The crews working on the lobby interior are being stepped up. Our first guests arrive December 15. That’s fourteen days, people.”

His gaze moved on, touching on nearly everyone and disproving her suspicion that he had been singling her out. “That’s not a lot of time, and it will take all of us working together to ensure that when those guests do arrive, they’re welcomed with every bit of luxury and excellence we want them to expect from the Taka brand. If you have a concern or a problem, you take it to your manager or to me. Remember that a hotel staff is a family. What happens in one department matters to all departments.”

Kimi glanced around. Unless they were busy scribbling notes on the stapled packets that were at each seat, or on something else, the employees sitting at the narrow tables were giving Greg their rapt attention. Even she had to admit there was something mesmerizing about the way he spoke to them; as if they were all part of the conversation, rather than merely observant listeners.

He went on, talking about upcoming training schedules and staff rotations and project meetings.

Kimi leaned closer to the ponytail. “Do you have a spare pen?”

Without taking her pinpointed attention away from Greg, the girl pulled a dark gold ballpoint pen printed with a navy-blue TAKA logo on it and slid it to Kimi.

“Thank you,” she whispered. She quickly jotted down the points that Greg was making on the back side of the packet in front of her and had started on another page before he turned the meeting over to Shin, who gave them an update on the closed-circuit security system.

“Our main concern is, of course, guest security,” the man said. “We’re not trying to police people’s normal behavior. But we will act when there’s a situation that seems to be developing. All points of entry and exit, the guest corridors and elevators, reception, will be on the circuit, which a team of security specialists will be monitoring 24/7. So any of you planning to catch a forbidden smoke outside on a fire escape be warned.” He looked around the room, his expression seeming far too good-natured for the tough-as-nails expert he was reputed to be. “You’ll be caught, and we’ll have your walking papers ready before you blow out your light.” There was a twittering of laughter around the room.

Kimi watched Greg to see if he showed some amusement. Of course, he did not. Then, as if he had sensed her attention, he looked her way again. She felt her cheeks warm and hurriedly focused on her notes. Through sheer effort she refrained from looking at him again for the rest of the hour-long meeting.

When the meeting concluded, a dozen of the women who had watched him adoringly throughout the meeting leapt from their seats to surround him with questions.

She hid a smile at the idea that he had his very own set of hotel groupies and returned the pen to the ponytail—Sue, according to the distinctive, engraved name badge the girl wore. “I’m Kimi. Are you from Kyoto?”

Sue shook her head. “San Francisco. From what I understand, there are only a few working here who are from Kyoto. The head of Housekeeping and a few men in Maintenance, I think. Other than that, we’re sort of a United Nations when it comes to ethnicities of the staff.”

“It’s quite a leap from San Francisco to Kyoto.”

“Not really. I started out at Taka San Francisco when it opened earlier this year but transferred here when I found out that he was the GM here.”

Kimi glanced toward the “he” in question. Still surrounded by groupies. “You came to Japan because of Gr—Mr. Sherman?”

Sue didn’t seem to see a single thing odd in that. “Of course.” She closed her binder and stood. Around them, those that were not clamoring for Greg Sherman’s attention were filing out of the room. “I’ll be in reception once we open, but for now am working in reservations. You?”

“I don’t yet know, actually.” Helen had not offered that much detail. She would have, if she had known exactly what position Kimi would be filling.

“What hotel do you come from?”

“Well, none,” Kimi admitted with a smile. “This is my first assignment in a hotel.”

Sue’s finely drawn eyebrows rose. “It’s Mr. Sherman’s policy that all staff members have at least three years’ previous experience in a first-class hotel. You must have been born under a lucky star.”

“I don’t know about luck,” she demurred, inching toward the door. Her stomach was growling and her head was pounding from lack of sleep. “It was nice meeting you, Sue. I am sure I will see you around.”

“Maybe you’ll be in reception.” The other girl smiled. “They expect pretty women at the front desk.”

Somehow, Kimi doubted that Greg Sherman intended for her to be registering guests. More likely, he would stick her in a housekeeping uniform and arm her with rubber gloves and a toilet brush for having the audacity of wanting to work there at all.

“Ms. Taka.”

She wanted to groan when he spoke her name. Already she was coming to expect that not-quite-identifiable tone in Greg’s voice when he addressed her.

Longing thoughts of the wide bed in her suite were swept aside, replaced by the reminder that he had deliberately withheld from her the fact that he had even scheduled this meeting.

She looked over at him. “Yes?”

Sue was giving her a reassessing look. “Oh. It was that star.” The open, friendly expression on her face was gone. In its place was that odd combination of deference and suspicious fascination that Kimi had come to recognize when people discovered she was a Taka. Before she could respond, Sue quickly excused herself and disappeared out the door along with the dispatched groupies.

The only other people remaining in the training room were Grace Ishida, Shin Endo and a few others, who had their heads bent in quiet discussion at the head of the room.

Greg stopped in front of her. “Do you intend to disregard my authority at every turn?”

Her lips parted, insult digging through her. “Do you intend to exclude me from all staff functions?”

“You’re not officially on the staff until you’ve completed your paperwork with Human Resources.”

“Which I thought I would be doing until I discovered you had directed me to a completely unoccupied—” she realized her voice had risen, and hurriedly lowered it again “—an unoccupied department. If you had intended for me to learn about the staff meeting, you would have told me so yourself. You had plenty of opportunity, after all, but you would rather instruct me on the finer points of a television remote control. I am here to work, Mr. Sherman, and I would like the opportunity to be allowed to do so. Despite your obvious belief otherwise, I am not incompetent.”

Annoyance tightened the already hard line of his jaw. “My apologies if it seemed that I implied any such thing. My point is merely that your presence here will be distracting enough without you looking—” his gaze raked down her body, scorching her skin “—like this. If you felt such compulsion to attend this meeting, you could have taken the time to change out of this unsuitable getup.”

She was overtired. That was the only reason there was a deep sting behind her eyes. Yes, her outfit was somewhat less than conservative, but she was hardly dressed like a prostitute. Nevertheless, she could eat crow if she had to. She had already gotten plenty of practice while getting herself reinstated with the university, after all.

She made herself dip her head in a slight bow. “An error in my judgment for which I apologize. I thought it better not to be any tardier than I already was.” She pressed her lips together for a moment and swallowed the constriction in her throat. “I am not here to be a distraction to anyone. I am here to be part of Taka Kyoto.” How had he put it? “To be part of the family.”

His slashing eyebrows quirked together over his blade-sharp nose. “And therein rests the problem, Ms. Taka. You’re part of the family. Do you really think that anyone within these walls is ever going to be able to forget that?”

Kimi brushed the palms of her cold hands down the sleeves of her blouse. Disappointment coursed through her, sharp and deep. “I had hoped so, Mr. Sherman,” she finally admitted huskily. “But that does not mean that I will tuck my tail and run back home to Mommy and Daddy. As I said, I am here to work. Once I begin, if you find me so unsatisfactory, you will undoubtedly treat me to a set of those walking papers Mr. Endo was talking about. But I am not walking away before I have even begun.”

With her words still settling around them, she turned and did walk away because there was another thing she had learned from Helen. And that was the graceful art of making an exit.

Helen had just never warned Kimi that after said exit, a woman had to lean against a wall where she would not be seen, so her knees could stop shaking.

Chapter Three

“No, Bridget, don’t worry about it. Last thing we need is a flu bug being spread around the hotel. Stay home, and take care of yourself.” Greg disconnected the call and stared at the mess that had accumulated in only one day without his assistant.

God knew what shape the desk would be in by the time Bridget recovered.

He exhaled roughly and picked up the hotel phone to dial Human Resources. They’d have to assign someone temporarily since it now appeared that Bridget would, at the very least, be away for several days. “I need a body who can manage to answer basic correspondence and can keep me on schedule without requiring my constant babysitting,” he told the girl who answered. “And I need them immediately.”

“We’ll send someone over to your office right away, sir.”

“Thank you—” What was the girl’s name? She’d come on board yesterday. Before Kimiko had set her sexy booted toe on the property. He grimaced. Focused harder. A redhead from Australia. “—Sheila.” He nearly pounced on the name, feeling oddly victorious.

“My pleasure, sir.”

He hung up again and went into the bathroom adjoining his office to finish shaving, which he’d been doing before Bridget’s call interrupted him. Then he grabbed a fresh tie from the spares he kept in the closet and flipped it around the collar of his unfastened shirt. If he hadn’t spent the entire night working in his office, he’d be taking care of these matters in his room.

From the small television in his office he listened to the international news. His phone buzzed again, and because he had no Bridget and no fill-in for her yet, he went out to answer it. “Sherman.”

“Don’t you sound so intimidating, honey.” The female voice was bright and cheerful and sounded as if she were right next door rather than back in Berkeley, California, where his mother lived in the house he’d bought her two years earlier. “How’s my little boy?”

He hit the speaker button and turned down the volume on the television. “All grown up, Mona.” Which was more than he could say for his mother. “What’s wrong?”

She laughed a little too heartily for a little too long. “Nothing has to be wrong for me to call my son.”

Theoretically that was true, Greg knew, but experience told a different tale. “Okay, so how are you? You’re taking your blood pressure medicine like you’re supposed to?” He started buttoning up his shirt.

Through the speaker her exaggerated sigh sounded even more false. “I’m fine. Actually, I have good news.”

He paused. Looked at the phone warily. “Oh?”

“Now, don’t go sounding like that,” she warned in a rush. “I’m just going on a little vacation, and I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t call and worry when I wasn’t home. Europe! Isn’t that the most exciting thing? You know how much trouble it was last year to get my passport—my goodness, it never would have come through if not for you—and now I’m getting to use it.”

The passport had been needed because she’d insisted on visiting him in Düsseldorf, where he’d been managing an aging grande dame of a hotel. But once there, she’d hated Germany and had flown home early. He hadn’t been sorry to see her go. She was his mother, and he wanted her well. But close they were not.

He flipped up his collar and worked on the last two buttons. “Where in Europe?”

“Oh, we’ll go where the spirit moves us.”

He sat down on the corner of his desk. “We?” he prompted cautiously.

“I’m not very likely to go alone, am I?”

He rolled his head around on his suddenly tight neck. “Who is he?”

“Who says it’s a he?”

Because it always was. He kept the thought to himself and waited. Fortunately, it didn’t take long. His mother was a flighty creature who couldn’t keep two cents in her pocket at any one time, but she was at least pretty honest about it.

“His name is Ralph,” she finally said in a rush. “Can you believe that I’ve fallen in love with a man named Ralph? Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a perfectly fine name, just a hair old fashioned. Which is a good description of him, you know. Old fashioned, I mean. We met at the grocery store. He caught my grapefruit. They’d dropped through the bottom of my bag. He rescued my fruit and then, oh, honey, he just rescued my heart. What can I say?”

Greg pinched the bridge of his nose. “When is this vacation supposed to occur? What about your job?” Her latest was as a clerk in a bookstore. Not that she needed the money, considering that Greg had been supporting her for years. But her history had proven that when she was working, Mona had a much easier time staying clean and sober. “You haven’t been there long enough to merit vacation time.”

“Oh, them,” she dismissed airily. “Stuffed shirts. I should have known it when they told me what to wear to work.”

His brain flashed back to Kimiko Taka. Something it had been doing too often in the past twenty-four hours.

Just because he’d told Kimiko what to wear didn’t mean he was a stuffed shirt. He was the general manager, for God’s sake. He was responsible for the image they presented. As a Taka, she ought to appreciate that fact. It was his problem he couldn’t get the girl out of his head.

He focused on his mother. “In other words, you’ve already quit your job.”

“No matter,” she said swiftly. “I’ll find another.You know that.”

That was true enough. Mona Sherman had never had difficulty finding jobs. She could charm employment out of anyone. It was keeping them that had always been her challenge. He knew he could spend an hour arguing with his mother about the wisdom of her actions, or he could save himself the breath, since his arguments had never had any impact in the past. It was just always his job to clean up the mess afterward.

“What’s Ralph’s full name?” He wrote it on the pad next to his phone. “Does he have an address?” He was somewhat surprised when she provided one. He’d half expected her to blithely impart that Ralph had already moved in with her since the grapefruit rescue. “Take your cell phone in case something happens. I’ll call the company and make certain you’re covered for international calls.”

“Don’t be such a worrywart, Greggie. Now, I love you. Be sure you’re taking those herbs I sent you. They’ll keep your sex drive healthy.”

He rolled his eyes. He lectured his living-in-the-sixties mother on taking her blood pressure medication.

She worried about him being able to get it up.

“Call and check in,” he reminded, ignoring the herbal advice, much as he’d ignored the package. It might have made it through customs, but the box had been relegated, unopened, to the bottom of Greg’s closet.

“I’ll try,” she said before hanging up. Which, in Mona-speak, meant don’t count on it.

A soft sound behind him had him looking around.

Kimiko Taka stood in the open doorway of his office.

Yesterday she’d been the picture of brassy American boldness. Today she was the epitome of professionalism. Couture professionalism, anyway, he allowed, giving the cut of her closely tailored ice-blue suit an experienced eye. The just-from-bed tousled ringlets had been replaced by a sleek knot behind her head. Even her makeup was subdued. Her full bowshaped lips looked soft and pink and unadorned, but that just made her wide, almond-shaped eyes stand out even more.

Unfortunately, she was no less attractive today than she had been yesterday. If his mother could see into his head, she’d realize that he needed no help from some damn herbs.

As for what Kimiko Taka was doing standing in his doorway? He had a sinking feeling in his gut. “Don’t tell me HR sent you.”

She looked genuinely puzzled. “Um, okay. I will not tell you.” She lifted a folder at her side. “Grace asked me to come and have you sign off on these orders.”

He let out a breath. God. He was losing it. Of course HR wouldn’t have assigned Kimiko Taka to be his temporary assistant when he’d already told them to put her in sales. He waved her forward and took the folder from her to scrawl his signature where she indicated, then eyed her from across his cluttered desk. She wore a small hand-printed name badge on her lapel—a far cry from the engraved ones the rest of the staff already possessed. “You’ve obviously had your personnel orientation.”

“This morning.” She took the folder back from him. “It was very informative.”

He glanced at his watch. “You’ve already toured the hotel?”

“Well, no. We did not get that done yet. I will return there during my lunch break for the tour. Grace was anxious for me to start. Evidently two people in her department called in this morning with the flu.”

That made three staff members to bite the bug. Great. “You needn’t give up your lunch break for a tour.” Though he gave her points for being willing to do so. That is, if she’d actually follow through. Despite her impassioned speech after the staff meeting the evening before, he still questioned her commitment.

What did the girl want to work for, anyway? She was an heiress, for Christ’s sake. She should be a guest in hotels like this, not some junior underling.

“I do not have any other plans for my lunch break,” she said reasonably.

“How about eating?”

She looked at the tray sitting on one side of his desk that held the Western-style scrambled eggs and bacon that he’d never really gotten to. “Like you are doing?” She lifted the folder a little. “Thank you for the signatures.” She turned as if to go, but paused. “I hesitate to tell you this, but—”

He was a fair-minded manager, he reminded himself. Or he was supposed to be despite his desire for some space from the disturbing young woman. “What is it, Ms. Taka?”

She moistened her lips. “Your shirt is misbuttoned.” She smiled faintly and hurried out of his office. The hem of her skirt swayed slightly above her knees. Perfectly circumspect. Perfectly…perfect.

He forced himself to look away from the view she presented and looked down at his shirt and tie that he’d managed to forget all about.

She was right.

With a sigh, he began reworking the buttons.

Too bad he couldn’t seem to realign his unwanted reaction to her just as easily.

Kimi was still smiling when she made it back to the sales and catering department. Aside from the office that Grace used, there were two others; one set up as a consultation room, and the other—far more spacious—housed several desks in an open area. It was to one of these desks that Grace had assigned Kimi. It had started out as empty as Mother Hubbard’s cupboards, but, after just an hour, was now piled high with project files that Grace wanted her to quickly review so she was up to speed with the rest of the department members.

She left the folder on Grace’s desk and headed to her own considerable pile of work. There were three other associates in the room, though, huddled over a round table spread with charts. They looked over at Kimi when she entered, barely returning her smiling hello, and she stifled a sigh, making herself approach them anyway. “Hi. I am Kimi Taka.”

It was regrettably obvious that they already knew and had formed their opinions about her, too. It seemed that Greg’s expectations about her fitting in with the rest of the staff members were all too accurate.

One of the group, a young dark-skinned woman who looked around Kimi’s age, started to smile, but faltered at the fast looks she got from the others. But she still provided her name. “Tanya Wilson. Welcome to Kyoto,” she added in a slightly southern-sounding rush.

Kimi’s smile warmed a little in response. “Thank you.” She looked at the other two—a natty blond guy in a beige suit who looked about her stepbrother Andrew’s age, and a stylish woman who had probably been perfecting the art of looking down her nose in front of a mirror since she was five. Kimi stuck her hand out toward the snooty woman. “And you are…?” She lifted her eyebrows slightly.

The other woman did not quite have the nerve to ignore Kimi, though it looked like she wanted to. The handshake she gave, however, was limp. “Charity Smythe,” she supplied with a bored clip. “And this is Nigel Winters.” She spoke for the man, as if she did not trust him to speak for himself. “And as you can see, we’re in the middle of a discussion.”

Kimi wanted to swipe her hand down her skirt to wipe away the memory of that cold-fish handshake. Instead, she looked curiously at the charts on the table. Grace had already told her that the department worked as an ensemble regardless of who the lead person on a project might be. “Is this the Nguyen wedding?” She had been familiarizing herself with the details of the four-hundred-guest wedding to be held before Christmas when Grace had sent her to Greg’s office.

Tanya nodded. “The problem is—”

“—there is no problem,” Charity cut her off. “We’re just finalizing some minor details.” She swept up the floor charts and strode to the door. “Come along, Nigel. Tanya. We don’t have time to sit around all morning twiddling our thumbs.”

“Delightful meeting you,” Nigel said quickly, as if sneaking it in before Charity could stop him. Then like two scurrying rabbits, he and Tanya sped after the departing woman.

As far as Kimi could tell, Charity seemed rather misnamed.

Kimi went to her desk and pulled the top file closer. An hour later, she had read through everything. If the quantity of special events on the department’s plate were anything to go by, the Taka Kyoto was already proving to be a success.