Sugar And Spice (37 page)

“Here you are.”

“Good assessment, Sam.” Brad might as well have patted the intern on his head and handed him a Milk-Bone. “For that, you can select the first nomenclature.”

Sam made a big production of rooting around, then pulling out a slip of paper. He opened it, read the name, smiled to himself and walked away.

“What do you bet he drew the boss?” Tim said.

“Better him than us,” Natalie said.

“What, and miss an opportunity for a good suck-up? There could be a raise in it for you, Miss Harris,”

Tim mocked.

One by one, they each went up and drew a name. Everyone except Karl, who called himself a

“conscientious objector to the overt capitalism of the holiday season.”

“No fruitcake for him,” Natalie whispered to Angie.

Her friend laughed, then headed up to pull a name out of the box. She flashed “Sam” and a frown at Natalie. “At least it’s better than having Jonathan,” Angie said when she reached her desk again.

“I thought they fired him.”

“Nope, he’s still here. He seals himself in the janitor’s closet every day. Something about the radiation levels in the office or something. I think Brad’s afraid of a workers’ comp suit.”

“Dena?” Brad called, then made no secret of watching her flagrant approach.

The new receptionist trotted forward, her breast implants high and prominent, like a one-woman billboard for Dr. 90210. Her leather miniskirt sashayed, and with it, the eyes of every man in the room, except for Waldo, who was on a one-man quest for a lifetime of celibacy. Judging by the XXX movies Waldo rented on his lunch breaks, he had the one-man thing down.

“I hate her,” Natalie said, gesturing toward Dena.

“Hey, I’m president of her non–fan club. Especially since she stole Joe before I could even get out the door to go to lunch with him.”

Dena’s flirting had drawn the UPS driver’s attention last month, never to return again to Angie, not after he’d taken a few spins down Dena Drive.

Now he delivered all his packages personally to Dena—who gave the words confirmation signature a whole new meaning.

Brad gestured toward Natalie. “Nettie,” he said.

One year here and the boss had yet to learn her name. Clearly a sign she should leave.

“Good luck,” Angie whispered.

Natalie strode across the room. She hoped she didn’t draw Clive’s name. Clive was convinced he was a Klingon and therefore not allowed to speak English. With a sigh, she closed her eyes, dipped her hand into the box and pulled out a folded slip of paper.

“Aren’t you going to look and see who it is?” Angie asked when Natalie walked back to her cubicle. “You could have drawn my name.”

“Fate isn’t that kind, believe me. I bet I got the new mail room guy.”

“The one who brings fried bugs for his lunch? Isn’t he trying out for Fear Factor or something?”

Natalie grinned. “I could get him an ant farm. Or an exterminator’s license.”

“Now you’re stalling,” Angie said, reaching forward and yanking the tiny slip of paper out of Natalie’s hand before she could stop her. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

Angie turned the paper toward Natalie.

She looked at the name, blinked, then looked again. But the four letters hadn’t changed. “Oh God, I can’t have him. I’ll—”

“Take this as the awesome opportunity it is and run with it. How long are you going to have a crush and not act on it? Besides, if we stick to our plan to ditch this place after the first, you can’t leave without at least giving Jake a ride around the moon.”

“I couldn’t.” Natalie paused. “I shouldn’t.”

“Come on, Nat. Live a little. Take a chance. What’s the worst that could happen? You could end up with that”—she pointed toward Jake, who had loosened his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt, making him sexier than anything Calvin Klein had ever put on a billboard—“in your bed?”

“Well, now that you put it that way…” Natalie said, grinning. She had gone way too long complaining about her stagnant life. She’d finally broken off her on-again, off-again relationship with Steve this past summer. Making that change had left her feeling empowered. Finally, she, Natalie Harris, master stutterer, was taking the reins.

Maybe she could do the same with Jake. After all, hadn’t he been a huge help to her in the last couple of months? Helping her work her way up in the company? Whenever she asked him a question or didn’t understand a transaction, he took his time to explain things to her to make sure she had a grasp on the task before she left his office.

If he took that much time explaining the ins and outs of corporate tax laws, what would he do with a very different kind of education? The kind that happened in her bedroom, between the sheets?

“As a Secret Santa, you don’t have to talk to him,” Angie said, her voice low in Natalie’s ear. “But you can communicate in other ways. Like by sending him a garter belt and directions to your apartment.”

Natalie wasn’t going to go that far, but maybe she could play a different game. She was creative. Surely she could come up with a solution that would give her cake and a bite of it too.

Because if she didn’t do it now, she’d never have another chance. After the holidays, she was going to take Angie’s advice and find a new job, one that allowed her to repay the community that had helped her so many years ago. The shelter program was a start, but it wasn’t enough. Natalie wanted—no, needed—to make a bigger impact.

To do that, she had to do what Angie had said. Live a little. Take some risks. With her life, her career and most of all with the sexy man in the glass office.

If she didn’t do it now, when would she?

“Remember, this is a secret only for twelve days,” Angie said. “What are you going to do after that?”

Natalie grinned. “If all goes well, I’ll be taking Jake Lyons for a sleigh ride. Or two.”

Jake would have preferred to skip Christmas altogether.

In fact, he had done exactly that in years past, jetting off to the Bahamas, the Caribbean or anywhere that didn’t have a bunch of fat guys in red chortling ho, ho, ho.

But this year, before he could rack up some frequent flyer miles, he’d gone and promised his cousin he’d stay through the holidays to help with the company. Things had been going south for a long time. Brad needed him to help set them straight.

And then there was this Secret Santa thing. As part of a company effort to increase morale, Brad said Jake was expected to participate. Jake never bought presents. Never bothered with a tree. Never found a lot of use for a holiday that put a cheery red hat on creating credit card debt.

But here he was on Thursday morning, holding a box wrapped by one of the staff in Bath Essentials, marked for Natalie Harris in the salesperson’s curly script.

Of all names to draw, that had been the last one he’d expected.

Until today, he hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words with the shy account manager. He knew her mainly for her attention to detail, her commitment to staying until the job was done and her avoidance of him.

But then his curiosity had gotten the better of him and he’d found himself following her into the family center, to see what it was that made the children watch her, still and quiet, wrapped in the magic of her voice and her storytelling. He’d seen a different side of Natalie, one that had intrigued him. She was fun and inventive, with a creative edge that he’d never realized existed.

There was something about this woman, about the way she acted so shy yet seemed to be masking a side of herself that was a little wild. When she was passionate about something, like the Our Hope Shelter, Natalie displayed a very alluring tiger beneath her kitten exterior.

It had all ignited his imagination, along with the kind of continual need to see her that he hadn’t felt since his first crush in seventh grade.

A soft knock sounded on his door, and he looked up. She was there, as if conjured up by his imagination.

He gave the box a gentle push under his desk with his foot, then cleared his throat. “Natalie. How can I help you?”

“I-I-I—”

She was stuttering again. She only seemed to do that around him. Perhaps he made her nervous, though he couldn’t for the life of him think of a reason why. Either way, for some weird reason, Jake found her stammered words endearing, not annoying.

Definitely a sign he needed to book a flight to Jamaica. Too much holiday Muzak and he was getting all sentimental.

“Do you need something?” he supplied when she kept doing the single-vowel dance.

“I-I-I want t-t-t—” Helpless, she held up a sheaf of papers he’d left for her to complete.

“Want my signature on the Maxten paperwork?”

She nodded, then moved forward and around his desk, circumventing the piles of work that Brad had dumped on him over the last few days. The only clean space was directly in front of him. Reaching for it would topple the work mountains. Natalie paused a split second, then slipped into the space beside him, avoiding a teetering pile with the grace only a woman had, and laid the papers down.

Her perfume floated lightly on the air between them, a scent so warm and homey, it made him think of chocolate chip cookies and milk. The woman who wore the scent, however, had a body that took his mind to a place that had nothing to do with a kitchen or anything June Cleaver ever baked.

She wore a straight red skirt that ended at her knees, revealing strong, long legs set off by strappy black heels. A sparkling black holiday sweater grazed her curves, dipping a little in the front as she bent over to retrieve a pen and hand it to him, giving him a view of perfectly shaped breasts fringed by black lace.

Sexy. Intriguing. And definitely evidence of a lurking jungle cat.

“Jake?”

Her soft voice made him jerk his gaze away from her chest and back up to her face. “Sorry.

Daydreaming.”

More like fantasizing, but he kept that to himself.

“C-c-can you—” She gave up on the sentence and directed the pen toward him.

“Sure.” He looked down at the document, and for a second, his mind went blank. “Where?”

She laughed, a quiet, very merry sound. “H-h-here.” She flipped a couple of pages and pointed. Right beside the “Sign Here” Post-it.

Duh.

He scrawled his name across the line, then handed the papers up to her. When he did, their hands touched, sending an electric jolt through him.

Hell, you’d think he’d never touched a woman before the way his body was reacting. It had to be the crooning of Dean Martin coming through the office speakers. Or maybe the sushi bordering on sashimi he’d had for lunch.

Or maybe he was getting soft. First he was reading stories to preschoolers, now he was actually shopping for Christmas and thinking about one of the employees in a way that had nothing to do with work.

“Someone gave you a poinsettia,” she said, gesturing to the plant that had arrived that morning and was sitting in the corner, because he’d yet to clear a space for it. “I love them, don’t you?”

“I’d love it a lot more if it could file and organize for me, but yeah, they’re nice.”

“When I was a little girl,” she said softly, “my mother always had a pointsettia at Christmas. She said they brought good luck or something. But then…well, it wasn’t true.” A wistfulness appeared in her eyes.

“Take it,” he said, gesturing to the plant. “I’m sure you’ll give it a much better home than I will.”

“Are you sure?”

With her smiling like that at him, he’d have bought her a whole damned nursery. “Absolutely.”

“Thanks.” She picked up the plant, then started to head out of his office. That smile, however, was the kind that stayed with a man, that starred in his fantasies. A smile he didn’t want to see disappear, not yet. “Natalie?”

She pivoted back, her long brown hair swirling around her shoulders as she did. Jake had always thought of himself as a blonde man.

Until now.

“Y-y-yeah?”

“Uh, someone left your Secret Santa gift in here.” He pulled the box out from under his desk and held it out to her.

For a second, she didn’t move, just looked at the box, then at him. Oh shit. He’d just given out his secret.

He hadn’t thought about how “coincidental” this would be. All he’d been thinking about was seeing whether she smiled like that when she unwrapped the lotion or whatever the hell it was that he’d bought at the Bath Essentials store. Women’s products weren’t his forte.

Natalie reached for the box, took it out of his hands, then smiled again. He saw her swallow, then purse her lips, pause, then push a word out. “Thanks.”

She turned to go again. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“I have t-t-to,” she paused, drew in a breath. “Get back to work.”

Then she was gone, leaving Jake’s fantasy of seeing her smile again unfulfilled.

Damn.

He shook his head, then pulled one of the piles in front of him and vowed to tackle it instead of thinking about the pretty brunette. For one, she was too…nice. The kind of woman who had white picket fence expectations written all over her. For another, she worked in the same office and he knew all too well the disaster spelled by putting office and romance together.

And for a third—

He couldn’t think of a third. But he was sure there was another really good reason for him to stop thinking about her, stop being mesmerized by this woman who had captured the hearts of the Our Hope Shelter under-eight set.

Not to mention every ounce of his attention. He sighed again, then opened the first file his hands touched. Time to focus on getting this company back up and running with the profitability it had had during his grandfather’s tenure.

It didn’t matter if Jake hated working with numbers, if every day he’d spent in college going after an accounting degree his father had chosen for him had been torture. The company was in trouble, it was part of the Lyons family, and Jake would suck it up and do what his father had asked of him because he was a Lyons and that meant something.

A quick rap sounded on his door. “Hey, Jakey, this one’s for you.” Brad ticktocked a brightly wrapped package.