That Boss Of Mine

Wheeler nodded dispassionately, curling his fingers around the coffee cup, which just went to show how suicidal he began to feel at the mention of his former client. “Yep. Denby’s account was the best one I had. I’m hoping maybe this sketch I’m working on now will win him back.”

“Had?” Miss Finnegan echoed. “Win him back? What are you talking about? He’s still your client.”

Wheeler glanced up, surprised. “He is?”

His secretary shrugged. “Sure.”

“Then...why was he here this morning? Other than acting as your orchid mentor, I mean?”

She shrugged, clearly unconcerned by his worry. “He just needed to get a few things straightened out about the new design you’re doing for him, that’s all. Why did you think Mr. Denby wouldn’t be your client anymore?”

He hesitated before answering. Naturally, it hadn’t escaped his notice that Audrey Finnegan wasn’t the most observant human being in the world. But surely even she could see how badly Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was foundering. He had, after all, pretty much spelled it out for her that first day. And then there was that small matter of him having virtually no furniture, nor any clients. That seemed to him as if it would be kind of a dead giveaway. But then, that was Wheeler. Always assuming the obvious.

“Well,” he began slowly, speaking his thoughts aloud, “there is that small matter of my having lost nearly every other client I have. I shouldn’t think Mr. Denby would be too different in that respect.”

“Oh, that,” Miss Finnegan said as she sipped her coffee. Amazing. She didn’t grimace once. “Mr. Denby is different, actually. And you didn’t need those other clients, anyway.”

Wheeler rather begged to differ, and didn’t hesitate to tell her so. “Oh, I think, Miss Finnegan, that I did need those other clients. Desperately, in fact. I do have bills to pay.” And lots of them, he recalled.

She wrinkled her nose as she shook her head, and Wheeler couldn’t help but think, for some reason, that the gesture was really...very...well, cute came to mind.

“No, you didn’t need them,” she insisted lightly before enjoying—enjoying—another sip of her coffee.

“I didn’t?”

She shook her head again. “Nah. They were alarmists.”

“They were?”

This time she nodded. “Those kinds of people are ready to bail at the slightest sign of adversity. They have no staying power whatsoever. You would have lost them anyway, eventually.”

“I would?”

She offered him an expression that assured him he was dreaming if he thought otherwise. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been going over your files as I’ve been rearranging them, and—”

Wheeler sat up straight at that, eyeing her in a panic. “You...you’ve been rearranging my files?”

She enjoyed another unconcerned sip of coffee. “Well, of course I’ve been rearranging your files. They were a mess—all alphabetical and everything. They made no sense at all. With all due respect to your former secretary, she could have learned a thing or two about filing.”

Wheeler closed his eyes. Rosalie, his former secretary, had been an absolute whiz at organizing his accounts. Although she wasn’t the biggest people person on the planet—okay, so she’d been abrasive, gruff and borderline obnoxious—her filing system would have been the envy of the Pentagon and the IRS. His associates had always considered her a file Nazi, but Wheeler had been a bit more charitable, thinking her more of a file queen. No, scratch that. What Rosalie had been was a file goddess. And now Miss Finnegan, the pretender to the throne, had “fixed” those files.

Oh, no...

“Anyway,” she went on, “I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with your different clients, and, in my opinion at least, a lot of them were just fly-by-nights. I mean, I know you were starting up a new business, so you had to take whatever came your way, but some of these people, Mr. Rush...they just weren’t the kind of clients you need. What you need to do is focus on attracting a more reliable, more stable account base.”

Wheeler narrowed his eyes at her. She sounded, almost, like she knew what she was talking about. “How so?” he ventured.

She waved a negligent hand through the air. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “You just focus on your designs. I’ll handle your accounts.”

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t think so. “Um, Miss Finnegan,” he began, striving for a diplomacy he was nowhere close to feeling in his surging panic, “I appreciate your wanting to take some of the heat, but honestly, I think you should tell me what you’re talking about.”

She smiled, those luscious lips that he just couldn’t quite ignore looking more tempting than ever. “Just trust me,” she said mildly. “I know what I’m doing.”

That, he thought, was open to debate. “But—”

“Is it okay if I take an extra half hour for lunch today?” she interrupted him. “I need to see about Marlene’s car.”

The change of subject nearly gave him mental whiplash. “No, before we talk about that, I think we need to talk about this other thing first.”

She studied him in confusion. “What other thing?”

“This thing with my accounts,” he prodded. “You’re not suggesting that you—”

“I’ll make the half hour up tomorrow,” she said, still not quite grasping the topic he wanted to put first. “I’ll only take thirty minutes for lunch, so it doesn’t mess up the time thing.”

“No, Miss Finnegan, before the time thing, back up to the other thing...the thing we were talking about a minute ago.”

She squinted at him. “Were we talking about another thing a minute ago?” she asked. “What was it? I can’t remember.”

“That thing,” he repeated emphatically. “That account thing. You know... That thing about how I should be attracting a more reliable account base. I want to talk about that.”

She squinted some more. “Did I say something about an account thing?”

He nodded. Vigorously. And he battled the urge to start pulling his hair out by the roots. “Yes. You did. Or, at least, you started to. And it sounded like what you were going to say about the account thing was going to make sense and be very helpful. What was it?”

She thought for a long moment, putting her entire body into the effort. She shifted her weight to one foot, an action that thrust one rounded hip to the side—and hitched up her skirt in a manner that Wheeler simply could not ignore. And then she crossed one hand over her midsection, a gesture that thrust her plump breasts up even higher, in another manner that Wheeler simply could not ignore.

His secretary might not be the most graceful person on the planet when she moved, he thought, but when she was standing still like this, she had the most elegant lines he had ever seen on another human being. And when she started nibbling her lip with great concentration... Well. Suffice it to say that, even though he was eager to hear her take on his state of business affairs, Wheeler was in absolutely no hurry for her to finish up whatever she might be thinking about.

But after several minutes of contemplation, the only comment she offered was, “Huh. How about that? I don’t remember what I was going to say.”

Wheeler closed his eyes again, feeling his last drop of hope dry up. Ah, well. It had probably just been a fluke, anyway. Miss Finnegan didn’t come across as too awfully savvy when it came to the business world. Without thinking, he lifted his coffee to his lips for an idle sip, and, as utter bitterness filled his mouth, he nearly choked to death.

Miss Finnegan immediately jumped to his rescue, which was unfortunate, because in doing so, she instinctively placed her own cup of coffee on his drafting table—his tilted drafting table—and the entire contents tipped over onto his truly revolutionary idea.

Wheeler watched with an almost detached feeling of defeat as what had promised to be the end of his worries was slowly obscured by a growing puddle of brown. And then, when his design was completely covered by the stain, the coffee, as if not quite finished ruining his life, spilled off the table and ran into his lap. Somehow the entire episode just seemed perfectly appropriate, and the only reaction he felt was one of vindication.

“Oh, no,” Miss Finnegan groaned. “I can’t believe I did that. Here, I can fix it. I swear I can.”

Before he had a chance to object, she was fleeing his office, only to return within moments with a massive collection of paper towels. And although Wheeler’s primary concern was for the design on his table, Miss Finnegan, evidently, was far more preoccupied by her concern for his lap. In any event, that was where she immediately focused her attentions.

And, my, but her attentions were...thorough. Nobody had ever gone after Wheeler’s lap quite the way Audrey Finnegan did.

For a moment he was simply too stunned by her actions to do anything to stop them. Then, for another—longer, more delirious—moment, he found himself not really wanting to do anything to stop them. Thankfully, though, sanity stepped in, in that next moment, and somehow he gathered his wits enough to react. Quickly he reached for her hands to remove them from where they had settled, in a place on his upper thighs that was far too likely to rouse suspicion—among other things—should she venture any farther. Then, as gently as he could, he nudged her away.

“Thank you, Miss Finnegan,” he said, “but I think you’ve done enough for one morning.” Or one lifetime, for that matter, he thought further.

“I am so, so sorry,” she told him.