Free Engaging the Boss (Heirs of Damon) by Noelle Adams

working on email, and Andrew was talking to their uncle
about the inn he and Laurel managed in Santorini.
    Since
everyone else was occupied, Jonathan figured he was free to do what he wanted.
    He’d
been playing for about an hour when he was conscious of a presence behind him.
    Reluctantly,
he turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway, staring at him with narrowed
eyes.
    “So
this is what you’ve been doing when you sneak away,” she said.
    He
gave her a sheepish shrug. “Nothing else to do.”
    “Isn’t
this game like twenty years old?”
    “I
used to play it as a kid, when I was here on holiday. I can’t believe my uncle
still has it.”
    She
came over to sit beside him on the floor, leaning back against the couch just
as he was. He’d taken off the jacket and tie he’d worn for dinner, but she
still wore a long gray skirt with a very high slit on one side and a blue silk
top that matched her eyes. She seemed unconscious of her nice clothes, though,
as she picked up a second joystick. “How do you play?”
    He’d
expected her to mock him. She seemed to be serious, however, gazing up at him
and waiting for instructions.
    He
felt the strangest overflow of feeling, a tension in his chest, in his stomach.
He’d never met anyone like her, never realized anyone could know him as well as
she did and still want to be around him, when it wasn’t even part of her job,
even when he was unquestionably unimpressive.
    “Jonathan?”
she prompted, her expression becoming slightly confused.
    “Yeah,”
he said, shaking himself out of the weird thought. “It’s not hard. You can pick
it up quickly. The object is to collect stars and starfish while not getting
hit with birds and fish.”
    She
did pick it up quickly. She was smart and coordinated, and in twenty minutes
she could provide him with a decent challenge. They played for two hours,
focused intently on the game and become more and more competitive as she kept
getting closer to beating him.
    She
didn’t beat him. No one ever had. But she came surprisingly close a few times.
There was something intoxicating about it, about how she laughed, about how
intensely she focused, about how excited she became when she did well.
    “All
right,” she said at last, setting down her joystick after just missing out on a
win. “I give up for tonight. We’ll try again later, though, so don’t get too
comfortable.”
    He
wasn’t comfortable. His back hurt a little from sitting too long on the floor
like this, and he was now having trouble not leering at her legs. She’d
evidently forgotten she was wearing a dress, and one of her legs was fully
visible through the high slit.
    She
was wearing another pair of those irresistible lace-topped stockings. He could
see where the lace met her skin.
    She
noticed his distraction and got flustered when she saw how much leg she was
exposing. “Sorry,” she mumbled, adjusting her skirt and tucking her leg back
under it. “I’m not used to wearing clothes like this.”
    He
wasn’t used to seeing her in clothes like that, but he realized she’d always
been beautiful. Even in less revealing clothes and with her hair pulled back in
a ponytail, she hadn’t looked that much different.
    He’d
just never been conscious of it before.
    He
was very much afraid that he would never see her as anything but gorgeous from
now on. Even back in the lab, in her white lab coat and no-nonsense work mood,
he’d still want her this intensely.
    It
was a very disturbing thought.
    She
still seemed embarrassed—either at her inadvertent exposure or at the way he
was staring at her—as she got to her feet. “I think I’m going to go to bed.”
    “Yeah,”
he said, glancing at his watch. “I guess it’s pretty late.”
    They
went down to their room. He took a shower, since he was slightly aroused and it
wouldn’t be smart to go to bed with her in that condition. By the time he came
out, she was under the covers and had turned off all but the light on