story. The one that would fix her reputation in the industry while appealing to her sense of fair play and her drive to help people at the same time. If she went undercover, surely she could get the facts for the exposé, and this time, there would be no embarrassing counter-story exposing the lack of foundation for her accusations.
Embarrassing and nearly career killing. Thanks to social media shares and the eternal stores of video, her blunder would never be forgotten. But she could give her audience something else to play with. As long as she didn’t make a single mistake with this investigation. When she blew the whistle on LBC, it would be career making. A triumph that would erase the mistakes of her last investigation.
Or so she’d laid out in a foolproof mental plan that ended up having a remarkable number of holes.
Instead, she’d spent her first few hours on the job following Adelaide around as the admin explained how Xavier envisioned things working around LBC—and how fast he expected Laurel to get it that way. Apparently, the old manager, Marjorie, had left operations in a bit of disarray when she’d left, but Mr. LeBlanc couldn’t be bothered to tell her his expectations himself.
At one o’clock, she’d had enough.
Feigning hunger and fatigue, she begged off from Adelaide’s cheerful tour of the facility and bearded the lion in his den. She didn’t mind hard work, but only if there was a distinct payoff, and so far, she hadn’t seen one. It was time to shake things up.
Xavier LeBlanc glanced up at her sharp knock, his deep blue eyes registering not one iota of surprise or curiosity—nothing. It was a great trick, one she wished she knew how to replicate. It would come in handy as she pretended she knew what the hell she was doing at this new gig.
In lieu of that, she’d settle for a mentor who could give her the insight she needed.
“Got a minute?” she asked and didn’t wait for the answer. He would see her whether he liked it or not. How was she supposed to figure out who was responsible for the fraud inside these walls if she didn’t keep the man in charge very, very close?
His gaze tracked her as she waltzed right into his office with confidence. He seemed like the type who wouldn’t appreciate a mousey approach.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, his sinfully sexy voice rumbling in his chest.
She missed a step. His sexiness quotient really shouldn’t be something she noticed. At all. Xavier LeBlanc wasn’t allowed to be sexy. He was her boss and she’d been hired based on a lie. One she’d told with good reason, and all of the experience on her résumé was real. But still.
None of that equaled free rein to be attracted to the man behind the desk. And none of that stopped her insides from quivering as his gaze slid down her face to her mouth. He’d done that in the interview more than once and she’d blown it off then. She thought she’d been mistaken. That they’d been stray looks that didn’t mean anything. She’d imagined it.
Today? Punch in the girl parts.
She could no more pretend it hadn’t happened than she could ignore it. Did Xavier have any clue how unsettling it was to have a man who looked like him slide his gaze to your mouth as if he couldn’t decide how to kiss you? Not if. How. Because it was happening and he wanted you to anticipate it.
Okay, she had to ignore that. She had a job. Two jobs. Neither were going to go well if she didn’t pull it together. Besides, he hadn’t done or said anything inappropriate. Likely she was still imagining it.
“Adelaide is a sweet lady,” Laurel began. “But I don’t get the impression she’s fully communicating your vision as well as I would hope. Would it be possible for you to be a little more hands-on?”
In a totally nonpervy way, of course, she added silently as the atmosphere in the room went dead still. Totally could have phrased that better. More professional. Less I want you on this desk right now.
Xavier’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “What, exactly, are you asking me to do?”
Oh, man. Surely he didn’t mean for that to sound as leading as it did. But then, she’d started it. Was he expecting her to finish it?
Her mind immediately filled in those blanks with several things she could ask him to do. Curiosity was both her strength and her biggest weakness, and she almost never hesitated to investigate things she was dying to know, like whether Xavier’s shoulders felt as strong and broad as they looked and how he planned to kiss her.
Of course, she’d never say that out loud. She couldn’t. Well, okay, she totally could and she had a feeling Xavier would deliver. But she wouldn’t. It was highly unethical, for more reasons than one.
But she couldn’t get the sudden and sharp images out of her head of what might happen if she did take the hint in his voice and really laid out what she might like. Nothing wrong with a little harmless fantasizing about a sexy man, was there?
“I, um...” Voice too husky. Not professional. Focus. She cleared her throat. “It’s my first day. I was hoping you and I might talk about your expectations.”
Good. That didn’t sound like the lead-in to a seduction scene at all.
“I expect you to manage the operations of this charity,” he said succinctly. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“I got that part.” Sexy, but either Xavier was obtuse or he had way more confidence in her than he had a right to. “But this is your vision I’m executing. I don’t know anything about you or your ideas for how things should work. Tell me what my typical day should look like.”
Xavier lifted his hands from the keyboard of his laptop and laced them together in a deliberately precise gesture that had the mark of a man demonstrating his patience. His hands were strong and capable, with long lean fingers that she had to stop envisioning on her body.
“That’s what I asked Adelaide to do. If she’s failing to—”
“No, no.” God, no. The last thing she’d intended to do was put a spotlight on Adelaide. The poor woman probably had nightmares about Xavier as it was. “She’s great. Very helpful. But I want to hear it straight from you. We’re going to be working very closely together, after all.”
“We’re doing nothing of the kind. I hired you to be invisible and ensure that I never have to think about the operations of this place.”
Oh. That was not going to work. Laurel leaned forward and laced her own hands together near the edge of the desk, mirroring his pose. “See, that’s exactly that sort of thing that Adelaide could never convey. She showed me where departments are and introduced me to people. But I need the mind of Xavier LeBlanc to mesh with mine so we’re in sync. Tell me what you’d do. That’s the best way to ensure you don’t have to think about things, because I will instantly know how you’d want something handled.”
And that philosophy had the added bonus of filling in the gaps of her skill set, not to mention allowing her to grill him on how much he knew about the fraud. Her sources had been volunteers in the food pantry and they had given her several credible tips about substitutions that didn’t make it into the books, among other things. What she already knew was likely the tip of the iceberg. In her line of work, there was always more to discover.
But she needed to know how high up
