With an opportunity of a lifetime to make her entrepreneurial dreams come true, Thea finds it getting increasingly harder to hide her attraction to her boss, Aiden Steele - not knowing that the man under all the cold layers has a secret worth millio...
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Landing in New York felt like a release, and truly I had been spoiled rotten by the first-class seats because sitting in Economy felt like a jail sentence. I had been hungover, in dire need of sleep and I happened to be sitting next to a woman with a fussy baby. I loved children; I really did. But they really needed to have more silent forms of expressing their discomfort. Howling like a fucking siren in my ear isn't going to fix your bowel problems, stupid fuck.
The city was bustling even in the middle of the night, and I took a cab back home, falling asleep the instant my head hit the pillows. I had spent the entire flight simmering in my anger towards Aiden, but I was too tired to think about it now. Plus, I had vowed to myself that I could pretend that night had never happened. The stupid scarring on my neck would fade away soon, and I could forget all of it. I'd fake it so hard that eventually, it'll go away like a dream.
I made my way to Jason's office feeling chipper the next morning, happy to be learning from someone a lot more fun and genuinely kind. Unlike someone. Jade was the one to assign me a desk and gave me access to some preliminary research that had been done by other interns, mailing me the pieces of information Jason wanted to be extracted from there.
How? Who knew?
I spent most of the morning learning how to use the complicated software and tried to make sense of the data that was presented, forgetting all about lunchtime till Jade reminded me of it. I had made cheese sandwiches, much to my luck and I ate at my desk while I tried to figure out how to change the variables and isolate the causative factor. The people around me could have been dancing, but I wouldn't have noticed. This was intense and required more of my brain cells than I imagined, only getting interrupted by a message from Jason calling me to his office.
Jason had a similar theme going on with Aiden's office, the same layout, the same colours, etc. But his office was made livelier by paintings, some prints of the ad campaigns he had designed and a lot of knick-knacks. Behind his chair, he had put a display of all the awards he'd won in the field of his work, and the fact that some sections were carrying two trophies instead of one just showed how much of a freaking genius he was. Jason looked vexed, staring at the screen with a hand over his mouth when I came in, motioning me to take a seat.
"Are you done with the work I assigned to you?"
"I'm making progress," I said, not seeing the point in lying. He had access to all my sheets and data, and if he was asking, he probably already knew.
"That's not good enough, Thea." He reprimanded, and I nodded, knowing that I was slacking and knowing that the reason behind it was stupid. "Look I know it's hard to reorient yourself after a trip like that," he put his elbows on the desk, hands folded in front, "But this is urgent business. If we don't wrap up those files by tomorrow morning, Steele Insurance loses profits worth 19 million dollars. And that's a conservative estimate. Now I don't suppose you'd have 19 million dollars lying around to donate, which is why I'd suggest you get your head in the game and finish all of it before leaving tonight."
