CHAPTER 7
First Filmy Meeting
Flopping back onto the bed and staring at the ceiling with a feeling of stunned helplessness, Geet told herself that she should have remembered that Maan's reputation as a shrewd and ruthless businessman was well deserved.
Working for the Khurana Corporation herself, she would have had to be blind and deaf not to know all about the man who paid her wages. Not that she had ever had any contact with him - nor so much as set eyes on him in that vast multi-storey office block where the top floor chief rarely set foot in the halls and offices of his working minions.
Except once, she recalled, thinking back to that one brief moment in time, before she'd even met Dev, when her eyes had clashed with those of Maan Singh Khurana. A day when she found herself accidentally tangled up in a sudden wall of bodies that had come surging out of one of the managerial offices in her floor.
She had been walking down the corridor, her arms full of files she had just picked up from the filing department. Restricted as she was, she'd had no hope of darting to one side as they'd come like a herd of cattle upon her. They had tried to avoid her, she admitted. But one rather bullish-looking man wearing an aggressive scowl on his face had looked right through her as if she hadn't been there, knocking so violently against her arm that she had staggered, the files going one way, she going the other. He hadn't even apologized, striding off without so much as turning his head to see the mess he had left behind.
It had been Maan who had paused, Maan who had turned to see what all the commotion was about. Maan who had come back and asked if she was all right. The knock had left her breathless, and the fact that she had recognized him instantly as the big chief that few ever saw away from his own executive floor had only made her more flustered. She could remember blushing, remember looking away quickly from the hard impatience glinting out of his eyes, and mumbling some incoherent assurance that she was fine as she'd bent down to gather the scattered files.
She had expected him to leave then - had wanted him to, so she could rub her arm where the other man had barged into her as it had started to hurt. But he hadn't. Instead he too had bent down and scooped the remaining files and handed them back to her.
And that had basically been it, she recalled. She'd mumbled a breathless thank you and he had nodded in acknowledgement before both had risen to their feet again.
It was then their eyes had clashed - just for a second as she'd glanced up and he'd looked down and his gaze had pierced right into her and the world had seemed to grind to a dizzy halt. Then he'd nodded his head again impatiently and strode off, leaving her standing there staring blankly after him as he had gone to join his waiting managers.
That should have been the end of it as far as she was concerned. So she'd been surprised when later on that day the man who had knocked into her turned up at the side of her desk and had apologized with a sullen look on his face, as if apologies did not come easily to him and he resented giving this one. Geet had just blinked up at him, wondering why he was apologizing. She was, after all, nothing but a very junior secretary amongst a whole army of secretaries who filled up the desks in the huge typing pool.
It was a few weeks later, when she'd been sent to do some urgent processing work for Dev, and they'd discovered a sudden liking for each other, that he'd referred to that incident himself. With a huge grin on his face, he had filled her in with what had happened afterwards.
'Maan hit the roof,' he'd told her. 'The moment he got us all back upstairs, he turned on poor Varun Kapoor and tore him to shreds!' Dev's expression alone had said he had found it all rather amusing. 'Said if Varun wasn't capable of applying even the basics of good manners then what the hell was he doing working for him?' Varun had been ordered to find out who she was, apologize personally and then report back to him. In her mind's eye, Geet could still see the way Dev had shaken his head ruefully. 'We all thought it was such a silly little incident - and I don't think Varun will ever forgive Maan for showing him up like that in front of the rest of us.'
But it was only now, as she lay there across the bed she was going to have to share with Maan tonight, that it occurred to her that the way Dev had been talking had put him amongst the trampling herd that had come bearing down upon her. She hadn't realized that before - certainly hadn't noticed him at the time. And only Maan had cared enough to stop. Only Maan had considered it more than just the "silly little incident" that Dev had.
Dev, she thought, letting out a painful sigh. Dev, the younger one, the more handsome and sunny one of the Khurana men. Dev the less intimidating and far less complicated one. And now she knew, the shallower, more selfish one.
She jerked off the bed to stand, swaying with a mixture of utter fatigue and miserable confusion as to where her life was going to take her from here on.
She looked down at the bed, and shivered at the thoughts that went skittering through her mind. 'No.' she whispered to herself. 'No. Never. Maan doesn't want me like that. I know he doesn't.'
And with that comforting thought, and a sudden flash of defiance, she pulled her bathrobe tightly around her, picked up the underwear and nightdress and draped it over the chair next to the wardrobe. She had made up her mind to make a stand so she would sleep in the bathrobe, she decided. From now on she was determined to be as cool and collected about all this as Maan. Even if it killed her to do so.
'Room Service, Mrs. Khurana.' she heard the waiter's call from the drawing room of the suite. She took a deep breath and walked into the other room where a selection of dishes from the dinner menu had been placed on the dining table by the waiter.
P.S. Hey every1 updated the chapter 7... do comment n lyk.. These chapter is about there past meeting
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