IN BED WITH THE BOSS

She hoped she didn’t look horrible standing so close to him. Dressed in a dusky-lilac shift dress and a black satin jacket, with a lot of long legs showing and her ankles elevated by the four-inch heels on her shoes.

Annoying and juvenile… those words began to ring in her head once again. Was he on his way to meet a woman? Was she tall and blonde and heart-stoppingly beautiful and screamingly intelligent and sophisticated? Just like the woman she’d seen with him the first day they met. Was he planning to bring her back to his place to make wildly passionate love with her while she went home to lay alone in her bed and-

“Where-?”

Her small chin jerked up and their eyes clashed; tiny prickles of attraction attacked her flesh.

“Excuse me?” she murmured blankly.

“I was asking where you are going for dinner,” Scott enlightened dryly.

“Oh. I don’t know,” Vivian let slip before she could think about it, watched his eyebrows arch, felt a deep inner niggle at the slip. “I am meeting someone,” she said. “I don’t know where he is taking me to eat.”

Fortunately the cars stopped and it was time for her to cross the road, giving her the opportunity to escape. “It was nice seeing you, Scott” she said softly.

He nodded. “Yeah. It was nice to see you too.”

She turned to leave. Her shiny black heels tapped on the ground as she crossed the road in her urgency to get away as fast as she could

Scott stood and watched her. Dinner with a man, he thought… Something hard gave him a kick in his gut. Was she meeting the tall blond clean-cut guy from the Accounts team he had seen her with the other day? Or was it that Michael guy again?

If she was, the damn jerk needed to learn some manners. What kind of man let a young and beautiful woman find her own way to their chosen venue?

She looked kinda lost. And the weirdest kind of tingling sensation was skittering down his torso and legs.

She struck off to the right, disappearing out of his sight in seconds. Scott held his stance for a few seconds longer, then he muttered, “Damn it,” giving in to what the tingling represented and slid his hand into his pocket to grab his phone.

———-

Ten minutes later, Vivian was hovering outside one of the bistros where she was to meet up with Collins. She was pretending to read the menu list stuck on the window but really she was wondering where the hell Collins was, and the bravado that had brought her this far was now lying dead at her feet.

She could not go in there alone. She did not know anyone around and she did not know why she had ever come up with the crazy idea that she could go out on her own! And the evening was chilly, the black satin jacket doing nothing to keep the chill at bay and-

“Been stood up…?”

Hearing that deep, mildly sardonic and crushingly familiar voice arrive from somewhere behind her caused a sudden burn of weak tears to flood her eyes. It took every bit of self-control she had to blink the tears away again, then lift up her chin and turn to look at him.

He was standing across the busy pavement, leaning against the side of his car with his hands resting inside his trouser pockets, his jacket pushed back from his bright white shirt. Tall, dark and so very sexily sophisticated, Vivian observed helplessly. The overhead lights shining amber onto the wet pavement also honeyed the skin of his too-perfect face. It was no wonder most of the women passing across the gap between them stared at him, Vivian thought as a whole clutch of them went by with their eyes glued to his long, lean, supremely elegant stance.

If he noticed he did not show it. He did not take his eyes from her face. His mouth was wearing a kind of half-mocking smile that stung her pride and made her wish that some other tall, dark, handsome man would just walk up to her and pull her into his embrace.

Annoying and juvenile…the words ran in her head again.

“No,” she answered his question. “He’s just a few minutes late.”

With the ease of a man used to doing everything with grace, she watched him tilt his dark head down and, without removing his hand from his pocket, twist his wrist, shrug back his shirt cuff and somehow manage to display his watch.

“This is not the kind of place a man keeps a woman waiting out on the pavement, Vivian” he said when he looked back at her again.

“Well, you should know since you seem to be doing the same thing to your date,” Vivian fired back.

“I pick my dates up at their door.”

“And yet the first time I went to a party with you, you didn’t pick me up”

“That’s because I knew you would have freaked out if I told you it was a date. Am I right?”

“Fine. Then please go away and pick up your date.” she invited and turned back to the bistro window.Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.

The seconds ticked by. Her ears pricked and her senses went on the alert for the sound of his car driving away. She found the space around her suddenly swamped by a group of people who wanted to check out the menu too. By the time they’d moved on she was wishing she’d had the foresight to tag on to them.

Because he was still there. She could feel his silent presence like some dark force trying to drag her back round to face him. After another second or two she heard him sigh, then the sound of his footsteps bringing him close.

Tension zinged down her backbone and remained there stinging like an electric charge. A second later he was standing right behind her-she could feel his body heat along her back.

“Will you go away,” she snapped at him. “You are making me feel stupid!”

“Once your date arrives, I will” he agreed. “Who is he anyway?”

Keeping her eyes fixed rigidly on the bistro window, she said, “That is none of your business.”

“No?” A hand moved against her spine like a finely brushed admonish ment. “I’m your boss, so that makes it my business.”

“That’s not true and you know it, and also, I do not need a babysitter.”

“Fine. Maybe you’re right but you also don’t need a man who plans to sit you down to dine in a place like this. It’s a bog standard pizza place, Vivian, with a cheap and fast turnaround.”

“I’m just meeting him here. He is supposed to pick me up here. It doesn’t mean that this is the place we’re going to have dinner.”

He wasn’t listening. Instead he went on. “What happens after the date, then? An hour or so in one of the pubs dotted down the street to soften you up with a couple of glasses of cheap wine, or will he be expecting to go straight back to your place to finish off the evening in the comfort of your bed?”

“Well, you should know since you are fabled for your fast turnaround,” she swung round to fling at him and was very pleased to see that likening his dating skills to a fast pizza restaurant made his chiseled jaw clench.

“That was not what I-”

“Thanks for your wise advice, Scott,” Vivian cut him off mid sentence. “When my date arrives I will be certain to ask him what his intentions are.”

“Or I will”

Sparking up like a firework she gasped out, “No you will not!”

“And he’s not only unforgivably late, but he’s also unfit to date you.”

Half unwilling to believe they were even having this conversation, Vivian stared up at him. “And you believe you have the right to make that judgment?”

“Yes” he replied simply.

In other words she was a duty he felt compelled to oversee! “Well, you are not my father-or my idea of what a father figure should be! And in case you have forgotten,” she added stiffly. “You went out of your way to tell me to back off from annoying you, so now I am telling you to do the same thing for me, Scott, and just go away!”

With that she turned to walk off down the high street. His long fingers curling around one of her shoulders held her still.

“Vivian, this is stupid,’ he sighed out heavily.

Or annoying and juvenile…Why was that cutting remark still stinging her as badly as this? Vivian asked herself. She did not know. She did not understand what she was feeling or even what she was doing any more.

“Please let go of me…” She tried to move away from him.

His fingers tightened gently. “No,” he refused. “Look…” he said, “I’m- sorry if I sounded…insensitive to your feelings but-”

“Sounded it?” she threw out.