Page 27 of My Forbidden Boss

He cleared his throat gruffly, accepting a file folder and cracking it open.

“Uh… Let’s see here. This is the outlier schedule for the next two weeks. I don’t know if you guys have been reading this or not… I always found it helpful since the weird, random events and unusual tasks seemed, at least to me, so much easier to forget about. Anyway… Oh, hold on. It looks like one or two of these aren’t reminders but requests. Ah… I see. Cool. Alright, Henry? You have your…”

“… my conference call seminar. Yes.”

“Yep, on…”

“… this coming Tuesday, uh-huh. And round two is the following Thursday, but we’ll be going off of Eastern Daylight time for that one.”

Hollis kept his head down, reading the folder and nodding. “Okay. Great, you’ve got that covered. Uh… Let’s see… Sandra? I’m going to be honest here. Uh… I have no earthly idea what this one is. It’s definitely yours, and it… well, it looks like every Wednesday from now until…”

He flipped one page, then another. Finally, he glanced up and, deadpan, pivoted toward every face in the room. “… until, uh… forever?”

He smirked, handsomely embracing his ignorance while somehow turning it into yet another show of smooth likeableness. It was infuriating.

Everyone chuckled, including the woman in question, as she blushed and attempted to quickly explain the calendar notation.

Hollis nodded absentmindedly but made eye contact with her and smiled patiently. “Interesting. Alright, that’s definitely different than what I’m used to, but I’m always up for a new approach. It sounds like you’re thinking ahead of the game, and I think we all can appreciate that. Now…”

He paused, still nodding, and looked down at the next name on his list.

Hollis stopped and sort of laughed to himself under his breath. He glanced up slowly and looked over everyone’s heads, deliberately searching the room as if for someone he had yet to see present.

“Miss Tisha Crawford? Are you here with us today?”

As soon as the question left his lips, his eyes darted to mine. My chest shuddered, and all eyes turned my way. The smaller I felt myself shrink, the greater Hollis’ grin seemed to gleam.

“Ah, yes, there you are. For anyone who has yet to have the pleasure, this is Tisha… a terrific addition to our team, fresh from… Chicago? Isn’t that right? Well, we are very lucky to have her. Miss Crawford, we don’t want you to think that we’re getting rid of you already, but your proposal has made too many waves for improving things around here for us to keep you all to ourselves. If you are up for it, we want you to take a few days over at our offices in Wyoming and show them what you’ve shown us. Either way, we won’t ask you to do the same for every regional headquarters, but their branch has the worst numbers in the company. If we see the same kind of improvement there as we’ve seen from your system here, we’ll organize a separate team that you’ll train, and they will go out and catch everyone else up.”

With his and everyone else’s eyes at the meeting on me, my heart was pounding, and my breath felt shallow.

“I know that the trip wasn’t part of our original agreement regarding your position, but it would be a tremendous step forward for the company if it works out. Everyone here would truly appreciate it, especially me.”

His smile twitched as he ended, and my mind whirled amid my social claustrophobia. I nodded, of course, but before I could find any fault in his expression, Hollis’s glowing confidence was back. Irritation seeped through my veins, extinguishing my anxiety just as it did to the spark that I thought I had witnessed.

He beamed like an aristocrat. “Great! I knew I could count on you. Well, everybody, I think that is everything we have for now. Thanks again for everything that you’re doing, and make sure to pass that along to the rest of your teams for me, alright?”

The meeting started to break up. Those of us who had remained standing stepped back, allowing our superiors to rise and extricate themselves from around the table. I sighed and growled under my breath as I moved back, feeling like an obedient dog who just had proudly rolled over to please my master.

It wasn’t that I minded the request. In fact, it was an unexpected reward to be recognized for my efforts in front of everyone like that. Alice could have easily just called me into her office or sent me a memo when instructing me to make the trip, so to be praised in such a public setting really pleasantly caught me by surprise. Still, though, it bugged me to feel indebted to Hollis, especially when I had no other choice but to say yes, and doing so only seemed to further inflate his overconfident self-satisfaction. I felt like he was playing with me.

His voice in the room, booming over his words echoing in my head, took my gaze back to where Hollis stood at the head of the room. “Miss Crawford? If you wouldn’t mind staying behind with me for a moment, I can give you the details for your Wyoming weekend.”

He was leaning to the side, flipping aimlessly through papers on the tabletop in front of him. His eyes were downcast, apparently, focused only on the documents at his fingertips, but Hollis’ casual request sent a strange tension up my spine. The feeling intensified as he looked up, locking his eyes with mine in a silent stare through the room full of moving people.

Frozen and again feeling my heartbeat stutter, I quietly nodded.

Again to my annoyance, he smirked, and once more, Hollis looked down, waiting for the conference room to clear.

I skirted the back of the room, intermittently stopping to let others pass on their way to exit as I slowly made my way toward him. A shuffle of shoulders later, and I caught sight of Brandon. He was eyeing me strangely as he followed the others out the door, trying to say something with a series of looks that I simply could not comprehend. His brow wrinkled, and his gaze flicked toward Hollis’ hulking figure waiting for me.

I lifted my arms and shrugged, shaking my head and mouthing my lack of understanding. Appearing vexed or flustered, Brandon waved me away and carried on, glancing back only once with a suspicious look before the meeting doors closed behind him, leaving Hollis and me together, alone.

I stood quietly, still halfway across the room down the long table.

His voice rumbled over the empty chairs and sent shivers over my skin. “So, Tisha. Or would you prefer that I only refer to you as ‘Miss Crawford?’ Please, tell me about your preferences, your needs. That way, I might be more able to do everything in my power to fulfill them. After our last one-on-one, I wouldn’t want you to even wonder about how professional or… inappropriate… our relationship might become.”

His eyes met mine, fiery and alive. I didn’t pick up on his underlying tone of suggestion, hidden as it was beneath a perfectly placid mockery of appeasement. However, I did regain my typical confidence, unencumbered by the meeting’s departed attendees and their added observation.

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