Josie was sitting on my desk when I walked into my office. She was in a pencil skirt with her legs crossed, and she beamed at me when she saw me and uncrossed her legs. I wondered what it would be like to slide my hand up that bare leg and stick my hand in her candy jar.
She opened her mouth. Her lips were as red as a candy apple.
"I want you," she said. My whole body jerked. Josie looked at me in bemusement. "I just wanted you to know I didn't sleep last night," she said. "I was here all night."
I watched her warily as I hung up my overcoat. "Why were you here?"
"I did what you asked," she said. "Actually I did more than you asked. Rice cake?"
"No, thanks."
"But it's healthy!" She took a bite. "Yum, it tastes like cardboard and the tears of children."
"I don't understand how it took you all night to do one simple task," I said irritably.
"It wasn't one simple task," she countered. "I had to fix not just your script but your whole presentation. Now everything looks amazing. This is going to be the best presentation of your life."
Henry making me late had thrown off my schedule, and I was having trouble recalibrating. "The broadcast room needs to be set up," I said, moving around Josie to look for my notes on my desk.
"Everything's set up already," she said. "Here's your script. Read it over, and familiarize yourself with it."
I took the papers and scanned through them as we walked to the broadcast room.
"You aren't going to be reading from it, obviously," Josie said, "so I'll have a teleprompter app on my tablet going in case you forget what you're supposed to say."
"This isn't right at all!" I complained when I followed Josie into the room we were going to be livestreaming from. "Where's my chair?"
"You can't sit down at a table hunched over," she countered. "You need to stand up tall. Be confident. We have to go live soon. Did you read over the script?"
"This isn't what I wrote at all," I grumbled as Garrett stuck his head in the room and looked around appreciatively.
"It's better," Josie told me. "Trust me."
"Garrett, we can't do the presentation like this."
Garrett gave me an annoyed look. "It's not anything that serious. Most of the employees just ignore it. You should see the glazed looks," he said to Josie.
"You won't have any glazed looks with what I've prepared," Josie promised. Garrett came over and flicked through the slides.
"She changed everything," I said.
"It looks great," Garrett replied. "All the information's here."
"Broadcasting in ten," Lenny said from behind the camera.
Josie stepped up to me and swept a hand through my hair. "You look a little frazzled," she said. "Smile! You're a good-looking guy. Be the confident CEO. Also, let's get rid of this."
She unbuttoned my jacket. The muscles in my stomach twitched as her hands grazed my abs.
"We're a conservative pharmaceutical company," I protested. Josie tossed the jacket on a chair then undid my cufflinks, pocketed them, and rolled up my sleeves. Then she undid my tie. She draped it around her neck and undid the top button on my collar. The part of my mind that wasn't reeling from the abrupt change to the presentation format was wondering what she would look like wearing that tie and nothing else.
"Are you undressing me?" I asked her.
"Not like that!" she said and winked. "Though maybe tonight." She stuck her tongue out at me. "I just want to make you seem more approachable." She fussed with my hair some more. My skin felt tingly when her nails grazed my scalp.
She stepped back, inspected her work critically, then smiled broadly. "You look good!"
"Broadcasting in three!" Lenny announced. I could see a few hundred employees gathered in the lobby below, watching the presentation on a large screen.
