Golden Temptation

Chapter 2

Eric's hand never once left mine as he gently led me down a series of halls of the prestigious company.

I must have looked a sight. Soaked to the bone and barefoot, bumbling behind the Vice President of the company.

But he didn't seem to mind, telling me tidbits about the origins of the business and the history that had led to Evangelic Jewellery as it was today.

I listened as best as I could, trying to take in the majesty of everything that I was seeing.

"And that brings us to today, where I would like to see us going into more homes, while our board of directors can only see one way of making money."

"The rich?"

The words slipped from my lips before I could stop them. My eyes grew wide at the transgression and I covered my mouth pretty bloody quickly.

He chuckled.

"Exactly. The bigger the pound sign, the more money they make in their mind. They don't understand that quantity of sales would help line their pockets infinitely faster."

"Or they simply can't understand," I pointed out as he started to slow his pace.

I slowed with him, looking up at him as he searched my eyes for something.

"Something like that," he muttered, before he shook his head violently. "Unfortunately that means our shareholders are getting a little tighter with their purse strings."

He pushed open a door and led the way into a large board room, almost matching Mr Woods' office in colour scheme. A coffee station, complete with espresso machine and nitro cold brew tap, was situated in the back corner of the room while a long mahogany table held pride of place in the centre of the room.

At the head of the table stood a heavily pregnant woman, dressed in the same business attire that everyone in the offices wore. Sleek and incredibly tight, leaving very light to the imagination.

On the table in front of her was a small pile of papers.

The beautiful mother-to-be looked from the papers as we approached and gasped.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Eric, she's freezing," the woman cried. Without a moment's hesitation, she waddled over to me and touched my drowned jacket.

"Oh, my dear, you're soaked through."

She looked over my shoulder and nodded.

I couldn't help but follow her line of sight to see a man in a black suit standing in the corner. The man gave a quick nod in return before slipping from the room, pulling out his phone as he made his leave.

"You could give her something to warm the poor thing up."

The gentleman beside me couldn't contain his smirk, pulling out a chair for me to take a seat.

"I did," he said, before adding a "sort of", just loud enough for me to hear.

My eyes widened, a blush heating my cheeks at the sight of him throwing me a wink.

Did he know what effect he was having on me?

"I'm sure you did, as she's still shivering," the woman scolded, as she sat beside me. The VP let out a laugh, before he asked how I took my coffee - coconut with hazelnut - and he turned his attention to the coffee station.

"Don't worry, he's not as much of an asshole as the media makes him out to be."

"I know," I mumbled, my teeth starting to chatter at the realisation that I was indeed freezing. "He stopped me from falling flat on my face."