The Boss's Marriage Plan (Proposals & Promises 2)

“I left a couple of contracts on your desk for you to look over and sign. They could have waited until Monday, but since you’re here...”

“I’m on it.”

He glanced over his shoulder as he opened the door with his name engraved on a brass plaque. Tess stood half-turned away from him, frowning in concentration at the Christmas tree, which looked perfect already to him. She really did look pretty today. He thought fleetingly about telling her so, but something held him back.

He made a cup of coffee with the pod brewer on his credenza. “Would you like a hot drink?” he asked through the open doorway as the enticing aroma filled his office. The rack beside the pot always included a variety of herbal teas that he knew Tess liked. They often shared drinks at his desk as they discussed business.

“No, thank you,” she called back without making an appearance. He told himself he wasn’t disappointed that she was too busy for a cozy chat, which meant he had no excuse to procrastinate any longer with the work he’d come in to see to.

Taking a seat at his desk, he tried to concentrate on paperwork for the next twenty minutes. Despite his resistance, his thoughts kept returning to the one-sided conversation he’d accidentally overheard, and the glimpse of insight it had provided into Tess’s personal life. Of course, he couldn’t have worked so closely with her for six years without knowing some things about her.

Through night classes and online courses, she’d completed her business degree and had earned postgraduate hours since she’d started working with him. He knew she took pride in those accomplishments. During that same time, he’d seen her deal with the illness and loss of both her parents. He’d gotten the impression the majority of the caregiving had been on her shoulders because her sister had been so busy with her young children. Yet he’d never once heard Tess complain. Whatever she dealt with in her off-hours, she’d always reported to work with her usual serene efficiency.

Serene. He repeated the word in his head, thinking how well it suited his assistant. Throughout several major work upheavals, when he’d been edgy and bad-tempered amid the confusion and mayhem, Tess had remained...well, Tess. She came in every morning with a smile, an encouraging word and a roll-up-her-sleeves attitude that let her tackle each day’s tasks with single-minded focus.

One would think someone so agreeable would be a bit of a doormat, easily intimidated, perhaps. Not Tess. He’d witnessed her hold her own with even the most belligerent, disgruntled employees and clients. One of his job foremen had confided to Scott that Tess reminded him of a nun who’d taught his junior high math classes. “Nice lady most of the time,” he’d clarified. “But get out of line, and you’d get a ruler across the knuckles before you could spit.”

Scott could imagine Tess wielding a mean ruler if necessary. But he’d never thought of her as a nun—had he?

He cleared his throat and reached hastily for his quickly cooling coffee, almost knocking over the cup in his clumsiness. He salvaged the papers on his desk at the last moment and with a muttered curse.

“Everything okay in there?” Tess called from the other room.

“Yes, fine, thanks.”

Maybe he hadn’t thought of Tess as a nun, but before that overheard conversation, he’d had no idea she’d tried online dating, or that she’d been actively looking for a match. Meeting strange men online was dangerous, he thought in disapproval. Sure, people did it all the time these days, but it just didn’t seem right for Tess.

He knew she’d been in a relationship about three years back that hadn’t worked out. That was about the same time he’d been briefly engaged to a stunning but capricious woman who’d understandably—and angrily—chosen to pursue a career in modeling over marriage to an often-neglectful workaholic. He still winced when he remembered the scene Sharon had caused when she’d broken up with him in a crowded restaurant, and all because he’d been a few minutes late meeting her there. Okay, twenty minutes late, but he’d texted to let her know he’d been held up—again—by yet another work crisis. She’d known going into the relationship that his business required a great deal of his time, but like others he’d dated before her, she’d expected more from him than he’d been able to give. She’d stormed off furiously when she’d finally concluded that his construction company meant more to him than their relationship. The split hadn’t been amicable, but then for some reason, his breakups never were.

He wondered if Tess had remained on good terms with her former flames. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had. Unlike the volatile Sharon, Tess was the practical, pragmatic type. In the years she had worked for him, he’d never heard her carry on about romance and unrealistic fantasies.

Of course, he rarely allowed himself to think of Tess as a vibrant, available single woman. After all, she worked for him, and he’d never even considered overstepping their professional boundaries and risking their comfortable work relationship. She had just turned twenty-three when she’d applied for the clerical job with him. He’d been a couple months shy of thirty-one, and had already owned the business for over three years. Perhaps that was why he’d thought of her all this time as much too young for him, though the actual gap was only seven years. She would soon turn thirty, he mused, surprised by how quickly time had passed. He supposed it was only natural that she would now be considering marriage and children. After all, he’d given quite a lot of deliberation to those things lately, too.

She strolled in through his open doorway. “I thought I’d put this candle on your table. I know you don’t like a lot of froufrou in your office, but this isn’t too much, is it?” She held a hurricane glass candleholder with a little garland around the base. “You’ve got a few meetings scheduled in here during the next couple of weeks.”

He often eschewed the main conference room in favor of the cherry table in his office. Everything

he needed was available to him in here—a projector and screen, whiteboard and display easels and blackout shades to hide the distracting views of the Arkansas River and the distant rolling hills. He loved his office. It was exactly what he’d envisioned back when he’d first started building his own business.

“I don’t mind a candle on the table,” he assured Tess, making her smile.

“How was your Thanksgiving?” she asked as she fussed with the garland.

“Nice. Noisy. The kids were wound up from all the attention.”

Both his brothers were happily married fathers. His older brother, Eli, a family practice physician, had twin girls, Madison and Miranda. Cute as little bunnies, they were almost five years old and full of energy. He was their “uncle Scotty,” and he adored them, just as he did his little nephew, too. Six-month-old Henry was his younger brother, Jake’s, kid. Both his brothers had been lucky enough to find their soul mates—Eli and Libby had started dating when both were in medical school, while Jake, an attorney, had met psychologist Christina at a cocktail party a couple years ago.

As much as he’d enjoyed the gathering, Scott had been painfully aware that he was no closer to having a family of his own than he’d been during the last solo holiday season. None of his relatives was actually nagging him to marry—after all, the next generation of Princes was already well established—but he couldn’t help wondering if they thought something must be lacking in him. Increasingly, he wondered the same thing about himself.

Without arrogance, he could admit he’d accomplished a great deal in his almost thirty-seven years. Valedictorian in high school. Summa cum laude college graduate. A master’s degree. His own business. He had a nice home he’d remodeled himself, with a couple of empty bedrooms he hoped to fill someday. All his life he’d heard about biological clocks, but he’d never quite understood the term until he found himself only a few years from forty without any immediate prospect of a wife and kids. During these past twelve months, he had attended cocktail parties and professional mixers—more than he would have liked, actually. He’d gone on blind dates, been to clubs and bars and charity fund-raisers. He’d met a lot of nice women, had some good times, made a few friends...but he’d yet to find anyone he thought would be a lifelong partner.

After his brief engagement to Sharon had ended so disastrously, he’d wondered privately if he was destined to remain a workaholic bachelor. He was accustomed to success, to achieving the high-reaching goals he set for himself. His only experiences with failure had been in the romantic area of his life. He really hated failure.

Tess stepped back to critically study the centerpiece she’d created. Apparently deciding it would suffice, she turned to the door, asking over her shoulder on the way out, “Have you signed those contracts?”

He reached hastily for the stack he’d yet to touch. “On it.”

He wondered half seriously what she’d have said if he shared that he’d been fretting about how to find a mate. Knowing Tess, she’d set her mind to solving that issue for him. He’d probably come in on Monday to find a line of qualified applicants standing outside his office door. Having trouble in her own quest wouldn’t stop her from setting to work on his if he asked.