The Boss's Christmas Proposal. Allison Leigh

aside, replaced by the reminder that he had deliberately withheld from her the fact that he had even scheduled this meeting.

      She looked over at him. “Yes?”

      Sue was giving her a reassessing look. “Oh. It was that star.” The open, friendly expression on her face was gone. In its place was that odd combination of deference and suspicious fascination that Kimi had come to recognize when people discovered she was a Taka. Before she could respond, Sue quickly excused herself and disappeared out the door along with the dispatched groupies.

      The only other people remaining in the training room were Grace Ishida, Shin Endo and a few others, who had their heads bent in quiet discussion at the head of the room.

      Greg stopped in front of her. “Do you intend to disregard my authority at every turn?”

      Her lips parted, insult digging through her. “Do you intend to exclude me from all staff functions?”

      “You’re not officially on the staff until you’ve completed your paperwork with Human Resources.”

      “Which I thought I would be doing until I discovered you had directed me to a completely unoccupied—” she realized her voice had risen, and hurriedly lowered it again “—an unoccupied department. If you had intended for me to learn about the staff meeting, you would have told me so yourself. You had plenty of opportunity, after all, but you would rather instruct me on the finer points of a television remote control. I am here to work, Mr. Sherman, and I would like the opportunity to be allowed to do so. Despite your obvious belief otherwise, I am not incompetent.”

      Annoyance tightened the already hard line of his jaw. “My apologies if it seemed that I implied any such thing. My point is merely that your presence here will be distracting enough without you looking—” his gaze raked down her body, scorching her skin “—like this. If you felt such compulsion to attend this meeting, you could have taken the time to change out of this unsuitable getup.”

      She was overtired. That was the only reason there was a deep sting behind her eyes. Yes, her outfit was somewhat less than conservative, but she was hardly dressed like a prostitute. Nevertheless, she could eat crow if she had to. She had already gotten plenty of practice while getting herself reinstated with the university, after all.

      She made herself dip her head in a slight bow. “An error in my judgment for which I apologize. I thought it better not to be any tardier than I already was.” She pressed her lips together for a moment and swallowed the constriction in her throat. “I am not here to be a distraction to anyone. I am here to be part of Taka Kyoto.” How had he put it? “To be part of the family.”

      His slashing eyebrows quirked together over his blade-sharp nose. “And therein rests the problem, Ms. Taka. You’re part of the family. Do you really think that anyone within these walls is ever going to be able to forget that?”

      Kimi brushed the palms of her cold hands down the sleeves of her blouse. Disappointment coursed through her, sharp and deep. “I had hoped so, Mr. Sherman,” she finally admitted huskily. “But that does not mean that I will tuck my tail and run back home to Mommy and Daddy. As I said, I am here to work. Once I begin, if you find me so unsatisfactory, you will undoubtedly treat me to a set of those walking papers Mr. Endo was talking about. But I am not walking away before I have even begun.”

      With her words still settling around them, she turned and did walk away because there was another thing she had learned from Helen. And that was the graceful art of making an exit.

      Helen had just never warned Kimi that after said exit, a woman had to lean against a wall where she would not be seen, so her knees could stop shaking.

       Chapter Three

      “No, Bridget, don’t worry about it. Last thing we need is a flu bug being spread around the hotel. Stay home, and take care of yourself.” Greg disconnected the call and stared at the mess that had accumulated in only one day without his assistant.

      God knew what shape the desk would be in by the time Bridget recovered.

      He exhaled roughly and picked up the hotel phone to dial Human Resources. They’d have to assign someone temporarily since it now appeared that Bridget would, at the very least, be away for several days. “I need a body who can manage to answer basic correspondence and can keep me on schedule without requiring my constant babysitting,” he told the girl who answered. “And I need them immediately.”

      “We’ll send someone over to your office right away, sir.”

      “Thank you—” What was the girl’s name? She’d come on board yesterday. Before Kimiko had set her sexy booted toe on the property. He grimaced. Focused harder. A redhead from Australia. “—Sheila.” He nearly pounced on the name, feeling oddly victorious.

      “My pleasure, sir.”

      He hung up again and went into the bathroom adjoining his office to finish shaving, which he’d been doing before Bridget’s call interrupted him. Then he grabbed a fresh tie from the spares he kept in the closet and flipped it around the collar of his unfastened shirt. If he hadn’t spent the entire night working in his office, he’d be taking care of these matters in his room.

      From the small television in his office he listened to the international news. His phone buzzed again, and because he had no Bridget and no fill-in for her yet, he went out to answer it. “Sherman.”

      “Don’t you sound so intimidating, honey.” The female voice was bright and cheerful and sounded as if she were right next door rather than back in Berkeley, California, where his mother lived in the house he’d bought her two years earlier. “How’s my little boy?”

      He hit the speaker button and turned down the volume on the television. “All grown up, Mona.” Which was more than he could say for his mother. “What’s wrong?”

      She laughed a little too heartily for a little too long. “Nothing has to be wrong for me to call my son.”

      Theoretically that was true, Greg knew, but experience told a different tale. “Okay, so how are you? You’re taking your blood pressure medicine like you’re supposed to?” He started buttoning up his shirt.

      Through the speaker her exaggerated sigh sounded even more false. “I’m fine. Actually, I have good news.”

      He paused. Looked at the phone warily. “Oh?”

      “Now, don’t go sounding like that,” she warned in a rush. “I’m just going on a little vacation, and I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t call and worry when I wasn’t home. Europe! Isn’t that the most exciting thing? You know how much trouble it was last year to get my passport—my goodness, it never would have come through if not for you—and now I’m getting to use it.”

      The passport had been needed because she’d insisted on visiting him in Düsseldorf, where he’d been managing an aging grande dame of a hotel. But once there, she’d hated Germany and had flown home early. He hadn’t been sorry to see her go. She was his mother, and he wanted her well. But close they were not.

      He flipped up his collar and worked on the last two buttons. “Where in Europe?”

      “Oh, we’ll go where the spirit moves us.”

      He sat down on the corner of his desk. “We?” he prompted cautiously.

      “I’m not very likely to go alone, am I?”

      He rolled his head around on his suddenly tight neck. “Who is he?”

      “Who says it’s a he?”

      Because it always was. He kept the thought to himself and waited. Fortunately, it didn’t take long. His mother was a flighty creature who couldn’t keep two cents in her pocket at any one time, but she was at least pretty honest about it.

      “His name is Ralph,” she finally said in a rush. “Can you believe that I’ve fallen