frowned. “Why—”
“Does it matter?” she interrupted. Steel suddenly hardened that soft Southern accent. “I’m technically employed by the temp agency, Mr. Anderson. They were satisfied. If you’re not…” She shrugged, as if she wouldn’t care if their paths never crossed again. “Call them and they’ll send someone else over.”
Okay. That put him in his place. Josh had no reason to feel she’d slapped him across the face, because she was right. Her employment history—or lack thereof—was none of his business. Not as long as she fulfilled her duties as Anderson, Inc.’s receptionist.
But he was irritated by her reticence because he wanted to know about her. Know her. And a few minutes ago he could have sworn there were sparks flying between them. Even before that, at the gym, her gaze meeting his had given him an I’m-Adam-you’re-Eve rush that he hadn’t felt in a long, long while.
With a mental shrug, he threw off his disappointment. Lori was beautiful, but so were a lot of women. She was an enigma, but he’d never been very good at puzzles. And the bottom line was that she wasn’t interested in his…interest.
Sure, their mutual attraction was undeniable. Some things a man just knew; like, he knew which side to part his hair on or the exact spot to hit the basketball backboard for his best lay-up. But, right now Lori was putting up a sign that screamed Back Off in big neon letters, and she didn’t need to flash it at him more than once.
So fine. The lady wanted nothing to do with him. He got it. He’d put his focus strictly on business and forget all about her.
He did okay for a while. A few hours. There were a dozen phone calls to field, a fire or two to put out at one of the construction sites. By afternoon, though, when he was back at his desk and staring at piles of work, the only thing moving through his head was the enticing, peachy scent of his new receptionist.
Ms. Hanson. He’d decided to call her that.
She responded in the prim manner of the schoolmistress who had once ruled over this old building. With an efficiency that put his teeth on edge, she located the files he asked for. Tracked down a wayward bill. Watered the plant in the corner of his office that he usually treated to desert rations. After those words over her resumé, never once did she seem to be aware of him the way he couldn’t help being aware of her.
When the sky outside his window started to darken, he wandered into the office’s reception area to check on the supply of firewood in the brass box sitting beside the woodburning stove. But it was chock-full and there was a telltale, winter-air pink on the receptionist’s cheeks and nose.
He frowned at her. “Ms. Hanson. Restocking the wood isn’t your responsibility.”
From the chair at her desk, she looked up at him. A pencil was stuck behind her ear, pushing a lock of hair forward so that it tangled in her curly black eyelashes. “I don’t mind.”
“Well I do.” His voice was just short of surly. “It’s heavy. You could be hurt.”
She brushed the hair out of her eyes. “I’m stronger than I look.”
“So you’ve told me before,” he said. “That day at the gym.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Then you should believe me.”
Instead of a good comeback the only thing that occurred to him was the memory of his body lying across hers, so he stomped back to his office and dropped behind his desk. He was acting like an oaf, or worse, a jerk, but there was something about her that aroused his protective instincts. It was that wariness. It was that Southern voice.
It was that peachy scent.
He opened up the nearest file and pretended he was looking at it. Perhaps he’d been all wrong about the mutual attraction. He was thirty-seven, supposedly old enough to know when something was there and when something wasn’t. But maybe he was going through some pre-midlife crisis. Maybe he was entering some delusional psychological state in which he imagined beautiful women had the hots for him.
What a depressing thought.
Depressing enough to send him stomping back to the reception area. “Ms. Hanson?” he barked.
She blinked those astonishing blue eyes of hers. “Mr. Anderson?”
He hesitated. For God’s sake, he couldn’t come right out and ask her if she was attracted to him. There was probably some sort of employment code about that, not to mention what his sisters would say if they ever heard about it. His ears burned just imagining his mother’s reaction to something so bad-mannered.
“Call me Josh,” he muttered, then stalked back to his desk.
As the afternoon wore on, his mood darkened. Lori Hanson was hell on his ego. On Christmas Eve, he’d been forced into buying the first round of beers for the team because he’d been bested by a woman. He’d laughed about it, been a good sport about his friends’ ribbing, because he had no problem with strong females. Risk-taking women were trouble, but not strong ones. Until he’d turned ten and outstripped all three of his older sisters in size, they’d flattened him often enough for him to be used to it.
But to make him doubt his powers of perception! That ability to recognize when a woman liked a man and when she didn’t was the only thing a man had between himself and humiliation. Since Kay’s death he’d enjoyed the companionship of women on occasion, always with the certainty that his attention was welcome. Because he knew which women welcomed him. Always.
But now…
Now he didn’t know if he had his signals crossed or if the ones she sent out were the problem.
Sighing, he cast a look at the deepening dark outside his window, then at the clock. It was 4:55. Well, the good news was that any second now Ms. How-the-hell-do-I-know-what-she’s-thinking Hanson would be on her way home. Then he could settle down and finish all the work that he should have been finishing that afternoon.
At 5:05 she hadn’t left her desk.
At 5:20, the only movements she’d made were to run her hands through her hair and frown at the computer screen.
When it was exactly 5:30, he made himself exit his office and tell her she’d been free to leave for half an hour. She hmmed absently, wrapped up with some paperwork on her desk.
By 5:45, he considered taking all his paperwork and dumping it on her, because only one of them seemed to be able to work in the other’s presence.
At 6:00 he couldn’t take it anymore. “Ms. Hanson,” he yelled from his desk.
“Yes, Mr. Anderson?” came from the reception area.
“Josh.” He grabbed hold of his temper. “Ms. Hanson, it’s time for you to go home.”
He thought she made another one of those absent hmms. With a look at the massive amount of work he had yet to finish, he strode into the reception area. “Ms. Hanson,” he said from between his teeth. “Go home.”
She didn’t look at him. “Soon.”
“You’ve done enough for today.” While I’ve done nothing but make myself crazy. “It’s time to knock off.”
