Chapter 14
Chris
My heart wasn’t pounding because of her. My lips didn’t tingle from her breath washing over them when the air left her lungs when she fell into my arms. Being attracted to her was not an option. It couldn’t be. I was her boss. What would the other employees think? And she was a spoiled, flirtatious brat, so whether I was her boss didn’t matter. Because even if I hadn't been her boss, I shouldn’t want to touch her. Hell, more than touch her. I wanted to be with her. Only I didn’t. Not truly. This was just some sort of high school reunion gone wrong. The one woman I couldn’t have. The one woman I wanted.
I needed to get rid of that notion. Fast.
When I held her in my arms, the older ladies inside waved at us, which was what had made me put Melinda back on her feet and out of my arms faster than a cannonball could fly. No matter how much I wanted to hold her closer, run my fingers through her hair and kiss her lips.
She was a temptation.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than throw our clothes to the wind and let out all the sexual frustration we had between us, but the way she made my heart thud, I just knew that if we slept together, it would only make everything more complicated than they already were.
This fucking sucked. Sucked… No! I had to clear my head. Seriously. Cold shower.
I rubbed a hand over my mouth and headed toward my car. From my windshield, I saw her talking to the older ladies that had observed us through the window. They were a great bunch. A little crazy, but Ben loved it when they came into the bar. They were something else.
And judging from how Melinda was waving her hands as I watched her speak, she was talking about me. I’d really pissed her off. I hadn't meant to. Or well, I had. I'd said the first thing that sprung to mind to keep her at bay. Now, I had a feeling she was going to be late to work just to piss me off, but I would make sure it wouldn’t irk me in the least. Instead, I’d tell her I'd been stressed out with everything going on, and that was why I had been acting like an ass, which was true. But with “everything going on,” I was genuinely referring to my helpless attraction to her.
The rink still needed to be decorated for the New Year’s gala. Maybe she was waiting to hear back from her connections in New York, but if I reminded her, it would only be another fight. She kept telling me she had things under control. And it wasn’t like I was micromanaging anyone else. I had to learn to trust her, no matter how stressed I was. And I guessed I already did. As an employee. Just not as a person. And things had gotten mixed up.
That was never good.
My phone rang, jerking my attention away from the window. It was Ben, “Hey, man. What’s up?”
“Uh, where are you? The meeting started an hour ago. We’ve gone through a lot of coffee waiting for you and tackled whatever we could in your absence. Mainly coffee. And some doughnuts.”
“Ben, what time did you think the meeting started?”
“Uh, eight,” he said as if it were obvious.
“It starts at nine−thirty, buddy. And it's nine o’clock now.”
“Oh. I may have told some of the others to get there for eight. I did wonder why they gave me angry stares.”
I covered my mouth with my fist to keep my chuckle in. Ben always did this. He showed up early to all meetings, forgetting what time they started. I’d rather he be very early than very late. I had to pick and choose my battles and this one? I just thought it was hilarious.
“Well,” he muttered. “I’ll see you here.” Ben quickly hung up, embarrassed for having done this for the fourth time in two weeks. He’d told me as a kid he was always late and had made it a habit to think of meeting times as being one hour earlier than they were, to show up on time. Sometimes that habit still kicked in, even though he was now super punctual.
I couldn’t blame him for getting things mixed up—after all, he stayed up last most nights running his own business on top of planning for the bar opening at the resort. He was doing his best to juggle it all, and that was all I care about. I gave one last parting glance to the women inside the café, my eyes focused on a certain blonde that drove me wild.
With a heavy sigh and a flood of memories from the other night, I put the car in reverse and got on my way to the resort.
As I pulled into the parking lot, Melinda came in right behind me.
“Oh, look, you showed up on time. I was getting worried you’d be late.”
“Goes to show how well you know me, then,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder with attitude and strutting away. Melinda left me enveloped in her sweet scent— vanilla with a hint of spice. It was enough to make me crush my cup and toss it in the trash, coffee and all. Hopefully, Ben had some new coffee brewing. And some of those donuts.
Light crunches under my boot told me it was an unusually warm day. Some of the snow was melting, giving way as I stomped toward the door. That seemed to be my M.O these days. Grouchy, brooding, short temperament, stomping ahead, and it all started when little Miss Priss came to work for me.
Opening the door, I found everyone seated in the lobby, chatting away. And, go figure, Melinda sat right next to Ben, and he had his arm on the back of the couch like I did the other night. His fingers behaved, on the other hand, and didn't reach for her shoulder as mine had. Good. It had to stay that way between them.
The truth was, it would bother me if they got together because I had feelings for her. I just needed to sort them out. Kick them out, more like it.
“Hey, everyone,” I greeted, plopping into the chair in front of the gas fireplace.
“Hey, Chris.”
