groaned at her stupidity. A single woman who might get custody of a little boy couldn’t afford to be fired!
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s just cold and I had things to do. So tell me what you want to work on and we can get started.”
“I’d like to catch up on what’s been going on, so I’ll need production schedules and the financials. Once you help me find those, you can go home.”
He didn’t smile. Didn’t give any reason at all for her heart to catch at the smooth baritone of his voice, but it did. Her entire body felt warm and soft, feminine in response to his masculinity.
She stepped back. She did not want to be attracted to him. It had taken her two long, miserable years to get over Greg’s death. And she refused to go through the misery of loss again by being attracted to a playboy who—as sure as the sun rises every day—would dump her.
Of course, she might not be attracted to Cullen as much as she was simply waking up from the sexual dead. It had been two years. And she had been feeling like her normal self for at least three months. Maybe this was just a stage?
She peeked at Cullen, knowing that beneath that soft sweater was a very hard male body. Something sweet and syrupy floated through her. Moving her gaze upward, she met his simmering dark eyes and knew she could get lost in them.
She swallowed. Nope. Not a stage. It was him. She was attracted to him.
He turned to walk back to the office. Following him, she caught Harry’s hand and brought him along with her.
“As far as the financials go, I don’t want those fancy reports that go out in the annual statement. I want the spreadsheets. The nuts and bolts.”
She stopped with a frown. She had access to everything, but if he was looking for the whys behind the line entries, she couldn’t help him. “Why didn’t you call Nolan, the accountant?”
He faced her. “Are you saying you can’t get me the financials?”
“No. I have them. Everything is in my filing cabinet. But—”
She stopped talking. First, his eyes were simmering sexily again and her whole body began to hum—which made her want to groan in frustration. Second, she was making this harder than it had to be. All she had to do was find a few documents for him. The faster she found them, the sooner she’d be at home making cookies.
She squeezed Harry’s hand. “I can get you anything you need.”
“Thank you.”
Cullen turned and resumed his walk to the executive suite. Wendy and Harry scurried behind him.
In her office, she stripped off her coat and removed Harry’s. Cullen stood patiently by her desk as she rummaged through her purse for the key to the filing cabinet. Walking over, she noticed the door to her boss’s office was open. Papers were strewn across his desk.
“Oh, you’re already working?”
Cullen nodded. “I typed a few letters. But there isn’t a printer in the office. I’m guessing I have to send my things to a remote printer, but I’m not sure which one is which.”
“E-mail them to me and I’ll print them.”
“Why don’t you just come to the computer with me and show me which printer to send them to?”
Okay. So he didn’t want her to see what he’d written. No big deal. Whatever he wanted to print was probably personal. Not her business. She not only got the message; she also agreed. The less she knew about this man and the faster she got away from him, the better.
She unlocked the cabinet, pulled out the accordion file that contained the backup documentation for the financials for the year that had passed and handed it to him.
He glanced at the packet, then back up at her. Her stomach flip-flopped. His eyes were incredible. Dark. Shiny. Sexy. And the perfect complement to his angular face. He had the look of a matador. Strong. Bold. Everything about him was dramatic, male.
“Is the forecast in here?”
With a quick shake of her head, she rid herself of those ridiculous thoughts, not sure where the heck they kept coming from but knowing they were absolutely wrong. She returned her attention to the open drawer and pulled the file folder for the five-year plan. “Here you go.”
“Great.”
Cullen took the folder from her hands and stepped back. He’d thought that bringing in Paul’s administrative assistant would make his life easier, but this woman wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. For a widow, she was young and incredibly good-looking. Long, loosely curled red hair fell to the shoulders of her thick green cable-knit sweater. Her cheeks had become pink in the cold, accenting the green of her eyes. Low-riding jeans hugged a shapely bottom.
He wasn’t sure what the heck had happened when she’d fallen into his arms after she’d slipped on the ice. Their eyes had met and he’d felt a jolt of something so foreign it had rendered him speechless. He couldn’t blame it on the fact that she was attractive. He knew hundreds of gorgeous women. Women even prettier than she was. He couldn’t say it was because she was sexy. He knew sexy women. And he couldn’t say he’d felt a jolt because he was happy to see her. He didn’t know her.
But whatever the hell that jolt was, he was smart enough to ignore it.
He was also taking that damned bell off the door. The whole point of having an executive entry was so the workers didn’t know when he was there or he wasn’t!
“Come on. Show me how to send these letters to a remote printer.”
She followed him into the office of the current company president and her little boy followed her.
“What’s your name?”
“Harry.”
Cullen couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Like Harry Potter?”
“No, like my grandpa.”
He turned to Wendy Winston. “So your father was a Harry?”
“No, his grandfather’s name was Harry.”
Confused, Cullen stopped and faced them again. He looked from Wendy to Harry and back to Wendy again. They didn’t look a thing alike. So the kid probably resembled his dad which meant that Grandpa Harry had been her late husband’s dad. Whatever the deal, he really didn’t care. He was trying to make light conversation so the afternoon would go more smoothly. If they wanted to play guessing games, he wasn’t interested.
He turned and walked behind the desk, falling into the uncomfortable desk chair. With a few keystrokes he minimized his letters and left a blank screen. He rose and motioned for Wendy to take a seat in the chair.
“Show me which printer to send these to.”
She sat. “Okay. Well, you just do all the things you need to do to print—” Using the mouse, she clicked the appropriate icon to get the print menu.
When the print
