Finally His by Doris O'Connor

FINALLY HIS
     
     
    Doris O’Connor
     
    Copyright © 2016
     
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    Jolie Pierson stretched to loosen muscles cramped from being hunched over her desk for hours, and yawned. A quick glance round the deserted office confirmed what she already knew. Everyone had left, leaving just her and the boss in the building. At least she assumed he was still here. She hadn’t heard his deep voice for some time, and no telltale click of masculine fingers over his keyboard broke the stillness surrounding her.
    The faint hum of the vacuum cleaner being employed by the cleaners in one of the side offices could be heard, but that was all.
    Normally speaking, the stillness didn’t bother Jolie, but as she gathered the reports to her chest, ready to dump them on her supervisor’s, desk it did.
    The boss didn’t go out of his way to say goodbye to her, but he did usually at least glance her way and nod, or something, when he left. As pathetic as that made her—because he showed the same courteous treatment to everyone else in the office—that brief smile lighting up his craggy features was the highlight of her day.
    I really need to get out more.
    Richard Tomlin was way, way out of her league. Not least because he was her boss, but … well just because. What would a highly successful business man at least ten years her senior ever see in her, after all? With his model good looks, he could have any woman he wanted, and frequently did, if the tabloids could be believed.
    He regularly graced their pages with some stick thin model type on his arm, when he attended yet another charity function. Yeah, her boss would never be interested in a short, far too curvy girl like her. Jolie had long accepted her far from fashionable body, and she knew she certainly wasn’t ugly, but she could never compete with the flawless beauty of some women. Her immediate supervisor being a point in question.
    Tall, thin, with platinum blonde hair, that woman never seemed to have a bad hair day. She was always immaculately dressed, and she’d made it perfectly clear from day one of Jolie’s employment that the boss was off limits.
    “Don’t you get any ideas about him, girl. He never dates the women in the office, and if he did, it wouldn’t be someone like you.”
    The inherent criticism behind those words, delivered with a practiced smile, which hadn’t reached the woman’s eyes, had stung. They had also ensured that Jolie had tried her utmost to stay off her boss’s radar, and thus the wrath of her supervisor. That woman had the power to make anyone’s life a misery, after all, and frequently did.
    While it grated that Stephanie swanned out of the office on the dot every day, Jolie didn’t mind the work too much. At least it kept her busy and it paid the bills. And she could swoon over Richard Tomlin from afar.
    Files clasped to her chest, she walked over to Stephanie’s desk and frowned at the note.
    Put the files straight on Richard’s desk, and attach this note.
    An irritated huff escaped Jolie. It blew an errant strand of hair into her eyes. No matter how she attempted to confine her unruly red hair—today it was in a bun—it always escaped.
    Richard,
    I thought you’d want them first thing, so I stayed late for you. Have a great evening tonight.
    Steph
    Stayed late, indeed.
    Jolie grumbled under her breath, but dutifully pinned the note to the top of her files, and shouldered open the slightly ajar door to Richard’s office. The sight that greeted her made her almost drop the damn papers, because, not only was Richard Tomlin still very much in the office, he was half naked.
    Oh, good God.
    She must have disturbed him mid changing of his shirt, because he stood, looking out of the window, deeply in thought.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to…” Jolie knew she was babbling and making a complete fool of herself, but she couldn’t help staring.
    It was one thing imagining what her sex-on-legs boss looked like