Boss's Christmas Proposal Read online

  A moment later he heard the low elevator chime and then all was silent and still.

  Greg realized he was rubbing his knuckles against his shirt.

  Danny Nelson supposedly had the excuse of too much sake.

  What excuse did he have?

  He yanked open the refrigerator, found a fresh carrot for himself and picked up the house phone next to the walk-in freezer. Even though the hotel was not yet hosting guests, Shin’s department was operating around the clock with at least a skeleton crew on duty to monitor the facility. “This is Sherman. I want the service elevators put on the closed-circuit system,” he told the security officer who answered his call. “Use portable units for tonight if you have to, but get the work scheduled by morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up. There would be complaints from employees who would consider the measures to be intrusive, but at this point, he didn’t care. Shin had wanted every elevator on the system in the first place.

  Greg should have listened to him.

  He snapped off the light and crunched off the end of the carrot, taking the service elevator straight down to his office.

  Well beyond the temptation of Kimi and the Mahogany Suite.

  In her suite, Kimi stared at her laptop and the accumulation of study materials spread across the desk. She had four hours left to finish her exam and get it submitted to her Principles of International Business professor. An incomplete for the course would mean no diploma at the end of the semester, and she was counting on adding that ammunition to her work here in Kyoto when she prevailed upon her parents to find a spot for her back in the States.

  Unfortunately, the only thing her mind seemed willing to focus on was Greg.

  He was a stiff-necked, humorless, by-the-book manager.

  Except when he was not being stiff-necked or humorless, a tormenting voice inside her slyly whispered. Either way, he was the sexiest man she had ever met.

  No amount of herbs could make him more lethal than he already was.

  She jabbed a key on the keyboard, sending her swirling psychedelic screen saver into la-la land, peered at the examination form and tucked a carrot stick between her teeth.

  But the second she did that, the memory of Greg snatching the piece while she had been chopping slid into her head.

  All he had done was give a glimpse into his humanity, and her silly heart was reacting as if he had slain dragons for her.

  It was no wonder women made fools of themselves all the time where men were concerned. She had just never before counted herself as one of them.

  She wondered what he would have to say if he ever learned that her romantic exploits had generally ended at her door. She had fended off her share of passes, and certainly ones less easily avoided than the clumsy security guard’s grope. What she had not done, however, was ever sleep with any of the men.

  What a good laugh Greg would have if he knew that she was a virgin.

  She pressed her forehead into her palms. But that was not even the worst of it.

  He was the first man she had ever met who really made her yearn to change that particular fact.

  With him.

  Chapter Five

  “Okay, children.” Grace Ishida stood at the project board that Nigel had trimmed with silver garland, her hands on her hips. It was Tuesday, and she had called her department together for a brief meeting before lunch. “Crunch time. As we all well know, the mayoral luncheon is tomorrow. There’ll be a great deal of local media present.” Her lips twisted slightly. “It is imperative that we make a good showing. Unfortunately—” she looked around the room “—as we all also know, our banquet crew has been falling victim to this damn bug that’s working its way through our system. Literally. We’re short six servers, and I’m looking for volunteers.”

  A host of groans went around, but Grace looked undeterred. “Come on, now. Charity, you used to work banquets.”

  The woman shook her head, looking bored. “Fortunately I’m long past those menial days.”

  Grace’s expression did not falter as she continued surveying the crowded room. “Anyone? We’re pulling from all departments, but I would think at least one of you would be willing to pitch in.”

  Kimi looked around the room. Not a single person appeared interested in helping out. She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment, then tentatively raised her hand. “I’m willing.”

  Sitting just a few seats from her, Charity made a show of trying to muffle a snort.

  Kimi’s hand went up even more firmly. She met Grace’s gaze. Her supervisor gave Kimi the courtesy of not showing her skepticism as noticeably as Charity had, but it was still there all the same.

  Kimi lowered her hand. “I may not have served any banquets, but I have attended hundreds of them. I think I can manage to act the part, if nothing else.”

  Grace smiled faintly. “All right.” Her gaze traveled over the rest of the assembly. “Hopefully there’ll be others in this house who’ll step forward. In the meantime, we’ll move on to a couple of other points of business—”

  “Grace?” Tanya Wilson sat closer to the edge of her seat. “I’ll work the banquet, too.”

  “So will I.” Another hand went up. Then another.

  Charity’s hand, noticeably, was still not one of them. But Grace was obviously pleased, nonetheless. “Well done,” she said. “You’ll need to report to the banquet kitchen tomorrow morning by eight, but it would be wise for you to go by sometime today and pick up a uniform.”

  She went on to quickly discuss the mini-clinic Greg had arranged that afternoon for staff members to receive flu shots and the scheduling of the staff’s holiday party, then sent them all back to their duties. But she stopped by Kimi’s desk as she headed toward her office. “Kimi? Could I have a word?”

  “Of course.” She rose, avoiding Charity who was looking entirely too superior, and followed Grace into the other woman’s office.

  Grace closed the door. “Sit down,” she invited, waving at the two seats positioned in front of her untidy desk.

  Unaccountably nervous, Kimi sat and Grace took her own seat behind her desk. She rested her arms on top, her hands clasped together and eyed Kimi. “Thank you for volunteering the way you did.”

  “I want to help,” Kimi said, fully prepared for Grace to tell her that she did not want her inexperienced assistance. “I can pour ice water and set out butter curls just as well as the next person,” she assured.

  Grace’s smile widened. “I’m sure you can. If you hadn’t set the example, I doubt anyone else would have felt shamed into volunteering at all. No, I’m afraid I brought you in to ask another favor of you.”

  “Anything.”

  “Well, it’s about Yoshi Kobayashi. He’s president of Kobayashi Media, and it would be really good if we could get him to the luncheon. So far he’s refused. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to lend your…encouragement…to him and see if he’ll change his mind about attending.”

  “What can I do?”

  Grace eyed her steadily. “Your father runs the TAKA-Hanson Corporation. There is no larger media enterprise in this part of the world. That alone would have weight with Kobayashi.”

  “Yes, my father runs TAKA,” Kimi emphasized. “I’m only fortunate that they are letting me in the door with the new hospitality division.”

  “We certainly don’t want to disturb your father or stepmother about this—” Grace shook her head, looking wryly aggravated “—this matter that is probably very minor in the grand scheme of things. I just want our first event to be as perfect as it can possibly be.”

  Kimi sighed faintly. How could she refuse? “I will see what I can do.”

  Grace smiled. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “Excuse me.” Tanya popped her head into the office. “Kimi, Anton Tessier is here to see you.”

  “Thanks, Tanya.” Kimi rose and looked at her supervisor. “If you will excuse me?”

  Grace waved he
r along. “Of course.”

  A full hour later, Kimi had a fresh page of notes from the wedding coordinator about the big Nguyen wedding. She also had a not-so-fresh headache from wondering how she was supposed to solve Grace’s problem with Kobayashi Media.

  But at least she had things to keep her mind occupied, lest she fall back into the preoccupation with her general manager that had consumed most of her weekend.

  After her encounter with Greg on Friday night, she had finally completed her exam and gotten it submitted barely before the deadline, then had spent the rest of the weekend almost entirely in her suite, either studying or sleeping and trying to conquer all wayward thoughts about the tall, green-eyed man. She had ventured out only once to use the swimming pool on the seventeenth floor when she had been certain nobody would be the wiser.

  And yesterday, she had heard that he was in Tokyo for most of the day on business.

  But her first glimpse of Greg as she walked with Anton through the lobby plainly pointed out that she had not managed to conquer a single thing, least of all her wayward thoughts or her unruly hormones.

  For one thing, he did not have on his suit coat, which was a surprise in itself, since aside from that morning when she had gone to his office with Grace’s papers, she had not seen him without one.

  Pity, too, because the man truly had a world-class physique.

  For another thing, he was standing eight feet up a ladder in the chaotic lobby, arms wide as he gestured and discussed the Venetian plaster finish the workers perched on the scaffolding were installing.

  Greg’s Japanese was perfect. But his gesturing was definitely all American.

  And she…she felt disconcertingly all female.

  With no small amount of effort, she dragged her gaze from the muscles outlined beneath his finely tailored white shirt and continued accompanying the wedding coordinator through the obstacle course the lobby had become thanks to the combined confusion of new scaffolding and the marble tile that was being laid.

  Grace had been accurate about the man’s fussy nature. Considering how much his clients were spending on their wedding, though, Kimi figured they were purchasing the right to be particular even if some of their choices seemed thoroughly extravagant to her.

  What was the point of having a twelve-layer wedding cake flown in from New York at an exorbitant cost when the hotel possessed a world-class pastry chef who could have easily created the same towering confection?

  She must have been doing a decent job of hiding her personal feelings, though, because Anton seemed completely satisfied as he clasped her hand between both of his and bowed enthusiastically before finally heading down the wide, shallow steps that fronted the hotel.

  Kimi turned around to go back to her office. She was not going to bother Helen or her father about Kobayashi. But she could call her stepsister, Jenny Warren, who had worked for TAKA-Hanson’s media division before Helen had tasked her more recently with media relations for the new hospitality division.

  But all of those thoughts siphoned out of her head when she nearly walked right into Greg.

  He was off the ladder now, talking with the chief engineer who was holding what looked like copies of blueprints, and he caught her arm to steady her when she slipped on the concrete. “Are you all right, Ms. Taka?” His green gaze was impersonal.

  “I’m fine. Pardon me.” She smiled at the chief engineer and quickly veered around the still-dry fountain, putting Greg safely out of her line of sight. But when she ended up face-to-face with Charity Smythe and the animosity pouring from her, Kimi almost wished that she had taken her chances with Greg.

  “I don’t know who you’re trying to impress,” Charity said just loud enough for Kimi to hear. “But I guarantee that you’re not going to be the favored darling of the management when you make a fool of yourself tomorrow.”

  “By management, you mean Mr. Sherman?” Kimi managed a blithe tone. If the other woman knew just how unfavored Kimi was, she would probably turn cartwheels right there among the pallets of marble tile. “I am surprised that you did not volunteer to help at the banquet, yourself. At least then you could personally witness my humiliation.”

  “This isn’t a joke, you know.” Charity’s voice went from cold to icy.

  “I would never presume to think it is.” Kimi stared the other woman in the face. “I am a Taka, Charity. Do you not think I might have a vested interest in the success of a venture that bears my name?”

  “You’re a Taka, and you’ll never let anyone forget it, will you?” Charity’s teeth were practically bared.

  “No, Charity. No one will forget it, despite what I want.”

  “Ms. Smythe. Ms. Taka.” Greg’s deep voice had both of them springing apart. “Is everything all right?”

  “Right as rain.” In a blink, the woman’s expression had cleared. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” She strode off as if the Emperor of Japan himself was waiting for her.

  “Is she giving you problems?”

  Kimi turned back to Greg only to find her nose mere inches from the nubby silk of his tie. Did he always smell so good? “What?” She slid back a step, frantically grasping for some functioning brain cells. “Charity? She’s just being Charity.” She sucked in her lower lip and felt the infinitely slow tick of time as his gaze narrowed on her face.

  “Are you sure that’s all?”

  “Well, she loathes and detests me,” Kimi managed lightly. “Not unlike others in these parts.”

  “Nobody loathes and detests you,” he countered brusquely.

  “I do not exactly have a fan club.”

  “You should have stayed in the States if you wanted that.”

  “I do not want a fan club,” she corrected, wishing that she had kept her foolish mouth shut. No matter what she said or did around Greg, it tended to be the wrong thing. “Would you excuse me?”

  His gaze did not waver from her face, but he nodded. “Of course.”

  She quickly walked away through the chaotic lobby.

  Instead of returning to her basement office, though, Kimi took the service elevator up to the twenty-first floor. She would call Jenny. Sound her out. But she would do it from the privacy of her suite where nobody would be likely to overhear.

  Given the time difference between Kyoto and Chicago, it was evening for Jenny when she finally came on the line. Kimi had long ago become close to the daughter that Helen had borne and given up while still a teenager, but not even Jenny—whose adoptive parents were highly successful hoteliers in their own right—seemed able to understand Kimi’s intense desire to be judged on her own merits rather than the family’s.

  When Kimi explained the situation about the luncheon, though, Jenny had only one suggestion since she had never personally had any dealings with Kobayashi. “Call your grandfather,” she advised. “Despite the softening of his ways since Mori and Helen married, he’s still about as old school as it gets when it comes to business there, and his roots are a lot deeper.”

  Kimi knew only too well how deep, having spent a good amount of time with him in her early years. Those roots went nearly to the center of the earth.

  “So,” Jenny asked curiously, “how is everything else there going? Have you set the hotel on its ear yet?”

  “I am not trying to.”

  Jenny chuckled. “All things are normal, then. I was just looking at the calendar here. Time’s racing toward the gala, isn’t it? Things are probably really hopping there. Are you finding the working world more to your liking than the academic one?”

  She very nearly confided in Jenny that she had managed to get herself reinstated to finish her classes online, but did not. Her stepsister would be just as surprised as the rest of the family when Kimi showed off that diploma. “It is pretty much more of the same.”

  “You mean you’re blowing off your duties just to see if somebody dares to get mad about it?”

  “No!”

  Even across the distance, Kimi could
hear Jenny’s faint sigh. “Well, that’s what you did in school, sweetheart.”

  That was something Kimi could not deny. “I mean that people either blame me for being a Taka or love me only for being a Taka.”

  “I hate to tell you, Kimi, but you are a Taka.”

  “So get used to it?”

  “Figure out a way to accept it,” Jenny advised. “Regardless of your heritage, you should live your life the way you want to live it; not as a reaction to what everyone else does.”

  “That sounds like something Helen would say.”

  “Well—” Jenny’s voice was serious “—it finally seems to have worked for her. Now come on. Have you made some new friends? What’s Greg Sherman like? Helen has really good things to say about him.”

  “He is fine.”

  “Just fine? If Helen is not singing his praises, then Mori is.”

  Kimi swallowed. “Actually, I do not see all that much of him. I am pretty busy working in the basement sales office. The hotel is spectacular, though. At least it will be when the rest of the interiors are completed. How is Richard and the baby?”

  “Oh-ho. Changing the subject. All right, I’ll let you off the hook only to talk about my husband and my son, who are both as wonderful and handsome as ever. We’ve gotten to see a lot of Jack and Samantha lately, since he and Richard have been working together as legal counsel for the hospitality division. And my friend Samara and Richard’s brother Steven are getting married, so there have been all the arrangements to make for that. It’s been busy, to say the least. And of course, the entire family will be in Kyoto for the gala. Everyone is anxious to see how you’re doing there.”

  Anxious was probably too accurate of a word, Kimi knew. “I am looking forward to seeing everyone, too.” And having the satisfaction of announcing that she had earned her college diploma without them having to harp on her to the very end.

  Once she had hung up with Jenny, Kimi stared at the telephone for a long moment. Then she snatched up the receiver again and quickly dialed.