Free Crazy for the Boss (Crazy in Love Book 1) by Ashlee Mallory Page A

handbag off the seat next to her and, with a wave, started across the restaurant.
    He watched her as she left, noticing how, in the past few weeks, she’d relaxed her no-nonsense masculine style to something slightly more feminine. The black pencil skirt hugged her surprisingly enticing curves and flipped provocatively around her knees. She’d even taken to loosening her hair a bit, so that a tendril or two framed her face.
    She paused when she caught sight of Kimberly, who was making a direct beeline for him—he’d bet having waited for Quinn to leave—before shaking her head and probably muttering something under her breath.
    Quinn was definitely unlike any woman he’d met before. In a good way.
    He thought about not having her around the office while she vacationed in Idaho. And even though he’d told her he was more than capable of running things without her, there certainly would be something missing.

    * * *
    Q uinn took a moment at the door of the restaurant to watch as Kimberly approached James, fawning over him as Quinn had come to expect. James smiled like he always did and sipped his drink while she talked. She knew that he was just being polite, not wanting to hurt her feelings, preferring his women a little older and more worldly. Which didn’t really help the strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that had been becoming more and more regular.
    A small sigh pulled at the back of her throat.
    Wait. Where’d that come from?
    Before James could spot her spying from the front door, Quinn turned and raced out of the restaurant. Had she really been considering, for a minute, putting off her meeting so she could share dessert with James?
    It was one thing these past few weeks to have suddenly found herself wanting to look her best—or at least less like a prude and more like the young semi-attractive woman she knew she could be—and another thing to consider blowing off work to put herself under the spell of James Thornhill any more than she had to.
    James was her boss.
    Quinn would never date her boss under any circumstance, least of all when she was now only three months away from having the medical bills paid in full. Not to mention that said boss was a womanizing philanderer allergic to any romantic commitment that lasted longer than a common cold.
    And then there was the fact that he would never in a million years find anyone as ordinary as her as dating material.
    But knowing all of this didn’t seem to help her ease the conflict she was struggling with of late.
    Quinn waved to James’s driver but kept walking, needing the few blocks to the office to clear her head. Fortunately, it was a warmer-than-average afternoon in San Francisco for January, and she had her jacket to ward off any chill.
    What she’d told James, about feeling like she’d become his Girl Friday of late, had been absolutely true. In fact, maybe it was this codependency that was the reason she couldn’t go an hour—awake or asleep—without some passing thought that involved the guy.
    After all, they’d spent nearly fifteen hours a day almost six days a week together since she’d started. She was bound to become delusional, what with the lack of regular interaction with any other man—or person, for that matter.
    Her roommates already had been hinting that she spent more time with James than either of them in the previous year. Which was precisely why this break, this mini-vacation back home, was so needed.
    She had to get away from his influence. Had to see that she could exist outside of James Thornhill’s sphere, something that seemed almost unthinkable the more time she spent with the man.
    Which was ridiculous. She’d always prided herself on being an intelligent and independent woman.
    It was best she had time to herself to remember that.

Chapter 9
    “ T his is insane ,” Quinn said, pacing James’s office another month later.
    She stared at the most recent amendment to the agreement with Blossom Brew that was