Chapter 11: What's in a Kiss?
By the time he locked up his office and walked to the store room downstairs where she had been cloistered all day, it was past 7:30 pm and turning dark outside. Some part of him hoped that she had already left for the day, but he saw the light coming out the door that was still ajar like it had been earlier that day. He walked in and saw that she wasn't by the desk. The lunch that he had gotten her still sat there, uneaten, although she had folded the brown paper bag neatly and put it off to the side. The sight made him angry. What was she trying to prove?
He looked for her in between the shelves and found her in the last aisle. She was leaning against the wall, a file in her hand, the pen thrumming against her lips rapidly. She didn't look up when she heard him, which of course agitated him more, as it was likely meant to do.
"Aren't you done?" he asked as he walked towards her.
She shook her head. "No, I will lock up. You can leave." She said without looking up.
"Khushi, I really don't think I assign you more work than what I do. In fact, I never assign any work to any employee that I think is more than what I do."
"Sir, it takes most people three times the time that it takes you to do the same work."
That gave him pause for a moment and he thought about it realistically before he answered, "Are you saying that I have some sort of unfair advantage?"
"You brain merely processes things three times faster than most folks. I wouldn't necessarily call it unfair advantage."
He wanted to laugh at the matter-of-fact way that she had delivered a great compliment, but she still wouldn't look up at him.
"So, you think I should assign one-third of the work that I do to you?" he asked, seeing how she would reason through that.
This time, she scoffed, but kept her eyes on the file as she answered, "I didn't say that I processed things a third slower than you. Merely that most people did."
Ohhh...
He walked up to her and grabbed the oh-so-interesting file out of her hand and looked at what she was so intently studying.
"That's rude." She said, finally looking up at him, her glasses sliding low on her nose.
"Where did you find this?" he asked, looking at the records of Shyam Mohan's holdings from two decades ago when both their fathers had been in charge of the budding company.
"There is a veritable treasure trove of information in this store-room, Mr. Raizada. Some of it is not available electronically."
"When you are done with it, I want a look at it." he told her as he gave the file back to her.
"By all means." She said before starting to walk past him.
He stopped her by holding onto her arm and she turned around with a questioning look.
"You can't stay here after I leave." He said obstinately.
"Why not?" she shrugged out of his hold.
"You may have no self-preservation instinct to speak of, but I can't run the risk of leaving one of my female employees in an office building alone in the nighttime. It's a liability."
"I will sign a waiver saying that I took the risk and stayed here on my own after listening to your counsel to the contrary." She tried to walk away again and this time he pulled her back towards him.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked, now starting to notice that she was purposely being aggravating.
"Nothing is wrong with me!" she was angry as she tried to push him away, but it only made him pull her up towards him.
"Since when did you start wearing this scent? It's been driving me nuts for weeks!" he told her as he caught a whiff of the lavender now.
He saw the anger in her eyes change to confusion. "What scent?"
"I don't know. Lavender or something!"
He saw her eyebrows come together in puzzlement as she shook her head. "I don't wear Lavender. I don't really wear anything. It's just regular soap."
"You're lying." He leaned in and lifted her hair off the right side to smell the side of her neck.
"What..." he heard her incredulous tone, but it didn't stop him from seeking the proof that he needed.
"It's lavender, not just soap." He said as he caught the scent again.
"Arnav..." her voice was now a whisper.
Arnav.
It was a husky sound and it made him pull her up closer to him and run his lips along her skin up to the hollow beneath her ear.
"Stop..." she whispered again and this time he pulled back.
He waited until she opened her eyes, fighting the impulse to kiss not just on her neck.
"I am not a good person to do this with." She said finally when her eyes opened.
"Good person to do what with?" he asked.
She looked at him above her rim of her glasses. "Office dalliance. I am no good for it. Not just because I don't think I have the make-up for it, but also because... it's tawdry. This is not like making out in the university library during exam week. You are my boss. Here in this building, you will always have power over me. It will never be an equal playing field. And even if you can be objective about separating what is personal and what is professional, I wouldn't be able to... and it wouldn't stop me from worrying about whether your responses to me from now on will be based on something that is not just about my work. I really don't want that sort of doubt lingering in my head. You and I have always had our differences. But it's always been within a certain limit. That limit allows me to tell you to back off when you are too harsh and it lets you tell me to buck up and deal with it when you feel that you have to. I don't want that to change. And yes, this is likely a premature conversation. But given what happened just now, I wanted to say all this before it happened a second time."
He took in her monologue in surprise. Clearly she had given it more thought that he had. It made him wonder why he hadn't given it more thought before. He had never hit on an employee before much less shown up at their apartment or kissed them in a store-room. And the way she put the whole thing just now made him seem like a juvenile novice of a junior manager rather than the CE-f**king-O of RE.
He let her ease out of his hold and looked at her.
She had indeed come a long way from the pom-pom girl that Lavanya had hired. Back then, aside from considering her a mild to moderate annoyance when he had had to deal with her, he had never given her a second thought. He hadn't known when that had changed. It seemed entirely plausible that this was a very recent phenomenon. Now that she was a woman rather than a silly impulsive eighteen year-old with a smart mouth. She still had a smart mouth on her; it was just... smarter...
"Alright." He said finally. "Don't work on Sundays anymore. Just come in on Saturdays if you need to. And leave at a decent time like everyone else. Keep me updated on Mohan. And give me that file on him tomorrow. Take Neha off this project. I think you and Sushant can handle it fine with just the two of you. If you need another person, ask Rajeev."
He saw her eyes widen at the quickness with which he had shifted gears. He thought it best that she thought that. It wouldn't help to let her find out that he felt ashamed of himself for the first time in a long time. Truly. And that was a feeling that was better dealt with in one's own time.
"And I still meant what I said before. You have to leave here today before I do. I won't allow you to remain in the building by yourself."
She had recovered by now, he saw, and she nodded.
"Alright then. I will wait for you to pack up outside." He told her before he made his way out of the store-room.
Lavender be damned.
Edited by -publicenemy- - 13 years ago
Kumkum Bhagya
Cricket
Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani
37