My Boss's Boss: A Steamy Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 5

  “Please don’t be upset, Emma,” he said, watching me carefully. “It’s just business. It’s not personal.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” I said, and I left the room.

  11

  “Emma, can we talk?”

  “No.”

  That was the extent of my conversations with Aiden over the next few days. I didn’t answer his texts. And the flowers he sent were in a dusty corner of the breakroom, not on my desk.

  It was hard, seeing Aiden around the store, looking so good in his dark suits, but that’s all the attraction had ever been. Just a physical reaction. Just a sexual thing. Or so I kept telling myself.

  In the meantime, I spent long hours holed up in Mr. Miller’s office planning and plotting. I put myself on a crash course to learn about HH&H corporate policies, and I even brainstormed with some of my online teachers and classmates for my MBA program.

  And the Monday before Thanksgiving, I was ready to make my move.

  “Good morning,” I said, knocking on the door to Aiden’s office.

  He looked up, either surprised to see me at all or just surprised to hear me speaking pleasantly to him. “Good morning, Emma. Come on in.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  Aiden got to his feet as Mr. Miller and a tall woman in her late fifties entered his office.

  “Mr. Donovan, this is the mayor of Fayetteville, Susan Finch.”

  “Madame Mayor, it’s an honor,” Aiden said smoothly, but he shot a quick, quizzical glance my way. “Please, have a seat.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mayor Finch said. She stood tall and straight, modeling the good posture she’d always taught us when she coached gym classes at the Fayetteville High School. “I’m here on official business. It won’t take long.”

  She turned to me, and I handed her a document which she read from. “I’m here to inform you that December 15th has been declared an official holiday in Fayetteville.” She handed the paper to Aiden who took it with a raised eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure why you’re telling me this?”

  “I’m telling you this because the town holiday known from now on as the Fayetteville Fall Festival revolves around this store. It's a traditional holiday in which many people gather together outside this store, playing games, socializing, singing.”

  “Singing carols, you mean,” Aiden said.

  “Singing whatever they want. It’s a free country,” she snapped.

  “And another part of this holiday is the appearance of a very important public figure in our town, Mr. Miller,” I added.

  “Wearing whatever he wants, no doubt,” Aiden said.

  “I have my suit all picked out,” Mr. Miller said, his words a bit snarky, but his tone as even, respectful, and professional as ever.

  “He looks good in red and white,” I said.

  Aiden looked at us and at the proclamation in his hand. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, I jumped in.

  “Have you ever been to the Sheldon Heights, Washington store, Mr. Donovan?”

  Puzzled, he looked at me and shook his head.

  “That store celebrates a special town holiday, a kind of Wild West festival in honor of an early pioneer. And in East Texas, there’s a Happy Hearth & Home store that sponsors a local radio. And in Kansas—”

  Aiden held up his hand, and I fell silent. He looked at me steadily before turning his attention back to the woman standing next to me. “Mayor Finch, Miller’s Hearth & Home would be honored to do our part to help Fayetteville celebrate its newest holiday.”

  “Thank you, young man,” she said, and behind her, I saw Mr. Miller sigh with relief. He actually looked a little weak at the knee, and he hastily sat down in one of the chairs across from the desk. I saw Aiden go over to talk to him as I escorted the mayor out.

  After that, I got back to work. It was an extremely busy time for the store with Black Friday coming up. But at least we’d been victorious. We’d be able to have our Christmas Festival as planned—just with a slightly different name.

  Actually, we’d won two victories when I thought about it, because Aiden had announced at a staff meeting the other day that the store wouldn’t be opening on Thanksgiving Day after all.

  Aiden. Just thinking about him made the triumphant feeling fade. He’d been gracious in his office with the mayor, but I still couldn’t quite figure out what his views on the matter were. Did he always follow the corporate office’s directives? Was business always about the bottom line to him? Did individual and town preferences never factor in?

  I was still musing about that when I entered Mr. Miller’s office later that day. He beamed at me. “Helen was so thrilled when I told her.”

  “We did good,” I said.

  “We did! And you were wonderful, coming up with that precedent for what other branches have done. Very well handled, my dear.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and Helen said that you should come at two-thirty on Thursday.”

  “That sounds great.” Mr. Miller’s wife was a phenomenal cook. I could practically taste the pumpkin pie already.

  “Oh, and will you tell Mr. Donovan?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “About what time to arrive. Oh, and maybe you could give him directions…”

  Mr. Miller kept talking, but I’d stopped listening. He couldn’t mean—he hadn’t seriously invited Aiden for Thanksgiving dinner, had he?”

  He trailed off at the look on my face. “Is something the matter?”

  “You invited him to Thanksgiving?”

  “Of course.”

  “But—but I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “Well, I admit that the transition has been a little shaky. And I really don’t like all these new policies. But the man is part of our company now. And he’s new in town, he doesn’t have family here. What kind of person would I be if I let him eat in a diner on Thanksgiving?”

  “But—” I tried to marshal my thoughts, but nothing sprang to mind.

  “We keep telling him what a great town Fayetteville is. How it’s a place where politeness and tradition and hospitality matter. So let’s show him what small-town values really mean.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said faintly.

  How was I going to spend an entire holiday socializing with a man I wasn’t even speaking to?

  12

  “You have a lovely home,” Aiden said to Helen Miller, handing her a bottle of wine.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Come on in. John will be out in a minute, he’s feeling a bit tired today. And you know Emma,” she said, gesturing to where I sat in the living room. “Please make yourself at home. Can I get you something to drink?”

  A few moments later, Aiden was sitting in an armchair adjacent to the couch I was sitting on. He had on faded blue jeans and a denim-colored sweater over a white shirt. The blue of the sweater really brought out the color of his eyes. He took a swig from his long-neck bottle of beer while I dipped a carrot stick into some ranch dressing, trying to figure out what to say.

  “It’s been a busy week,” Aiden said.

  I nodded. It definitely had been.

  “You’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you.”

  “For what?” I said, surprise making me drop the baby carrot onto my plate.

  “For finding a way to make the Christmas Festival happen.”

  “The Fayetteville Fall Festival, you mean.”

  “If you say so,” he said, but his words were accompanied with a wink.

  I wished I could return his easy grin, but I still couldn’t quite figure out how I felt about him. I mean, I knew some things. Like that the sight of him made my pulse race. Made me breathing speed up. Made me squeeze my thighs together. I knew that he was all kinds of sexy. But I didn’t know what he really felt about my store. Or my town. Or me.

  He was only here for three more months. Well,
two now. Didn’t he ever want to settle somewhere and get to know the people around him? Get to know his neighbors? His employees? His customers? Or was he just an unattached fixer who swooped in, got a store in line, and moved on, Lone Ranger-style?

  But then Mr. Miller appeared, and I used that as an excuse to extract myself from Aiden’s piercing gaze. Mr. Miller looked pale, and I asked how he was feeling when I went to greet him. He assured me he was fine, just tired. I could understand that. It was a very busy time of the year for those of us in retail.

  Dinner was lovely. Aiden was the perfect guest, complimenting Mrs. Miller’s food, regaling us with stories of crazy customers he’d encountered over the years. Mr. Miller chimed in with some anecdotes, too, but he seemed more subdued than usual. I wasn’t sure if his reticence had to do with Aiden’s presence or not. Manners had caused him to issue the invitation, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t warmed up to Aiden much.

  After dinner, I helped Mrs. Miller in the kitchen as Aiden and Mr. Miller brought dishes out to us. But after we got the food put away and the table cleared, she insisted that she’d do the rest later, and Mr. Miller invited us into the backyard.

  Bundled up in our coats, gloves, and scarves, we followed the Millers into the cold night air. To my surprise, one of the evergreen trees in the back yard had been decorated with ornaments and lights.

  “I know it’s cold, but it’s so pretty back here, we thought we could brave the temperature for a little while,” Mrs. Miller explained while Mr. Miller started a fire in a fire pit. He brought out two plastic chairs, and Aiden and I moved a wooden porch swing down onto the lawn.

  A few minutes later, we were sipping hot chocolate and watching the fire and the tree. Mrs. Miller had a radio set to a channel that played all Christmas carols, and suddenly the cold didn’t matter anymore.

  It was a beautiful evening. The sky was clear and the stars were bright. Aiden commented on it more than once. I supposed that where his apartment was in Chicago, it was a lot harder to see stars this well.

  The radio station played a mix of carols, and we chimed in on some, mangling the words and having fun. Mrs. Miller kept popping up to refill our steaming mugs of hot chocolate, but when she was still, she sat very close to her husband. He was constantly touching her arm, her shoulder, or her hair, and it was wonderful to see how in love they were. They’d been married for four decades. Clearly, they still cherished their relationship very much.

  As I watched the logs snap in the fire, with the beautiful Christmas tree beyond it, I wondered when I’d find a love like that. I’d dated some and had a boyfriend or two in college, but I’d never known true love.

  I wondered if Aiden had. We were scrunched together on the porch swing, and I could feel his firm thigh next to mine, though many layers of winter clothing separated us. He was in his late thirties, so he must have been in plenty of relationships. Maybe he’d even been married at some point—I’d never thought to ask.

  But had he been in any relationships recently? It couldn’t be easy since he went on assignment to so many different parts of the country. A pang of sadness hit me at the thought that he might have a girl in every store, so to speak, but even though I wasn’t sure about many things when it came to him, I doubted that. He didn’t strike me as that kind of man.

  But then again, he hadn’t struck me as a man who would cancel Christmas, either. But maybe that had been more his corporation’s doing than his? Then I remembered his early stance against the elf costumes. I wished I had time to get to know him better. And away from the store. At the store, there were so many factors. Being professional. Following policy. My desire to be loyal to Mr. Miller. It was all so complicated.

  Tonight, however, was anything but complicated. We fell silent as the radio played some instrumental holiday music. The crackle of the fire was mesmerizing. I stared at it until I felt something against my hand. Looking down, I saw Aiden’s dark leather glove next to my knitted one. He slid his fingers under mine and clasped my hand.

  I stilled, thinking rapidly. We hadn’t spoken much in the past week though he’d kept texting me. And sent flowers to my apartment, too. Did I want to start things with him? Part of me did—part of me really did. But part of me held back. The simple fact of the matter was that I didn’t know him as well as I should know someone I was being intimate with. And with the holidays and the craziness of the store, I couldn’t quite figure out a way we could find time to get to know each other better.

  Making my decision, I pulled my hand away, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw his face harden. But then I took off my glove and set it aside. Picking up his hand, I tugged his glove off too. Then I clasped his hand and squeezed it.

  With his free hand, he reached up and unwound the plaid woolen scarf from around his neck. He wrapped the scarf around our clutched hands, providing instant warmth.

  Smiling, I leaned against him as we stared into the fire.

  Later, back inside, we warmed up and had pie. Aiden was talking to Mrs. Miller when I noticed that Mr. Miller wasn’t eating his slice of pecan. “Would you rather have pumpkin?”

  “No, no, pecan is my favorite. I’m just not that hungry today.” He set down his fork.

  Now that I thought about it, he hadn’t eaten much at dinner, either. He absentmindedly rubbed at his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just feeling a bit sore. Don’t tell Helen, but I tried to move that porch swing yesterday so we could sit around the fire.”

  “By yourself?”

  He chuckled. “That’s exactly the reaction Helen would have, so don’t tell her.”

  I nodded, but I was upset with him, too. It had taken both Aiden and I working together to move the heavy wooden swing. And Mr. Miller wasn’t a young man.

  He seemed more like himself when we said goodnight. Aiden and I thanked the Millers for a lovely evening as we bundled into our coats. Mrs. Miller presented us both with a little shopping bag full of plastic containers of leftovers. “You’re too kind, but I’m not going to say no,” Aiden said with a grin. “That meal was too good for that.”

  And then we were outside on the front porch. Alone. For the first time in quite some time.

  “They’re a great couple,” Aiden said, his face in the shadows.

  “Yes. I never really thought about it much because they’re like my grandparents, but they really are.”

  “Where are you parked? Can I walk you to your car?”

  “I’m right there,” I said, pointing at the street in front of the house.

  “Oh, okay. My car’s on the other side of the street.” But he didn’t make any move to leave. Nor did I. “Look, about the Christmas Festival…”

  He paused and I took a step toward him. It was disconcerting not to be able to see his blue eyes in the darkness. Normally, the Millers had a porch light, but it had been temporarily replaced by a string of twinkly gold Christmas lights that provided little illumination.

  “I still don’t think it’s a good idea from a business standpoint. But I admire how you went after it and made it happen.”

  I took one more step forward and looked up at him. “Thank you. Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you ever think that personal feelings should affect business decisions?”

  He rubbed a gloved had across his chin. “No. Or maybe rarely. But that doesn’t mean that my management style is necessarily the best.”

  A quick laugh escaped me. I knew him well enough to know he didn’t really mean that. “But you think that it is.”

  “Well, yeah, or I wouldn’t use it.”

  I thought about it. Could I accept that about him? That business would always come first? I was studying to get my MBA. That was probably what I was supposed to believe, too. But maybe not. Maybe there was some other option for businesses in small towns in which the people were very close. Our customers were loyal to Miller’s store the way I was loyal to Mr. Miller. That’s what kept th
e majority of them from driving thirty miles up the road to the big box stores.

  “But you’ll find your way. Every business leader is a little different.”

  I nodded, thinking about that.

  “Hey, look.” Aiden was pointing toward the roof of the porch above us.

  “What?” I asked, following his gaze but not seeing anything special.

  “It’s mistletoe.”

  My pulse quickened even as I frowned at the spot he was pointing to. “I think that’s an old bird’s nest.”

  “Close enough,” Aiden said, humor in his voice, and then he pulled me toward him. My eyes closed as I stood on my tiptoes, my mouth seeking his. And then his lips were on mine, his arms around me, and it felt right. I couldn’t explain it exactly after all my mental debate about him lately—but somehow it felt exactly right. Like I was meant to be in his arms. Like he was supposed to be kissing me.

  Melting into his embrace, I returned his kiss, savoring it. Until a sudden light flashed across us both. Breaking apart, we turned toward the door that was now open.

  Mr. Miller stood there, staring at us. Looking shocked. “You—uhhh… Helen found your scarf out back,” he said, holding it up. “You two are… are you—” But he never finished his sentence.

  Instead, he dropped the scar and clutched at his chest.

  And fell through the doorway and onto the ground at our feet.

  13

  “He’s stable,” I told Aiden on the phone the next morning. Helen and I had ridden in the ambulance last night while Aiden followed in his car. But as soon as Mr. Miller was out of emergency and admitted to a room, Aiden had left. I didn’t blame him, he needed to catch at least a few hours of sleep before the store opened for Black Friday at six.

  Now it was eleven, and I’d fielded calls from Aiden and other employees all morning. Everyone had inquired about Mr. Miller even while questioning me about various work-related issues. They were all concerned, but they were also doing their best to keep the store running smoothly in Mr. Miller’s and my absence.