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Chapter1
Clover
“It wasan absolute pleasure working with you as well,” I say smoothly as I hover my finger over the button for my boss’s extension. “Please hold for a moment and I’ll transfer you to Mr. Newton Smith.”
Through the door that separates my desk from his office, I listen to Rufus answer the overseas call.
I think of him leaning back in his chair, talking to the coffee producer with his unique brand of serious enthusiasm. A private smile plays at my mouth.
“Call me Rufus,” he said the first day I started to work for him.
And I do—to his face. But I really quite like calling him Mr. Newton Smith to everyone else when I can. It has a lovely formality to it that makes me sit up a little straighter in my chair.
While he finishes this phone call, I triple check that everything in his Special Projects online drive is properly labeled.
I love the satisfaction of finishing these proof-of-concept projects with him. There’s always a moment—once the final invoices are taken care of, the summary report has been printed, and the paper copies of the most essential pieces are sitting in a manila folder on my desk—when Rufus comes out of his cavernous, serious space and carefully circles my desk.
That moment is mere seconds away now, and a tingle races down my spine.
Heavy footsteps cross to the door, and I force myself not to blush.Get a grip, Clover.
Can’t help it, though. I have a crush on my boss, a hopeless, one-sided crush, and what is about to happen will feed it for another few months. He will have no idea, but I will float through the weekend on a high comparable to winning an Olympic medal or baking a perfect loaf of sourdough bread.
His office door swings open, and our gazes collide. I resist the urge to adjust my glasses.
“Well, we did it,” he says, his voice low and full of pride. “You’ve given a family-run coffee farm three years of solid orders, Clover. How does this feel?”
I smile, because there’s no way I can tell him out loud that it feels so brilliantly private, so personal and intimate, that it fills me with a bright, light happiness.
He means the work we’ve done over the last few weeks, not the way his proximity makes me feel, but all the same, I soak up the rare warmth of his proximity like a lizard plastering itself to a hot, sunbaked rock. I go very still, and just wait. If I don’t move too much, he’ll come even closer.
There is a chair next to my desk, but he doesn’t fit in it. Rufus is six-foot-seven, a towering hardwood tree of a man who might look lean from a distance—the height messing up whatever ratio you might expect from a human body—because he seems to be all arms and legs until it’s just the two of you in a small room, and then he’s…huge.
And I’m not a short girl. I’m five-foot-ten myself, but I still barely come up to Rufus’s shoulder.
So if he’s going to come closer—and I’m being very still, so I think he will—he’s going to have to sit on the edge of the heavy desk. I’ve made space for him there in anticipation of this moment.
He pauses, and his fingers brush the bare wood surface.
“We did it,” I repeat breathlessly.
“We did.” His gaze flicks down to the folder on my desk. “And you’ve already finished filing the details. Good girl.” I force myself not to shiver at the way he says that, or to read anything into the heavy silence that follows. He clears his throat. “Thanks for all the help. We pulled some late nights there.”
“Any time.”
“Oh, I hope not.” He laughs, a deep rich chuckle that makes me shiver. And then he exhales and sits, his hips on the edge of the desk, his long legs stretched out beside me. “Actually, I think you have earned the afternoon off.”
I almost don’t hear him, because I’m distracted by how his shoulders are straining the limits of his blazer. He usually keeps his body well away from me, keeping a desk or a whole room between us. Having an up close view is—
“Clover?”
I jerk my gaze up to his face, my cheeks blazing. “Sorry?”
“You can leave now.”
I’ve missed something. “Pardon?”
His brow furrows as he rakes a confused glance over my probably beet-red face. “I said, you can leave early today. I need to take care of some personal business.”
