Boss's Christmas Proposal Read online

  “A damned costly one.” His voice was low. “I was jealous. I didn’t like seeing you dancing with Shin.”

  “It was merely a dance between coworkers. It was not like you and your…your assistant.”

  His head jerked back. “Bridget? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  It was too late to back down now. Kimi turned to face him, pressing her hands against the counter behind her. “She is the one, is she not? The other woman you were kissing?”

  Chapter Nine

  Greg stared at Kimi, trying to decipher the coils inside her mind. “No, I was not kissing Bridget. She’s my secretary for God’s sake. Where on earth did you get that ridiculous idea?”

  “She is very beautiful.”

  “Sure. And so is Grace Ishida and about three dozen other women I could name off the top of my head who work for me. I’m not sleeping with them, either.”

  Her shoulder lifted diffidently. “I heard otherwise.”

  He let out an impatient snort. “Gossip. What did I tell you about gossip in hotels? There never has to be any basis to it. It just grows all on its own.”

  Her long lashes veiled her eyes. “Then who was it? The one who you would be smarter to be with?”

  “An attorney I know. Nobody who matters.” He lifted her chin until she had to look at him. “I do not sleep with my employees.”

  “Not even in your other hotels?”

  “Not even there,” he assured flatly.

  “Then why do you choose to come into my room now? You said we should stay away from each other. And I have done so!”

  He needed no reminder that he was the one who kept crossing his own uncrossable line. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic wrapped employee name badge. “Here.” The badge was nothing more than an excuse, though.

  He could lie to everyone on the planet about his reasons, but he couldn’t lie to himself. Not anymore.

  He’d wanted to see her.

  End of story.

  She slowly took the badge and peeled off the clinging protective wrap. Then she smoothed her fingertip across the brushed brass surface engraved with her name.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced toward the window. “The first one that came back said Kimiko. I thought you’d prefer it to say Kimi. That’s why it took this long to get it. I had Human Resources reorder another.”

  “Hai.” Her voice was nearly inaudible. “I do prefer Kimi. Thank you.”

  “What’s wrong with Kimiko, anyway?”

  She slipped off the magnetic bar on the back of the badge and turned to face the mirror again, positioning the badge over the sweater that lovingly clung to her willowy curves. “I just prefer Kimi. It sounds less—it sounds more…Western. More approachable.” He caught the grimace she made in the mirror before she turned back to look at him, the name badge in place. “How does it look?”

  As effective as armor.

  Or it should have been.

  He walked behind her desk. Another layer between them. Knowing he was a damn pathetic excuse of a manager if he couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

  “It’s just a badge,” he said, whether in response to her question or the impossible debate inside him, he didn’t know.

  Her lips curved sadly. “It is my first employee badge. And if I fail here at this hotel, I fear that my father will never allow me to wear another badge bearing a Taka logo.”

  He knew how much his career mattered to him. He was just beginning to appreciate how much the job might truly mean to her.

  He eyed the laptop nearly obscured by the mound of clothing on her desk. “Grace tells me you have the Nguyens’ wedding coordinator eating out of your hand.”

  She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Mr. Tessier is not so bad.”

  Greg had heard plenty of complaints otherwise before Kimi had come on the scene. “She also says that you are doing an excellent job in general.”

  “I will remind her of that when she fills out my three-month review.”

  “She won’t need to be reminded,” he assured. Grace had been receptive to the idea of Kimi working there all along.

  It was only Greg who’d had an issue with it.

  He moved a pair of shoes from the upholstered desk chair and sat. Kimi had him feeling like a teenaged kid who’d just discovered the wonders of women. She also had him feeling every one of his thirty-two years, and then some.

  He pulled at his constricting tie. “You needed to stay in the Mahogany for the closet space alone.”

  She gave him a faint smile, but stayed near the coffeemaker. “I was able to dispose of my excess luggage, but I confess that I do not find it so easy to part with much of my clothing. I kept picturing my friend Lana’s face whenever I added something to my giveaway pile. She wants to be a fashion designer.”

  He picked up the top item on one of the folded stacks on the desk and shook the diminutive item out.

  Tasty. The memorable stitching came into view.

  “That was one of hers,” Kimi murmured. She shook her head, looking regretful. “I should have taken time to change on the flight over that first day. You had every right to disapprove.”

  He set the patch of fabric that passed for a skirt back on the pile. What he’d been was overbearing and damned intent on establishing his authority.

  “I probably could have been more tactful,” he admitted.

  “Probably?”

  He grimaced and silence, thick and pulsing, settled between them until finally, Kimi cleared her throat and moved, only to perch herself gingerly on the very corner of her bed. “Who would have thought we would come to these admissions?”

  “Why is being more Western important to you?”

  She shot him a startled look. “Excuse me?”

  “You said you liked going by Kimi because it sounded more Western.”

  She brushed her hands down her thighs and rose from the bed. “It is merely a nickname. You don’t go by Gregory, yet that is your name.”

  “Americans are always in a hurry. We shorten everything.”

  “Then my U.S. citizenship is not misplaced,” she said promptly. “Kimi is shorter than Kimiko. Do not make more of my preference than it is. I told you I missed nothing about Japan when I left.”

  “But you chose to come here.”

  “I asked for a job, and this is where I was sent.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “You would like that, would you not?”

  He exhaled. Not as much as he should. What he ought do was leave her room. Go back through the connecting doorway, close it, lock it and throw away the key.

  Instead, he picked up one of the small framed photographs perched on the ledge of the window that overlooked nothing. A teenaged Kimi, her father and stepmother dressed in scuba gear smiled back at the camera, looking carefree. “How old were you when this was taken?”

  “Fifteen.” She stopped next to him and took the frame in her hands, looking at it. “We were in the Caribbean for a vacation. Have you ever been there?”

  When he was fifteen, he and his mother had been living in a single-wide trailer parked behind the convenience store where he worked. “Yeah. I did a stint in the Caymans at an all-inclusive resort when I was a few years older than you are now.” Two months of sand and sun and thinking that he’d fallen for a wealthy young jet-setter named Sydney who was staying there.

  “I think you may have traveled more than I have.” Kimi’s voice pulled him back from the memory that no longer held any sting, but still served as a reminder that some lines aren’t meant to be crossed. Not permanently.

  “Not in the same way,” he assured dryly.

  She leaned past him to replace the frame with the others and he had to fist his hands to keep them from breaching the paltry few inches between them.

  But instead of straightening again and moving safely away, she seemed to freeze. Then she slowly lifted her long lashes, casting him a hesitant, sidelong look.
“Even my father learned that mixing business with pleasure was not always a terrible thing. Sometimes it is the most successful in all ways.”

  “When your father married your stepmother, she was a wealthy woman at the helm of a significant American media company. I’m pretty sure he’d feel differently if he knew that any of that kind of mixing involved his daughter and someone on his payroll.”

  Her voice went even softer. “He does not need to know everything.”

  Could the room be any hotter? He yanked his tie another inch looser. “Is there anything in your life you do that your father doesn’t find out about?”

  Her lashes fell again. “There are a few,” she said after a moment. She looked up at him again, but her gaze didn’t seem to make it any higher than his mouth.

  “Like what?”

  “You wish to have proof?” She leaned past him suddenly and pushed a pile of clothing off the desk. She picked up the thick textbook she revealed. “Will this suffice? He does not know I am finishing my degree.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am as contrary as everyone says.”

  He took the textbook from her. “This is what you’ve been doing every night. The reasons you raid the kitchen at two in the morning.”

  “I am sorry to disillusion you about my partying ways.” She snatched the book and pitched it after the clothing and impetuously fastened her mouth to his.

  He’d been around too long not to know that lightning could strike twice. That the one kiss they’d shared wasn’t just some random fluke.

  Kissing Kimi Taka—no matter how many times—was like lassoing lightning. Intoxicating, exhilarating and dangerous as hell.

  Even knowing that, it took him too damn long to tear his mouth from hers and when he did, he found his hands were wrapped around those long, silky skeins of dark hair. “Dammit to hell.”

  She pressed her lips together as if savoring the taste of him. Her voice was husky when she finally spoke. “Sumimasen.”

  He let out a strangled groan. “You’re not sorry.”

  She sucked in an audible breath. “No. I am not sorry.” Her fingers fluttered over the loosened knot of his tie. “Does it help if I take all responsibility? I kissed you. It is not as if you were an interested participant. And we can blame my forwardness on the cosmopolitans I had earlier.”

  His gaze fastened on her face, seeing past the bravado to the uncertainty that had a much more effective way of sneaking inside and grabbing him by the gut. “If you think I’m not interested, you haven’t been paying attention very well.”

  “Interested but unwilling.”

  “Kimi—”

  “I am not in the habit of begging for a man’s attention.”

  “Because most any man would fall over themselves for you. Which you well know.”

  “But not you.” She pressed her lips together for a moment and her lashes swept down again. “This would be the time for you to say that my interest is only heightened because of your resistance. That I only want what I cannot get. Contrary, remember?”

  She was definitely a woman of contradictions. “There’s no possible way this can end well.”

  “This?”

  His hands clamped around her hips and he pulled her down onto his lap. “This.” His voice was tight.

  Her eyes widened and color bloomed on her cheeks. She couldn’t fail to miss his meaning. Not when “this” was a plainly obvious presence there between them.

  “I do not wish to think about endings.”

  “Honey, there’s always an ending.”

  “And there is the now,” she countered. “Do you not know the importance of living in the moment?” She slid her hands beneath the lapels of his jacket and they seemed to burn right through his shirt to his chest. “You run a hotel that seduces its clientele into that very luxurious thing.”

  He was the one feeling seduced and it wasn’t a particularly accustomed sensation. “Those are the clients,” he corrected. “I’m not one of them.”

  “Do you not wish to be like that, though?” She leaned into him, managing to fit her curves even more fully against him. She fiddled with his tie. “Just once in a while, to be just a man, and not always the boss?”

  “I am the boss. Your boss.”

  She managed to slide the tie free and let it dangle it from her fingertips. “And if you were not?”

  He grimaced. “Yes, well, I won’t be if your parents fire me.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  He grabbed the tie. “You do plan on going somewhere, then? I thought you weren’t a quitter. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to convince me of these past few weeks?”

  “If I go elsewhere,” she pressed.

  “But you work here.”

  “If I did not?”

  He let out a short breath. “I don’t know why I should be surprised when that persistent streak of yours makes its way to the surface.”

  “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

  He let out a short breath. “Quoting Benjamin Franklin ought to douse the problem we’ve got between us, but it doesn’t.”

  She slid her hand behind his neck, feathering her fingertips through his hair. “It does not feel like it is a problem that is between us.” Bright color bloomed in her cheeks. But that didn’t stop her slender hips from rocking almost undetectably against him.

  But he still felt her. Still wanted more of her.

  He caught her fingers when they slid down his neck again to seek the button holding his strangling collar closed. “It’s a problem because you’re Kimi Taka.” He knew he sounded like a broken record, but there it was.

  “Could we not just forget who my family is? Just…for a while?”

  He let go of her hand and slid his palms along the impossibly fine line of her jaw, cupping her face. “You don’t understand how often I do forget.” He brushed his thumb slowly over her lower lip. “But the fact remains, Kimi, that you and I are in two different worlds. I’m the mutt—”

  She huffed, rolling her eyes. “Please.”

  “—who’s managed to work his way up in the world,” he continued doggedly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m ever really a part of that world.”

  “You are a snob,” she accused huskily.

  “I’m a realist.”

  “That sounds worse.”

  He could feel the butterfly beat of her pulse throbbing against her satin smooth throat. “You are Mahogany Suite material, Kimi. That’s where you belong. Even if you don’t want to remember that today, sooner or later you will and you’ll leave me in the dust without a second glance.”

  “You are wrong, you know.” She didn’t look away from him despite the sudden glisten in her eyes.

  “Like it or not, I’ve got a few more years under my belt to have learned some about human nature. If things were different—” His voice was low. Nearly hoarse.

  “That is an easy thing to say, is it not? Because I will always be who I am. And you will always hold it against me, so we will never know.”

  “I don’t hold it against you.”

  “Are you certain? If I were anyone else, I believe you would not hold back.” She pressed herself even more boldly against him, and the soft catch of her breath when she did so nearly undid him. He could feel every breath she drew as if he breathed them for himself.

  His hands found their way back into her hair. “You’re killing me here,” he muttered.

  The color in her cheeks deepened. Her eyes were dark and nakedly vulnerable. “I would rather share a different little death with you.”

  He tucked her brow against his, bracing against the blast of heat plowing through him. “That kind of little death is likely to blow the roof off the Taka.”

  “Well—” Kimi twisted her head around until her lips hovered against his. Her own boldness shocked her. “This Taka, at least.”

  She gasped when Greg abruptly rose from the desk chair, lifting her along with him, only
to toss her across her bed. The pillows at the head bounced, one slid off onto the floor.

  She stared up at him, her heart racing. “Greg?”

  He followed her down, catching her wrists in his hands and looming over her. “You sure about this, Kimi? Do you want just mind-blowing sex?” His hooded gaze seemed to burn over her face, setting off a clenching wave of heat that spread through her body. He slowly lowered his head until his lips grazed tantalizingly over her earlobe. “That’s something I can deliver.”

  He had her trapped in such a miasma of desire, she could not doubt that particular talent of his. Her fingers curled, instinctively wanting to touch him, but he still held her wrists captive.

  “Or are you going to want more?”

  Her head pressed back into the soft bedding. If there were more, she was uncertain she could survive, and the only place he was touching her—other than that maddening non-kiss—was her wrists. “M-more?”

  He finally lifted his head, and she managed to drag in a shuddering breath. His jaw looked carved from stone. “You won’t get more from me,” he warned. “Gossip around this place can spring up from nothing but it just as easily broadcasts the facts. Haven’t you paid attention? I don’t do relationships. The only thing I care about is my career.”

  “You care about a lot more than that.” Her voice shook. “A person only has to see the way you work to know that. You surround yourself with people you care about. Mr. Endo and Grace and Lyle.”

  “I hired them because they are the best at what they do.”

  “I believe you brought them here, away from the various places they had been working because they are like family to you,” she countered swiftly.

  “The only family I have is my mother, and I would no more want her working anywhere near me than I’d want to stick my head in a noose. Which is exactly where your father will want my head if he gets word that I’m sleeping with his daughter.”

  Her nerves felt ready to jump out of her skin. Her legs moved restlessly. She had to swallow hard. “Are you? Sleeping with his daughter?”

  His eyes stared into hers for what seemed an eternity. “Every time I close my eyes.” His hold gentled, no longer shackling her wrists, and she couldn’t restrain the faint moan that rose in her throat when his palms flattened against hers, his long fingers sliding between hers. “Everything about this is wrong, and I know it, and I still can’t make myself stop wanting you.”