Page 15 of Snowbound in Her Boss's Bed

“Private joke?” he asked, leading her to the office door they’d entered not two, but three, hours before.

Shaking her head, Miriam said, “No. Just getting a little delirious. Air is thinner here,” she added lightly.

Self-deprecating, he smirked. “Is that a nice way of saying I suck the oxygen out of a room?” he asked, and though she didn’t know him well—at all, really—Miri knew he was joking.

She smiled and shook her head lightly but said no more.

From another man, the joke might have been charming. But not from him. She couldn’t allow him to be charming.

He was too powerful—had too much sway in her life to be charming from a safe distance.

Charm could be fun, but it was also dangerous.

Charm disarmed. It was fun and made you feel pretty, and it was also fickle and liable to abruptly leave you alone in a lurch.

She had an ex-high-school-sweetheart fiancé who had been charming until he wasn’t, and the experience had taught her that charm was something she could allow into her life only under strict parameters.

Alone in the woods with a man with enough power to have the world literally at his fingertips, a face and physique that belonged on the silver screen, and a voice that made her want to take off her clothes—whether it was demanding more of her or calling her out or simply exchanging pleasantries—were not those parameters.

“This place is so big, inside and out. No single man could take up all the air. Is that why you like to spend so much time out here?”

He laughed, the sound deep and resonant, and Miri once again questioned her decisions.

Making him laugh was a bad idea.

“You’ve found me out,” he said, still smiling, his eyes glittering like ice in the moonlight. “Here, even a man such as myself is humbled by the surroundings.”

He was mesmerizing, like something beautiful because it was dangerous, and for a moment she was frozen looking at him.

It took her several seconds to shake free once more.

She had never encountered a man around whom walking the line was so exhausting.

And once again he was telling the truth even as he joked.

There was real respect for the awe-inspiring landscape in his humor.

When she had collected her things in her shoulder bag once more, he led her toward the office door. “Despite our additional hour, you should still arrive back in LA with plenty of time to spare before sundown.”

Miriam nodded, relieved again at the prospect of a night celebrating Hanukkah with her friends after the intensity of her meeting with Mr. Silver.

Opening the door, he stepped aside to let her through, only to stop in his tracks upon finding his assistant standing on the other side of the door, a severe frown on her face.

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sir,” the woman said, without preamble or a hint of remorse in her voice and as blunt as her employer, “but a storm swept in. They’re calling it a full-on blizzard. Chuck says he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to get back into the sky, but it’s not going to be today.”

Mr. Silver stilled. “There was no warning?” he asked, censure heavy in the question.

His assistant remained unfazed. “The do-not-disturb alert was on,” the older woman replied with a shrug, as if that explained her not poking in to let them know of an impending storm that had the potential to prevent Miriam from getting home.

In response, however, Mr. Silver nodded, accepting the response as if it were perfectly reasonable.

But it was not reasonable.

It was completely unreasonable.

Blizzards weren’t the kind of thing that happened to her.

They should have been warned. She needed to get home. To her friends, and the sun, and Los Angeles.

And most of all, she needed to get away from Mr. Benjamin Silver—before she did or said something to get herself fired.

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