Oops â I thought I'd only thought it, but I obviously didn't. “You bastard,” I think, as I walk inside. There's a ping as the lift finally arrives and the doors open. Didn't you have a presentation about, what⦠an hour ago, Jenny?” he asks, giving a theatrical look at his watch. “Glad to have provided you with some amusement on such a challenging day. Though, of course, he's not doing a very good job of it. He must practice looking as ominous as possible in front of the mirror or something. His pitch black eyebrows are lowered warily, an expression that I've often seen on his face. What a waste â a pair of eyes that gorgeous on such a puffed-up, snotty, hateful creature.īut my curiosity is too much for me, apparently, and as I give him another look I can't help but chuckle. I look up, and am dazzled by the bluest pair of eyes in the whole of creation, and I lower my head quickly, as though in annoyance. Why hasn't anybody invented some kind of app or something to help you avoid making a fool of yourself the way I just did, I wonder?Įven without looking at him, I can tell that he is staring at me with curiosity. All this technology and you still find yourself unable to avoid the one colleague you don't want to bump into. We're both standing in front of a lift that apparently just doesn't want to come. “Well I never thought I'd see anything like that,” murmurs the voice that a second before was behind me and now is⦠right next to me, damn it. I swipe my badge quickly, rush across the atrium and press the lift button in front of me furiously. “I do my best to keep my colleagues entertained,” I say, turning slightly.įrom the corner of my eye I see his tall, menacing figure approaching. And despite all the doom and gloom and Mayan prophesies and Hollywood disaster movies, the end of the world is not yet quite at hand. Part of me is tempted just to swipe my badge and keep walking without even turning round, but that might look as if I was running away, and the day I run away from Ian St John will be a pretty chilly one in hell. Ok, now it's official: I'm not going to make it. I don't even need to turn around to know who it belongs to. My hand hangs suspended in the air, gripping the badge I was about to pass over the scanner. Are we on You've Been Framed ?” asks a deep, perfidious voice behind me. Ok, here I am â only two hours behind schedule! I wasn't particularly attached to that lip gloss that's rolling away anyway. I search desperately through the pile of stuff until I find what I'm after, then hurriedly shove all the rest back into the bag â well, almost all the rest, but it doesn't matter. I'm gasping for breath from panic and the effort of running â I need to find that damn badge quickly, otherwise I'll be for the high jump. When I get to the turnstiles in the atrium, I unceremoniously dump the contents of my bag out onto the floor. Me, the perfect employee, head of the bank's best tax consultancy team â unforgivably late on the day of a crucial presentation. I'm running like crazy along a street in central London because, for the first time in my almost nine year career, I'm atrociously late. Soon, it becomes more and more difficult to tell the difference between fiction and reality⦠ContentsĪnd it's then that I make the mistake of checking my watch.
THE HATE YOU GIVE ONLINE FREE FREE
When they are thrown together to work on the same project, Ian makes Jenny an offer she can't refuse: to have free reign of their rich client if she pretends to be his girlfriend. Ian is a handsome, wealthy and sought-after bachelor Jennifer is a feisty, independent lawyer. They are leaders of two different teams in the same London bank, and are constantly engaged in a running battle to be number one. Jennifer and Ian have known each other for seven years.