kitchen.
“Yeah. You were right. She had been a little worried, but I explained the situation to her and she won’t be expecting me or a phone call for a few days.”
“Always good to keep your mother informed,” Josh said. “I ordered pizza. It should be here any minute.”
She smiled. He smiled. For Olivia things began to fall comfortably into place. As long as she remembered her mother’s life, her mother’s warnings, she would get out of this with both her dignity and her sanity.
As they ate, Olivia began to detail her duties, most of which Josh had once performed himself but had forgotten, given that he hadn’t had much contact with them in at least two years. She rattled off a list so long, Josh began to get nervous. But when she described her system of filing documents in her computer and also the hard copies in the cabinets that lined the wall beside her cubicle, Josh felt light-headed. This time he couldn’t blame the feeling on being unreasonably attracted to Olivia. This time the feeling was overwhelm.
He didn’t realize how much work she did and wondered if he wasn’t going to have to replace her with two people.
“Wow,” he said, leaning back on his chair and tossing his paper napkin to the table. “I’m never going to learn all this stuff in a weekend.”
“Sure you will,” Olivia said confidently. “In fact, while I was on the phone with my mother I realized we could make this a lot easier if we just do the training in the office tomorrow. That way I can show you the filing cabinets, show you what’s in the drawers, show you the color-coding system for the different grocery stores, show you the document system in the computer.”
Josh heaved a heavy sigh. “Okay, makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Olivia said, then she yawned. “It does.”
“I’m sorry. You’re tired,” Josh said, rising from his chair. “I’m not a very good host. I hardly ever have people over…especially overnight,” he said, recognizing he was tripping over his tongue to make sure she knew he didn’t have women over often. Actually, he didn’t have women over at all. First, he worked too much. Second, if he was going to sleep with someone he usually preferred her turf. He didn’t like people invading his sanctuary, yet he had invited Olivia without hesitation or consideration. And he wasn’t uncomfortable with her being here.
Puzzled by that notion, Josh led Olivia upstairs. He carried her small suitcase and she brought her overnight bag. He tossed her luggage onto the bed, and then immediately pivoted and left the room, telling Olivia he was going for clean sheets.
He really was going for clean bedclothes, but the truth was he was confused by how intimately he felt about a woman he hardly knew. He wasn’t so blind or so foolish as to dismiss four years of working together for eight hours a day as meaningless, but they’d rarely held personal conversations. He hadn’t told her his deepest, darkest secrets. She hadn’t told him hers. Yet, he felt comfortable letting her into his house. Even reminding himself that he should be more wary if only because of their age difference, he still wasn’t getting qualms of conscience or darts of fear.
Josh liked Olivia a lot more than he realized, but more than that, all this ease had to mean that he trusted her. Pushing himself to the limit on the issue, as he stretched to the top shelf for new—he wasn’t letting her sleep on old—sheets, he realized he would trust her with his life.
That took away some of the incredulity and replaced it with simple curiosity. The only other person he trusted like this was his uncle, Hilton Martin. He didn’t even trust Gina this way.
When he entered the room, Olivia had already stripped the bed of the old linens. The sheets and pillowcases were wadded in a ball on the floor. The blankets and floral comforter lay on the cherry-wood cedar chest at the foot of the bed. She stood with her back to him, staring out the window, waiting for him, and Josh felt a hundred strange sensations. The one that seemed to clamor for more attention than all the rest was an intense desire to kiss her.
Just the thought of kissing her made his lips tingle. All his blood surged to his chest and his heart beat wildly.
He cleared his throat. “Here are the sheets.”
She turned with a smile. “Thanks, you can go. I’ll get this.”
“You sure?” He knew the polite thing to do would be to help her, but red lights and warning signals were flashing in his brain. The polite thing might be to help, but the smart thing would be to run.
Her smile grew. “Of course I’m sure. I’ve made the bed a hundred times.”
He almost asked for whom, as irrational, unwarranted jealousy swept through him. He tried to stop it. He tried to reason it away. In the end, he tossed the linens to the bed and grabbed the fitted sheet and snapped it open.
“Josh, really, I can do this,” Olivia protested, but she giggled as if seeing him doing housework appealed to her.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m fine.”
“Josh, I want to make the bed and take a shower,” she said, then walked over and tried to yank the sheet from his hands. “If you go I can have this done in two minutes.”
“What? And with me here, it will take longer?”
“No,” she said, but she laughed again. At his stupidity, no doubt, because Josh knew he was acting stupid. But whatever her reason for laughing, Josh recognized he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard her laugh. More than that, though, he liked the sound. It warmed him all over.
With that thought, he realized he was staring down at her. She turned her beautiful green-blue eyes up at him, and he noticed that they were standing so close that with one lift of his hand he could be touching her. If he lowered his face just a couple of inches he could be kissing her.
He swallowed.
Two minutes ago he had his first ever thought of kissing her. Now, suddenly, he felt he would die if he didn’t.
Chapter Three
When his gaze stayed on her mouth, Olivia realized Josh was going to kiss her and her breath froze in her throat. Her blood tingled through her veins. Her knees weakened. For four long years she had been waiting for this man to kiss her. Now that the moment had arrived, she savored every second of the exquisite torture of anticipation, stunned that her dreams were about to come true.
But when he returned his gaze to hers, she also saw from the look in his eyes that he was confused about why he wanted to kiss her—confused enough that he didn’t follow through. He didn’t kiss her. He took two paces back and spun away so quickly, Olivia felt a breeze.
“Well, I guess you can handle putting these sheets on by yourself. Good night, Olivia,” he said as he bent to grab the old linens from the floor, and nearly sprinted out of the room.
Olivia collapsed on the bed, wondering what the heck had just happened. He seemed to be seeing her differently, but since he didn’t follow through it also confirmed that he was fighting the fact that the way he saw her was changing. Which meant she couldn’t let the near miss with kissing cloud how she felt about him or her decision to leave. She might have had twenty seconds of glorious anticipation, but for him that “almost kiss” was nothing more
