One Night with her Boss (7 page)
Read One Night with her Boss Online
Authors: Noelle Adams
Two
months later, Anne was popping up on a surfboard, early on a Sunday morning, trying
to get her stance right.
She didn’t seem to be naturally talented
at it.
The board wasn’t even on the water—it
was just on the sand so she could practice—but she still couldn’t seem to get
her feet placed right when she hopped up from the paddling position.
Jake laughed when she tried to jump
again and ended up with one foot off her board completely.
She groaned and glared at him.
He walked over with a grin. “It’s not as
hard as you’re making it. Push with your arms and pull your feet up under you.
Don’t worry about doing it really quickly yet. Just stand up in the right way
and make sure this leg is out front when you do.” He patted her right thigh.
She sighed and got down again on her
stomach on the board.
“Don’t worry about being fast this time.
Just stand up.”
Without the pressure of doing it
quickly, she stood up just fine.
“Good,” he said, coming over again and
sliding his hand down her thigh to change her stance slightly. “Bend your knee
a little more.”
“Like this?” she asked, looking over at
him. He looked gorgeous in the morning sun, relaxed, happy, and in need of a
shave. It had taken her a few weeks to convince him to teach her to surf—since
he knew exactly what her real motive was in the request—but he’d relented
eventually.
He’d gone out on the water yesterday to
show her the basics, and she knew he’d go out again once she was ready to get
off the beach herself.
He hadn’t yet surfed on his own yet, but
she was pretty sure he would.
He’d never be able to surf like he used
to—not with his bad knee—but he could surf some. He could have a little of what
he’d lost.
She wanted that for him.
It wasn’t like the last two months had
completely changed him. He still worked like a maniac during the week, but he
was doing better about taking the weekends and evenings off.
Anne was loving her new job, and she was
loving Jake even more.
He seemed satisfied with her stance, but
his hand lingered on her upper thigh.
“Watch the hands,” she teased, glancing
back at him.
He gave her a wicked grin and slid his
palm back even more inappropriately so it was cupping her ass.
“Hey,” she objected.
“I thought I was allowed to do that
now.”
She playfully swatted his hand away.
“Not in public.”
“There’s no one else around. And you
know how irresistible I find your delectable ass.”
She made a face at him but was smiling
when he leaned over to kiss her. After he pulled away, she said, “Seriously,
though, I want to learn how to do this.”
“Right. Then why don’t you try it
again?”
It took her about ten more times, but
she finally got the pop-up right, jumping up from her stomach in a fast, smooth
move with her feet and body in the right position.
When she finally got it right, she
squealed in excitement and launched herself at him in a hug. He caught her, the
momentum causing him to spin around once as he held her tightly.
“I love you, Jake Woodward,” she burst
out, when she raised her head to smile at him, joy and affection overflowing
into words.
They hadn’t said those words to each
other yet, but she wasn’t even afraid. She gazed up at him, knowing—knowing—he
felt the same way.
He froze for a moment, before emotion
broke briefly on his face. But then he drawled, “I’m sure you already know how
much I love you too. And, seriously, if I’d known it would get me this
reaction, I would have taught you to surf ages ago.”
Sometimes she couldn’t believe this
miracle had really happened to her, that someone she loved so much could
actually love her back.
But it had happened. And it was real.
And it wasn’t going to go away.
Maybe it had happened gradually, and over
the course of seven years, Jake had changed from her boss into the man she
wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
Or maybe it had happened in only one
night.
***
Thank you for reading! If
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telling others about it. I’ve also written three more One Night novellas, which
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information
here
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If you like
boss-employee romances, you can check out the excerpt from Engaged to the Boss
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Boss
She
couldn’t believe Jonathan was engaged. How was she going to stand working for
him every day when he was married, knowing she wasn’t even allowed to dream
about him?
His fiancée was undoubtedly
beautiful—slender, elegant, and stylish. Everything Sarah was not.
“What’s wrong?” Jonathan asked from
behind her. He’d evidently walked out of his office and taken his normal
position at the lab table.
She turned around, her eyes widening.
“Nothing. Why?”
Jonathan didn’t look anything like a
stereotypical research scientist. He was built like a football player, but it
must be just good genes because she never saw him working out. He had a strong,
handsome face with brown hair and brown eyes, and his clothes and lab coat were
perpetually wrinkled.
He gave a half-shrug at her question.
“You seemed to be having a hard time screwing on the lid.”
“Oh. No. I just wasn’t paying
attention.” She smiled at him, as brightly as she could, as she brought his
coffee back over. “Is your uncle doing all right?”
His uncle, Cyrus Damon, had founded a
multi-billion dollar conglomerate of hotels and restaurants, and his four
nephews were the heirs to his fortune. The other nephews were more in the
spotlight than Jonathan. He’d buried himself for years at school in MIT and in
the lab here, which he’d opened seven years ago with funding that came
primarily from his uncle.
“You heard, huh?” He shook his head as
he took a swallow of coffee. “He never changes. He’s unhappy with me, as
usual.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured,
looking back at the DNA sequence blindly. “I didn’t know you were engaged.
Congratulations.” She couldn’t help but wonder how he’d found the time to date
and get engaged to someone. The one long-term relationship she’d had was with
Matt Turner, who’d been hired at the lab at the same time she was. Their
relationship had dissolved after a year, in part because they just hadn’t had
time for each other.
She’d thought Jonathan had nothing in
his life but work. Evidently, she was wrong.
There was silence beside her, stretching
out so long she finally turned. She caught the strangest expression on
Jonathan’s face.
Half-reluctant and half-guilty.
“What is it?” she prompted. He usually
didn’t express any emotion at all, his face always relaxed, even when focused
deeply on the most minuscule of genetic details.
“I’m not really engaged.”
“What?”
“I lied.”
Her belly clenched with a weird
combination of relief and excitement. “But he’ll have to find out eventually,
won’t he?”
“I know,” he admitted, rubbing his chin
in a habitual gesture. She could hear the faint sound of his bristles against
his hand. He shaved every day, but he was always bristly again by lunchtime.
“It wasn’t the smartest of lies. Now he wants me to bring my fictional fiancée to
my cousin’s wedding.”
“I guess you could make up an excuse
about why she couldn’t come.” She tried to sound normal, but she almost felt
giddy.
She indulged in daydreams all the time
about Jonathan, but she didn’t have any realistic hopes about a future with
him. He was brilliant, handsome, and would be a billionaire when his uncle
died. He commanded attention everywhere he went—so compelling was the force of
his intellectual confidence and the depth of his commitment to his goals. It
wasn’t arrogance or intimidation, and it was completely unconscious on his
part. But she’d seen him at conferences and symposiums, and she’d seen the most
skeptical of stodgy academics look at him with respect, despite his youth and
despite the fact that he wasn’t affiliated with a university.
Jonathan Damon could have any woman he
wanted. Sarah was smart and was good at her job, but otherwise she was nothing
special. She could be content with what she had—a career she’d always dreamed
of and working daily with a man as brilliant and amazing as him.
Anything more was a Cinderella-dream,
and she’d always known that could never happen to her.
“Yeah,” Jonathan replied, sitting down
on a stool and turning back and forth on it restlessly. “Hopefully, he’ll
accept the excuse. He threatened to pull our funding because I was too focused
on research to settle down and get married.”
“I heard,” she said, surprised he’d told
her something so personal. They talked all the time, but it was almost always
about work. “It’s probably just a passing whim,” she added, “brought on by your
cousin getting married. You can just make up an excuse for her now and then
later claim that she broke the engagement. You don’t really think he’ll stop
funding us, do you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, just
looked away, which was answer enough.
“Is he really so…so old-fashioned?” She
chose her words carefully, since she didn’t want to offend him. “I mean, to
insist that you not stay single.”
“Old-fashioned doesn’t even begin to
describe him. He wants to be an eighteenth-century lord of the manor.” There
was a slight bitterness in his brown eyes as he said the words—something she’d
never seen there before. He was usually such an even-tempered man.
“Maybe you could ask a friend to pose as
your fiancée,” she suggested. “Just for the wedding. That way, you can extend
the engagement as long as possible before you say it’s called off. By then,
maybe he’d feel so sorry for you about the broken engagement that the funding
would be safe.”
Jonathan arched his eyebrows. “Who would
agree to do something so crazy as pretend to be my fiancée?”
“I’d do it,” she volunteered without
thinking. Mostly, she was trying to make him feel better, and she didn’t think
through the implications until the words were spoken.
Her cheeks grew hot, and she lowered her
eyes to the peppermint wrapper she still held. “I mean, if you decided you
wanted to do it.”
***
You can find out more
about Engaging the Boss
here
.
It is the third book in the Heirs of Damon series, but can easily be read
without reading the other books.
Noelle handwrote her
first romance novel in a spiral-bound notebook when she was twelve, and she
hasn’t stopped writing since. She has lived in eight different states and
currently resides in Virginia, where she teaches English, reads any book she
can get her hands on, and offers tribute to a very spoiled cocker spaniel.
She loves travel,
art, history, and ice cream. After spending far too many years of her life in
graduate school, she has decided to reorient her priorities and focus on
writing contemporary romances. For more information, please check out her
website:
noelle-adams.com
.
Other
Books by Noelle Adams
One Hot Night: Three Contemporary
Romance Novellas