again.
“And you review works, there, no?”
“Yes.” Did she Google me too? How did she know so much about me?
“So I want you to do the same here, but only this time, you get heard.” She leaned back on her chair and looked at me with her naturally green and incredibly sharp eyes. “You will take the job, no?”
“I’d be crazy not to,” was all I could say.
Afterwards, Charli told me that I along with the two other applicants called back for a second interview yesterday had the same jobs. We would work as a team and individually, depending on necessity. The salary she quoted for me was standard pay in the industry, but she told me this could go higher in a short time, based on my performance. On the bright side, she did say I’d get free meals at work, excellent overtime pay when needed, and transportation allowance.
Mondays to Thursdays, I was required to report in office attire. Fridays were anything-goes. My work schedule would be from 8am to 5pm. No grace period. Oh, and one thing else, Charli reminded me as a post script — office romances were not allowed.
Déjà vu struck me for the second time, and I almost shivered at it.
Constantijin was still nowhere to be found when I finally walked out of the doors of Kastein, Inc. My phone rang just as I reached the other side of the street.
“Hello?”
“Did you miss me, Yanna?”
Holy...
It was him.
Constantijin.
The whole world disappeared the moment I realized who I was talking to. People were constantly walking before me, drivers honking their horns, and there was even a construction crew a few feet away drilling into the cement, doing God knew what. But none of their noise reached my ears.
“Yanna?”
I still didn’t know what to say so I stayed silent, secretly content to replay the sound of his voice over and over, especially the part where he said my name with that accented voice of his.
“I think about you all the time, schat .”
What did that last word mean? I was so, like, Googling that after this.
When I still didn’t answer, his tone turned from seductive to serious as he asked, “Why did you run away?”
Why didn’t you run after me?
But I couldn’t ask him that, could I? It would have been akin to, like, begging him to come after me. I said finally, in a stiff voice that required all my acting skills to carry off, “I don’t think we should be talking like this anymore. I’ll be working for you starting tomorrow. It would be inappropriate.”
A long pause followed, one that made me anxious and tense even though I didn’t want to be. I should hang up now. I knew that, but I couldn’t.
“That’s impossible.”
I inhaled sharply at the words, conscious of the zing of relief that went through me and shamed by it. Oh, God, I was so pathetic. Sometimes, I was too stubborn for my own good. Constantijin Kastein was bad news. How many times did I have to repeat to myself that anything that had to do with Netherland’s #1 playboy was surely going to end not just with a broken hymen but a broken heart as well?
My fingers tightened around my mobile phone. “I’m hanging up after this, Mr. Kastein. Please just---”
“I want to fuck you too much to stay away.”
Holy. Shit.
I glared at my phone, wishing it was a blond gorgeous giant I was glaring at instead. With just those few words, he had ruined whatever composure I had. Now, all I could think about was how he had me on the table, devouring my breasts, his erection jutting hard against my core, and me right now, soaking wet in the middle of a public street.
“Stop saying things like that,” I said weakly. Lame response, I know, but right now? That was, like, the best I could dish