The Boss's Mistletoe Maneuvers by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom Page B

for making her feel guilty about having to force her to use bribery and revenge to get him off her back. She cursed him for bringing up her dark past and causing her to become someone else, someone who would do such a thing for their own personal gain.
    Darkness bubbled up inside her, coating her insides.
    Once upon a time, she had wanted to trust a man for his good and magical qualities. She had wished hard for Santa Claus to bring her father back. On each anniversary of her father’s exit, she had prayed for something to stop her mother’s crying jags and all those days when her mom couldn’t get out of bed.
    She had secretly written to Santa once, and mailed the letter. But Santa hadn’t bothered to respond or grant her that wish. Her father never returned, and her mother’s depression got progressively worse until relatives had threatened to take Kim away.
    The emptiness in her past was riddled with fear and loneliness and a young girl’s angst. Her mother’s rants and monologues had followed Kim everywhere, and guilt had made her stay close. Her mother didn’t need another disappointment; couldn’t have withstood her daughter leaving, too.
    There had been no escape until college, and even there, while testing her wings, guilt had been part of Kim’s existence. She had fled some of that darkness, while her mother had not. She was okay, and her mother stayed sick.
    Tonight that sickness had become hers. She had become a player, against her will, as if her mother had risen from the grave to goad her on. She had been willing to hurt someone, a man, so that her secrets could go on being secrets, and her hurt stayed tucked inside. She had wanted to trust, and had been shot down.
    “Kim?”
    The voice was close, deep and too familiar for comfort. A wave of chills pierced Kim’s red dress. The elevator was too damn slow, and she hadn’t expected Monroe to follow her.
    Now what?
    Wobbling on her weakened knees, Kim whirled to face Monroe in all his gorgeous male beauty. The persistent bastard wasn’t going to let her off the hook, but he wouldn’t touch her again if he knew what was good for him.
    He leaned toward her before she could voice a protest, and placed both hands on the wall beside her. It took him several seconds to speak.
    “There’s no need to run away.” His tone seemed too calm for the expression on his face. He pinned her in place, within the cage of his arms, as if knowing she’d bolt at the first opportunity. The front of his shirt showed creases from where she had greedily tugged at it in a moment of blissful mindlessness.
    Kim didn’t reply. She could not think of one appropriate word to say.
    “I really don’t see the need for an all-out war, or whatever you imagine this is,” he said. “I asked to meet in good faith to discuss the problems facing us. I was trying to find a way out of this mess.”
    Kim tried to hit the elevator button with her elbow. Though there’d likely be a hint of snow on the ground outside tonight, the corridor felt stiflingly warm. Part of that heat came from Monroe, who acted as if he knew exactly what she had done, and what the outcome had to be.
Clever man.
    “I believed we could work something out,” he said. “For a minute back there, I thought you might honestly want to.”
    She had to fight for a breath. Monroe’s closeness was a reminder of how far she had strayed. That kiss, in public, would be career doom for her if rumor of it got around. She wasn’t the one with the VP spot. He was.
    She tried to touch her lips, to wipe away the feeling of him, but couldn’t raise her arms. Monroe’s inferno pummeled at her, overheating her from the inside out, rendering her excuses for her behavior useless.
    “I tried to explain,” she managed to say.
    Maybe he hadn’t gotten the picture, after all, about the blackmail. His mouth lurked a few millimeters away from hers. Dangerously close.
    “But you didn’t explain. Not really,” he said. “None of