His gaze tracked her as she waltzed right into his office with confidence. He seemed like the type who wouldn’t appreciate a mousey approach.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, his sinfully sexy voice rumbling in his chest.
She missed a step. His sexiness quotient really shouldn’t be something she noticed. At all. Xavier LeBlanc wasn’t allowed to be sexy. He was her boss and she’d been hired based on a lie. One she’d told with good reason, and all of the experience on her résumé was real. But still.
None of that equaled free rein to be attracted to the man behind the desk. And none of that stopped her insides from quivering as his gaze slid down her face to her mouth. He’d done that in the interview more than once and she’d blown it off then. She thought she’d been mistaken. That they’d been stray looks that didn’t mean anything. She’d imagined it.
Today? Punch in the girl parts.
She could no more pretend it hadn’t happened than she could ignore it. Did Xavier have any clue how unsettling it was to have a man who looked like him slide his gaze to your mouth as if he couldn’t decide how to kiss you? Not if. How. Because it was happening and he wanted you to anticipate it.
Okay, she had to ignore that. She had a job. Two jobs. Neither were going to go well if she didn’t pull it together. Besides, he hadn’t done or said anything inappropriate. Likely she was still imagining it.
“Adelaide is a sweet lady,” Laurel began. “But I don’t get the impression she’s fully communicating your vision as well as I would hope. Would it be possible for you to be a little more hands-on?”
In a totally nonpervy way, of course, she added silently as the atmosphere in the room went dead still. Totally could have phrased that better. More professional. Less I want you on this desk right now.
Xavier’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “What, exactly, are you asking me to do?”
Oh, man. Surely he didn’t mean for that to sound as leading as it did. But then, she’d started it. Was he expecting her to finish it?
Her mind immediately filled in those blanks with several things she could ask him to do. Curiosity was both her strength and her biggest weakness, and she almost never hesitated to investigate things she was dying to know, like whether Xavier’s shoulders felt as strong and broad as they looked and how he planned to kiss her.
Of course, she’d never say that out loud. She couldn’t. Well, okay, she totally could and she had a feeling Xavier would deliver. But she wouldn’t. It was highly unethical, for more reasons than one.
But she couldn’t get the sudden and sharp images out of her head of what might happen if she did take the hint in his voice and really laid out what she might like. Nothing wrong with a little harmless fantasizing about a sexy man, was there?
“I, um...” Voice too husky. Not professional. Focus. She cleared her throat. “It’s my first day. I was hoping you and I might talk about your expectations.”
Good. That didn’t sound like the lead-in to a seduction scene at all.
“I expect you to manage the operations of this charity,” he said succinctly. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“I got that part.” Sexy, but either Xavier was obtuse or he had way more confidence in her than he had a right to. “But this is your vision I’m executing. I don’t know anything about you or your ideas for how things should work. Tell me what my typical day should look like.”
Xavier lifted his hands from the keyboard of his laptop and laced them together in a deliberately precise gesture that had the mark of a man demonstrating his patience. His hands were strong and capable, with long lean fingers that she had to stop envisioning on her body.
“That’s what I asked Adelaide to do. If she’s failing to—”
“No, no.” God, no. The last thing she’d intended to do was put a spotlight on Adelaide. The poor woman probably had nightmares about Xavier as it was. “She’s great. Very helpful. But I want to hear it straight from you. We’re going to be working very closely together, after all.”
“We’re doing nothing of the kind. I hired you to be invisible and ensure that I never have to think about the operations of this place.”
Oh. That was not going to work. Laurel leaned forward and laced her own hands together near the edge of the desk, mirroring his pose. “See, that’s exactly that sort of thing that Adelaide could never convey. She showed me where departments are and introduced me to people. But I need the mind of Xavier LeBlanc to mesh with mine so we’re in sync. Tell me what you’d do. That’s the best way to ensure you don’t have to think about things, because I will instantly know how you’d want something handled.”
And that philosophy had the added bonus of filling in the gaps of her skill set, not to mention allowing her to grill him on how much he knew about the fraud. Her sources had been volunteers in the food pantry and they had given her several credible tips about substitutions that didn’t make it into the books, among other things. What she already knew was likely the tip of the iceberg. In her line of work, there was always more to discover.
But she needed to know how high up it went, if Xavier knew about it or if this strange and unexplained switch between the brothers had removed the real culprit from LBC.
Maybe the mysterious switch had its roots in the fraud. She had to know.
At the same time, she couldn’t make mistakes. If Xavier’s brother had spearheaded or approved the fraud, she had to find proof. Of course, it could have started with Xavier’s reign, which added to the complexity of the investigation. It was a wrinkle she hadn’t seen coming but adhering to Xavier’s directive to be “invisible” wasn’t going to reveal even a tiny slice of what she needed to uncover.
Xavier’s gaze skittered over hers again and she had the distinct impression he didn’t quite know what to do with her. Good. An off-kilter man spilled secrets he meant to keep close to the vest. She relaxed a smidgen. This undercover business couldn’t be too hard. Or, rather, she couldn’t allow it to be. This story was too important to the people LBC should be serving instead of cheating. The story was too important to her career.
“Here’s what I want, Ms. Dixon.” His low voice snaked through her and she tried really hard not to react, but she didn’t have his ability to be stone-faced. Neither did he miss her reaction, absorbing it with a long, slow pause laden with things unsaid. “I want you to ensure LBC operates smoothly enough that I can focus on fundraising. Outside of that, I don’t care what you do.”
She blinked. “Sure you do. You’re in charge. Everything flows uphill, right?”
That was the core of an investigative reporter’s philosophy, the one they taught in Digging for Facts 101. Follow the money. The guy in the corner office was always the place to start because he made all the decisions. If anything illegal was going on, it usually went all the way to the top.
Of course, this situation had the added layer of the guy at the top not being the normal guy. All at once, she hoped Xavier would be in the clear and she’d instead be taking down his brother. Which would be a shame, because she’d genuinely liked Val.
She couldn’t let her personal feelings compromise the investigation, as they had in her last story. She couldn’t afford to like anyone in this situation.
“Indeed it does,” Xavier finally said.
His gaze still hadn’t left hers, and if she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he might be fighting some of the same attraction she was. Surely he had his pick of women. He wasn’t trying to be sexy as a come-on; it was just a natural part of who he was and she didn’t for a second think he’d turned it on specifically