Page 3 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

He swallowed and his expression…On a normal human, I’d say it was uncertainty. Which was impossible, because Alex Owings was never uncertain, not about anything. “I’ve done my best this past year to forget our kiss.” He rubbed his chin. “That mind-blowingly sexy kiss.”

I snorted. “If it had been so amazing, you wouldn’t have gone home with someone else.” I spoke without thinking and regretted the words immediately. I squared my shoulders and glared at him, angry at myself for revealing too much and angry at him for making me do it.

“I was there with someone else. A date.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “A woman who deserved more than being abandoned at a club while her date went home with someone else. By the time I’d ended things with her, you’d started working for me, and I had to keep our relationship professional.”

“I worked for you because you insisted on it.”

“Because you’re the best,” he said, but there was no smug smirk. He looked sincere, apologetic even. I’d never seen him like this, and I didn’t know what to do with this version of him. “I had every intention of keeping things professional, but I can’t forget that kiss. I can’t stop wondering what might have happened if I’d left that club with you, taken you back to—”

“You didn’t.” I couldn’t handle hearing him finish that sentence. “And I do work for you. You missed your shot, big guy.”

I tried my best to speak in a teasing tone, but my heart was pounding a bit too hard for it to be convincing.

I’d wondered, too.

I’d thought about that night every time his beautiful green eyes flashed my way, every time he was close enough for me to make out the small scar on his top lip.

He ducked his head so his gaze was on a level with mine, as though he knew what he did to me, as though he could hear my racing heart or scent my arousal. “I might not be able to go back in time and take you home for a night in my bed, but I can date you.” He cleared his throat. “I want to date you.”

I ran his words over in my mind several times before they sounded like identifiable English. “I don’t date colleagues and I certainly won’t date my boss.”

I waited, sure he was going to turn this into some sort of joke at any moment, sure he was either trying to humiliate me or get in my pants. And if a little voice in the back of my brain reminded me he’d always treated me with respect, that from everything I’d seen of him he was a genuinely good guy, I shut that little voice down.

“And it’s against company policy.”

He nodded. “It is against company policy, and for good reason. I should know, since I made the rules, but if you owned a substantial stock in the company, enough so that you weren’t working for me, so that we were on equal footing—”

“Is this some sort of practical joke?” Anger pushed me to my feet. How dare he walk into my office and make me…Make me feel…I mean who did he think he was…He couldn’t possibly be serious about offering me stock in his company. That kind of offer from a man who loved this company as much as he did, it just…It couldn’t be real.

“Joke?” he asked, surprised. “No. I wouldn’t—”

“Get out.”

He got to his feet. “I’m dead serious, Jill. I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe, because I’m pretty sure you were there for that kiss fourteen months ago and I know you felt what I felt. I know you did, because I felt your nipples harden against my chest even through that ridiculous blouse you were wearing. I heard you moan into my mouth even over the music that was so loud I thought my ears were going to bleed. I—”

I only listened to his nonsense as long as I did because I was reliving the kiss with him while he spoke. I was remembering the feel of his big hands on my body as he pulled me closer, the way his tongue had teased and caressed as though we weren’t hooking up in some loud, dirty club, but had all the time in the world to enjoy each other.

I shook off the memory. “I am not for sale. Get the hell out of my office.”

Shock blanched his perfect, diamond-cut features, before his blue eyes hardened and his jaw twitched. “I’m not trying to buy you,” he said. “I’m trying to do something romantic, here.”

I rolled my eyes. I wouldn’t let him get to me, wouldn’t let anything he said touch me, because this man…Less than ten minutes in my office and my mask had slipped, emotions I never let out at work burst from me. He was dangerous, and I never dated dangerous guys. “Save it for the twenty-year-old bimbos you date,” I said. “They haven’t learned, yet, the way guys like you work.”

“Guys like me?” I saw the anger in his expression, saw the disbelief, and my body responded like he’d touched me intimately. He was the most handsome guy I’d ever met, but that anger, that raw emotion, it did things to me. I had to hold tight to the edge of my desk not to reach for him, not to grab him and let myself drown in those electric emotions he felt so freely.

Just as fast as the anger had blown in, though, it vanished and he smiled. He licked his full lips and scanned my body like it already belonged to him, the entitled jerk. “You noticed how the ages of the women I date?”

I bit back a growl. I would not give him the pleasure of getting under my skin. I would not do it. “I didn’t notice. Aubrey told me about them when she warned me to be careful around you. She also told me you asked her to break up with them for you, because you didn’t know how to do it yourself.”

He huffed. “That was one time. She wouldn’t take no for an answer and I…” He stopped, his bluster vanishing. “I was new to the whole dating thing. I screwed up. I won’t do that with you.”

“Get out.” I couldn’t handle him sincere and so…God, so damn vulnerable. How did he do that? How did he bare himself so unabashedly?

He might think he wanted me, might think I was worth those stock options, but I knew better. I knew how far south this thing could go if we gave into it. We had an amazing working relationship. Why the hell did he want to mess with that? “And don’t you dare come back unless you’re here to talk about business and only business.”

He grinned, but his expression was soft, no sign of teasing. “I’ll send over the paperwork for the stock options this afternoon. Whether you date me or not, you deserve a share in the company. You’ve made us a ton of money and your family’s resorts have been huge assets to us.”

I glared at him, but he didn’t back down.

“Have a good weekend,” he said, his air light and jaunty, like we’d just shared a good laugh and I wasn’t calculating how many years in prison I’d get for stabbing him in the eye with my four-inch heel.

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