Boss's Christmas Proposal Read online

  She gave him a sidelong look. “So what you really are worried about is not my reputation, but yours.”

  He turned the knob and threw open the door so hard it banged against the wall. He stopped it from bouncing shut again with the flat of his hand, leaving visible the opposing door that was locked from his room on the other side. “What I’m worried about,” he said flatly, “is that it’s going to be too damned easy for us to pull these doors open and damn the consequences.”

  She finally looked shaken.

  And impossibly vulnerable.

  It was a look that he was coming to recognize on her face more than he would ever have expected, and he was no more immune to it now than he was the first time he’d seen past her glossy exterior that night in Sakura.

  “What about the woman whose lipstick you wear?” Her voice was quietly distinct.

  He shouldn’t have followed her into her room.

  It was too damned close.

  Too damned intimate.

  He knew just how easy it would be to put his hands on her, and taking the direct line from that point A to the queen-sized point B with the pillows that she’d already tousled around would be even easier. “If I were a smart man—” he looked away from the bed “—I’d be with her right now.”

  She looked pained. The muscles of her ivory throat worked in a hard swallow. “Then why are you not?”

  “Because I draw the line at making love to one woman while thinking about another!”

  Her lips parted. Sudden color rode the high arch of her cheeks. “Oh, Greg.” It was little more than a sigh, but it still went straight to his gut.

  “Move back to the twenty-first floor,” he advised roughly. “We’ll both be safer.”

  “I do not wish to move back up there.” She moistened her lips and pressed her hands down her thighs. “Nor do I wish to cause more…dissension between us. But working here at the Taka is something I have to do, Greg. And I have to do it correctly. Please try to understand that.”

  “Why? You don’t have to prove anything, Kimi. For God’s sake, you could swing the world by its tail if you so choose.”

  “You mean because I am a Taka. Do you not see? What is it worth to gain something simply because of my family’s name? This was the same problem I had at university!”

  “If you had no family name, you might have a different opinion.”

  Kimi stared at Greg, frowning. “You cannot be referring to yourself. Look where you are. You are head of a world-class hotel.”

  “I work for a world-class hotel,” he said evenly. “I am well aware how easily that particular fact can change.”

  “Not because of me.”

  “Exactly because of you. Go back to the suite, Kimi. For all of our sakes.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He raked his hands through his hair, looking thoroughly aggravated. “Why the hell not?”

  “I want to prove that I matter, all right?” Kimi’s words rang through the room, seeming to hang in place, utterly out of her reach and beyond her ability to take them back.

  Greg’s eyes narrowed. He slowly closed the space between them, not stopping until he was inches away and sucking up the oxygen her brain cells needed for reasonable function. “Of course you matter. Your family—”

  “—loves me.” She could not back up because the window was behind her. Nor could she sidestep, because the very fashionable and very functional dark wood desk covered with her laptop and the textbooks she badly wished to cover up was at her side.

  Standard rooms in the hotel were unquestionably beautifully appointed, but they were a fraction of the size of the suite she had thoughtlessly occupied.

  “I know they do. And I know I am making no sense, so please forget I said anything.” She bravely stepped forward to slip around him, but ruined the effect by catching her breath when their bodies brushed even briefly. “Sumimasen.” She stole a glance at him through her lashes.

  He cursed softly, and suddenly slid his hand around her waist, pulling her back against him.

  Her heartbeat stuttered, then raced. Her hands pressed against the lapels of his beautifully tailored black suit jacket and just as quickly pulled away. But not even closing them in a fist against her middle could erase the heat they had felt. “Mr. Sherman.”

  “Too late,” he said huskily, and pressed his mouth against hers.

  He tasted of coffee. A hint of sake. Then even the slightest hint of objectivity was beyond her because the only thing she could grasp were his arms. Then his shoulders. And she did not need the iron band of his arm around her back to press her closer, because there was no closer. His breath was her breath. His pulse was her pulse.

  But just as abruptly, he lifted his head, and pushed her at arms’ length, holding on to her shoulders, which was a good thing because her legs seemed incapable of normal function.

  He was hauling in deep breaths as if he had just run a marathon, and she vaguely realized that she was in no better condition.

  “Please do not say that we shouldn’t have done that,” she managed breathlessly.

  “Not voicing the words doesn’t make them any less true.” His jaw canted to one side, then centered again. His hands slowly fell away from her shoulders, leaving her feeling chilled despite the heat still bubbling through her veins.

  Her knees were still too weak to be of use, and she sank down onto the edge of the bed. “We are the only ones who know what occurs in this room.”

  “Go ahead and keep trying to believe that.” His voice was low. Deep. It slid over her, warm and enveloping. “I’ve been in this business too long to not know better. There are no secrets in hotels, Kimi.”

  “But—”

  “Do up your zipper.”

  Her mouth closed. She looked down, oddly startled to realize that the zip on her hoodie was halfway down her chest, showing him most clearly by the narrow strip of nude flesh that she wore nothing at all beneath it.

  She fumbled with the tab, and if she had managed to keep from looking at him, she never would have hesitated. She would have yanked the zipper right up to her throat.

  But she did glance at him.

  She did see the fierce flame that made the pale green in his eyes look more like gold. She did see the way his knuckles looked white as he dragged at the knot of his paisley tie.

  Her heart skipped around, and her nipples tightened even more, achingly sensitive against the soft fleece. What would he do if she drew the zipper all the way down?

  The heady answer was there in his taut face.

  “Up, Kimi,” he said, obviously reading her mind. “This might be routine for you, but I’m not ready to jeopardize an entire career again because my willpower where you’re concerned is seriously AWOL.”

  Again? “But it is not routine.” She yanked the zipper up and pressed her hands down against the bed, her fingers digging into the thick downy bedding. “I am not…I mean, I have not—”

  “Slept with the boss before? That’s not difficult since we both know this is the first job you’ve ever had.”

  “What did you mean by again?”

  “Let’s just say that this is not the first time a rich little girl has screwed with the help.”

  She swallowed hard. “Did you l-love her?”

  “I don’t love anyone but my hotels.” He turned away and finished yanking off his tie, only to twist the patterned silk around his fist.

  She wondered if he was imagining it to be a noose around someone’s neck. His? Or hers?

  She bit down on her tongue, rather than make the situation even worse. When she felt certain that she would not blurt out the truth about just how un-routine this sort of thing was for her, she pushed off the bed and forced herself into a steady pace to the room’s main door. She turned back to face him, but looked no higher than the hard rise of his tanned throat above the snowy white shirt collar. “If you prefer, I will find accommodations at another establishment. But I will not go back to usi
ng a room here that has not been set aside for staff.”

  “Staying in another hotel is out of the question.” He grimaced. “That would make great press coverage, wouldn’t it? Kimiko Taka doesn’t even want to stay in the same hotel that shares her name.”

  Irritation nuzzled against the desire still swamping her. “What would you have me do then, Greg? You don’t want me on the same floor as you, and you don’t want me to leave altogether. You would prefer me to occupy that premium suite at the expense of the very service we are supposed to offer our guests, and then you could continue believing that I am just the selfishly pampered heiress whose playacting at a job does not even merit a proper employee badge?”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “But you did when I arrived here.”

  “And I was wrong,” he said flatly. “Which I’ve admitted. And picking an argument doesn’t make this—” his hand waved in a brief motion between them “—whatever the hell it is between us just disappear.”

  The fact that he wanted whatever to disappear was more than plain.

  Kimi knew that she had been blessed with more than her fair share of pride. It was that overabundant trait that had caused all manner of misbehaviors on her part in the past. But right now, that pride was painfully elusive.

  She clasped the door handle behind her back. “Then what do you suggest?”

  “Damned if I know,” he muttered. He reached around her and opened the door himself. “You do your job and stay out of my hair, and I’ll do the same. Deal?”

  She pressed her lips tightly together and managed a nod.

  He did not look overly convinced or thrilled.

  But he did step out of her room and she quickly shut the door. Then she followed that up by turning the security lock, as well.

  “Good girl,” she heard him say through the door.

  She let out a long sigh and moved away from the door, only to be faced with the still-open connecting door.

  Moistening her lips, she sat on the side of the bed, staring at it. Knowing she should close it.

  Praying that he would open the other door from his side.

  “This one, too, Kimi.” From his room on the other side, Greg’s voice was muffled but distinct enough. The second door remained firmly closed.

  She bounced off the bed and slammed her connecting door shut.

  With it safely locked between them, she slid her back down it until she sat on the floor. Drawing up her legs, she pressed her forehead to her knees.

  But it was a very long time before she stopped trembling.

  Chapter Eight

  Getting through the weekend without running into Greg was not as difficult as Kimi expected it to be. Not when she remained entirely in her room, venturing out only to meet with Chef Lorenzo and Anton Tessier to discuss another menu change for the Nguyen’s wedding reception and to sneak in a kitchen raid when she could no longer ignore her hunger pangs.

  The rest of the time she had spent figuring out what to do with her overabundance of clothing and luggage since the closet space in her new accommodations was considerably less accommodating than the suite had been, and gathering research for the last paper she needed to write before the semester ended that week.

  When she finally left behind the room for work on Monday morning, she knew that Greg had already left his room much earlier. She was painfully attuned to any noises from his room, but the only thing she had been able to hear was the muffled sound of his door opening and closing.

  The service elevators were even busier than usual, so Kimi took the stairs, stopping off at the lobby level to return the key card for the Mahogany Suite; something she had forgotten to do amid the task of moving out of it before the weekend.

  It was plainly evident just from the heightened energy and activity in the hotel that they were rapidly gearing toward receiving their first guests the following day.

  If she had not personally witnessed the effort that had gone into the transformation of the lobby from its unfinished state when she had first arrived to its current completed luxury, she would have thought that magic had been at play.

  Gone were the pallets of marble and wood. Metal scaffolding no longer crisscrossed the high, faintly golden-toned walls. The fountain, presently flanked by magnificent holiday poinsettias fashioned into tall Christmas “trees”, was a soothing focal point for all who would enter the lobby, and particularly for those who chose to relax in the deceptive comfort of the low couches and chairs arranged between it and the soaring windows that overlooked the most traditional of the various gardens the hotel boasted.

  There were pristinely attired men and women behind the reception desk that was elegantly decked with boughs of berry-sprigged garland, and even the uniformed doormen were in place.

  It struck Kimi as oddly surreal.

  A busy, beautifully constructed, elegant and sophisticatedly appointed building, just holding its breath as it awaited the guests that would truly bring it to life as a world-class hotel.

  She spotted Greg talking with an auburn-haired woman behind reception and made herself continue to the desk in a natural fashion, aiming for the clerk—ponytailed Sue—who stood farthest from Greg.

  “You’re leaving?” Sue asked when Kimi handed over the card to her. She looked just as disconcerted by Kimi’s presence as she had when she had learned who Kimi was at that first staff meeting.

  “No.” Evidently the details of her move out of the suite had not yet traveled entirely along the hotel grapevine. Kimi hoped that meant her presence at the Taka was no longer such a novelty. “I switched rooms last week and neglected to return this key.” From the corner of her eye she could see Greg and the redhead.

  “What other room could you possibly want? Next to the Presidential Suite, the Mahogany is the best we have.” Her eyes widened. “Did you move up there?”

  “Oh, no,” Kimi assured quickly. “I am just down on four where Gr—Mr. Sherman and Mr. Endo also stay.”

  Something in Sue’s surprised expression shifted, and Kimi wished that she had not said anything at all. She quickly wished Sue good luck for the following day and excused herself.

  Employees were still arriving when Kimi made it down to her department. She could see Grace sitting at her desk as she passed by her office. Thankfully, the other woman merely offered an absent “Good morning” and refrained from commenting about the last time she had seen Kimi with Greg.

  Relieved, because she really had not known what to expect from her supervisor, Kimi returned the greeting and quickly went through to the main office. The coffeemaker was cold and empty and she rapidly started a pot.

  Before long, Tanya arrived, seeming to bring in cold air with her as she unwound her scarf and shrugged out of her coat. “Oh, you’re a peach. Coffee. It is really cold outside.”

  Kimi poured a mug and handed it to the shivering girl. “I have not been out,” she admitted.

  Tanya cradled the mug in her hands. “Why would you want to? If I got to live here, I wouldn’t be out there, either.” There did not seem to be any judgment or envy in her voice, though. Just wry humor and a chattiness that had been present only since they had both pitched in to help with the mayor’s luncheon. “There’s actually snow in the forecast for the next few weeks. Charity will have a litter of puppies if it actually hits. She chairs the committee that runs the staff holiday party,” Tanya added.

  Realization dawned on Kimi. She had stuffed so many envelopes with the save-the-date flyer that she now felt slow on the uptake. “I didn’t realize the details of the party had already been determined.”

  “They haven’t. But Charity figures that since she chairs the committee, her idea to have it in Sakura and the rooftop garden will override anyone else’s ideas. But there’s no way the party’ll be on the roof if it’s snowing, because we can’t all fit in just the restaurant.” Tanya looked a tiny bit gleeful about the prospect.

  “Don’t even suggest snow.” Charity’s voice accost
ed them as she entered the room. She glared at Tanya as if the girl were Mother Nature in disguise. “Outdoor heaters were invented for a reason, and I can bring in plenty for the party no matter how cold it gets. It will be a winter wonderland,” she assured.

  Tanya shrugged and headed toward her desk, but she slid a mischievous glance toward Kimi along the way. “Icy and appropriate,” she whispered. Kimi could not help but grin back at her.

  Then the rest of their coworkers seemed to arrive en masse, and the workday was off to a bustling start. The pace didn’t slow until late that afternoon when Grace shooed everyone up to the training room for a last staff meeting before the big “O”.

  “Occupancy day,” Tanya provided to Kimi as they trooped out and went up to the fifth floor. She lowered her voice again, looking rueful. “For some of us, that big ‘O’ is the only orgasmic thing going on in our lives at all.”

  Kimi felt her face flush and was grateful that Tanya’s attention had turned ahead once again.

  When they arrived, the training room was considerably more crowded than it had been the first day of Kimi’s arrival, and she slid in to stand at the back of the room alongside Tanya and Nigel. The redhead she had seen that morning with Greg was at the front of the room along with the rest of the senior management.

  She leaned toward Tanya. “Who is the woman next to Mr. Sherman?”

  “Bridget McElroy. I guess she’s over the flu by now. She’s Mr. Sherman’s administrative assistant.” Tanya made a slight face.

  “You don’t like her?”

  Tanya tilted her head toward Kimi’s and lowered her voice even more. “She’s okay. But I heard they’re sleeping together.”

  Kimi jerked. “What? Heard from whom?”

  Tanya shrugged. “Oh, you know. Word travels, particularly through hotels. Who can blame her? Most of the women—single or not—who work for the man would jump at that chance. He’s handsome, successful and I hear he earns a fortune. And he did bring her with him when he came to the Taka.”

  “He chose a lot of people to come to the Taka,” Kimi pointed out, striving for a normal tone.