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He shifted from one leg to another. Spending time in close quarters with Natalie, watching her skirt swirl around her ass, wasn’t going to help him lose this boner anytime soon. “Let me look. I’ll let you know when I find them.”
She tossed her clipboard onto his guest chair—the one spot in the whole office unencumbered by piles of paper. “We can get through this whole mess faster if we work together. I can even devise an organizational structure for the records based on your work habits.”
Excitement turned her cheeks pink as she chewed her bottom lip and bounced from foot to foot. If she ever looked at him with the same amount of giddy anticipation, he’d be in even worse trouble than he was already.
“Trust me.” She locked gazes with him, hitting him with the full force of her blue eyes. “People pay me big bucks to do that for them.”
“Any other option?” He already knew the answer to that one.
She grinned. “You could toss me over your shoulder again and throw me in the cooler.”
The idea of touching her held more appeal than it should. He took a half step forward.
Natalie jumped back, but not before he noticed her quick intake of breath and how her eyes darkened with what looked at lot like lust.
He winked, loving the fact that he’d knocked her by–the–book self off kilter. “Gotcha.”
He couldn’t wait to do it again.
The filing cabinet was empty. Not just empty, but the drawers were still taped shut and the receipt—dated three years ago—sat inside one of the drawers. There was at least an inch of undisturbed dust on the handle. Natalie glanced around Sean’s paper–filled office. The man made less sense than wearing a ball gown to yoga class.
“Are you allergic to metal?”
He looked up from the stack of papers he was going though and peeked at her from beneath the brim of the hat he always wore. “Why?”
Spinning around to face him, she put her hands on her hips. “I’m trying to figure out why you’d leave a perfectly good four–drawer filing cabinet complete with hanging folders and color–coded tabs empty, and instead leave everything stacked a mile high on every flat surface.”
He did that one–sided grin thing that made her stomach do the loop–de–loop. “I have a sys
tem.”
“How’s that working for you so far?”
Sean looked around as if seeing his office for the first time, taking in the towers that had given up the ghost and fallen long ago and the ones wobbling with any significant exhale of breath. “Pretty shitty.”
Natalie chuckled at his assessment. Blunt. Honest. To the point. If he wasn’t such a giant pain in her ass, she’d be in danger of falling for him. Lucky for her, she’d already created a list of attributes she wanted in a man, and Sean didn’t qualify. Even if he had, he was her employee.
A heavy sigh escaped from her lips. Nothing to do but move on, so she took stock of the situation. They needed to make quick work of organizing the pounds of paperwork so she could take a look at the records and determine if there was any kind of a pattern to the things going wrong at the brewery. First the canceled bottle delivery that everyone at the brewery—including Sean— and now the suspicious leak. Then she’d be able to create a solution to avoid making the same errors in the future. Easy–peasy.
“Okay. Here’s the plan. I’ll start with the credenza. You tackle the desk. Make stacks for different types of paperwork. All quality assurance reports go in one stack, for example. Once you have your new piles, we’ll transfer them to the filing cabinet. Pull out anything you see from the last three months and put those files on the guest chair.”
He looked as though she’d just asked him to give a speech on national television while buck naked and doing one–armed pushups—an image that flashed into her mind and put her nether regions on full alert. Needing to do something with her suddenly jittery hands, she trailed her fingers across her cool, round pearls.
“I know it seems like a lot…” Her words came out in a breathy half whisper. “But I promise we’ll be done before you know it.”
She’d seen that pursed–lips look on Sean’s face before. Her clients always doubted before they became true believers. “I won’t even say the word flowchart while we’re doing it.”
“You just did.” He crossed his arms, pulling his Sweet Salvation Brewery T–shirt tight across his broad shoulders and making the short sleeves hike up, showing off plenty of sinewy muscle, from his thick forearm to his bulging biceps.
Her mouth turned to sawdust and her mind to mush. “Did what?” Damn, that breathy sound again.
“Say flowchart.” Sean took a step closer, not with intent, but as if he couldn’t help himself.
In normal circumstances, a step here or there wouldn’t make a bit of difference. But one stride on his long legs in the tiny, crowded office brought him almost toe to toe with her. Awareness crackled in the air between them, cool and crisp like the first burst of autumn after a decade’s worth of summer humidity. Solid brawn was not on her potential partner attribute list. Neither were broad shoulders or a sharp wit that snapped at her funny bone when she least expected it.
Feeling like she’d been set adrift on a roiling ocean, she grabbed frantically for a lifeline. Bossiness always worked wonders. “You know, you’re a real smartass. Enough stalling, let’s get to work.”
Something dark and hungry swirled in his brown–eyed gaze before it sank to her mouth. “It’s always the chatty ones.”
