Page 34 of The Wrong Boss

Carrie let out a breath of relief. Her hands relaxed their grip on each other, and she leaned her head against the headrest. “Good. I was worried you were going to fire me like you did poor Alison.”

“Poor Alison?”

“Alison Bronson? The woman I replaced.”

“Oh.” I waved a hand. “She made too many mistakes. Couldn’t keep up.”

“Noted,” Carrie said, voice wry. “I’ll try to keep my fuckups to a minimum.”

“Do that, and your job is safe,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly what I’d intended to promise her when I got in the car. But who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to let her slip through my fingers a second time.

Wait—no. That wasn’t what I meant?—

“Okay,” she said. “That’s good. So do we just…keep things professional?”

I blinked slowly, turning my head to meet her gaze. “Did you have something else in mind?”

What the hell was wrong with me? Why did words keep falling out of my mouth?

Her blush was quickly replaced by a beautiful, ferocious scowl. “No,” she said forcefully. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. Kaia was asking if we knew each other.”

“Kaia should mind her own business.”

“I think her questions were fair, considering what happened inyour office.”

“Kind of sounds like you’re blaming me for the fact that you fainted.”

“I’m notblaming you,” she insisted, frustration lacing her words. “And besides, I’m not the one that went all he-man protector and carried me over to the couch.”

“He-man protector?”

“You were all over me!”

“You had a medical emergency, Carrie.”

She waved a hand. “I was a little lightheaded.”

“You were a little lights out, is what you were.”

“That doesn’t mean you had to freaking carry me to the couch and cradle me while you fed me sips of water and mixed nuts.”

“I’m not sensing a lot of gratitude for caring for you while you were in distress.” I snapped my fingers. “But that’s not actually surprising, is it? We met because you insisted on trying to get stabbed by a drug addict, and then you had the audacity to get mad at me when I saved your life.”

Outrage made her eyes lift to a brilliant shade of pale gray. “When yousaved—” She cut herself off and ground her teeth. Her hands clenched and unclenched on that tight black skirt of hers, and I realized my breaths were coming fast. My pulse pounded in my neck, my thighs, my toes—and I was hard as stone.

I hadn’t been this turned on in years. Seven years, to be exact.

She inhaled slowly through her nose and let the breath out again. Then she licked those pink lips and turned her dangerous eyes on me. “Thank you for your concern,” she enunciated. “Ido appreciate the fact that you took the time to make sure I was okay.”

“That sounded painful,” I noted, enjoying myself far too much for this to be healthy.

Carrie’s chest rose and fell with another breath, and I watched her gather herself. “We need some ground rules.”

“Do we?”

“Yes. So we can form a good working relationship.”

“This isn’t how these conversations typically go when I’m talking to employees in my own company. I’m the one who makes the rules, Carrie.”

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