His Challenging Lover by Elizabeth Lennox

“He doesn’t have enough experience. Next?”
    “Stop! That’s ridiculous. What part of your requirements does he not have?” she demanded, sliding the job description towards him.
    He actually had the audacity to sit there and point out that the resume didn’t spell out a person’s organizational skills. “That’s a big deal to me after the last person you brought in.”
    “You agreed that Rosa was a good candidate!” she cried back, defending their joint decision.
    “Only after you argued that she would work out. You convinced me. I took your advice. Rosa was nice, but she was an idiot. I need someone who can think.”
    “You need someone who can follow orders blindly!” she snapped right back. “You don’t want a human being,” she said, exasperated by all of his demands. “You want a robot.”
    “Do you have one?” he came right back.
    She tossed her arms up in the air, defeated. “So none of these candidates meet your requirements?” she asked, totally dumbfounded.
    “Not a single one,” he said and leaned forward, ostensibly to look through all the dozen or so resumes she’d brought with her. But in reality, he just wanted to smell her hair, feel her soft skin one more time. He didn’t touch her, not getting any signals that she would be receptive to any touch from him. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream.
    He stood up, needing to get away from her before he took her into his arms and kissed her senseless. “Have some more resumes for me by tomorrow morning.” Without another word, he walked out of the conference room, leaving her glaring at his back while her eyes shot arrows at his head.
    The following morning was exactly the same. By the end of the hour, he’d rejected all of the candidates and Autumn was flabbergasted. “You’re being unreasonable!” she yelled at him and then looked at him with a horrified expression.
    “I’m sorry!” she gasped. She’d never yelled at anyone before but she was too nervous around him to be able to control her temper. She could smell his cologne and his soap and she ached to just curl up in his lap and feel his strong arms wrap around her, make her feel better.
    Xander stared back at her for a long moment, then burst out laughing. “Don’t be sorry,” he said and put a hand on her back. She flinched away and he pulled back immediately, but he wanted so badly to…well, to do everything to her.
    “How about if we go out to lunch today to discuss options?” he suggested, leaning against the conference room table.
    Autumn took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “Perhaps we should just meet and discuss your requirements again.” And maybe get two people in to help him out since no one candidate seemed to meet all of his needs. “We don’t need to go out to lunch.”
    Xander looked down at his watch, shaking his head. “I didn’t think it would take this long to get some candidates lined up for interviews. The only time I have available is lunch time.”
    Autumn sighed, resigned to having lunch with him. “Fine,” she said, thinking she could just run down to the deli and grab both of them something so they could eat while they discussed new resumes. Although how she was going to find even more resumes in just a couple of hours she had no clue. Not to mention, her stomach always acted weird around him so eating might be difficult. Maybe if he would finally sit across the table from her instead of next to her!
    He walked out of the conference room at that point and she slumped down in the soft, leather chair, feeling defeated. She’d gone through all of her resources to find this second set of resumes. She couldn’t figure out where else to go for a new batch. Maybe if she were honest with him, told him that she was stumped, he would relent a bit.
    Then she thought about his irritated expression when she’d passed by his office earlier today. Tilly must have been looking for some file and Xander was standing behind her