Her boss

33

"Why did you want to call me sir?" The assistant's voice echoed in the call for a couple of second.

It waited for another echo of a response from the man, but that never came.

Not a single sound was made.

This caused Nathalie to become confused about the reason that her boss was calling for, and why he wasn't speaking back to her

"Mr Agreste?" She asked. "Are you still there?"

"Y-yes!" He exclaimed. "N-Nath I am sorry b-but-"

"Is something wrong?" She interrupted his slow words. "Pardon me sir, but you sound...odd."

"Well..." the man awkwardly chuckled. "I suppose this is rather strange, all I wanted to asked was if you were alright?"

"Oh." Nathalie tensed up for a moment.

It took her by surprise that her usually cold, strict and ignorant boss would wonder about such a thing.

Did he really care about her?

Or did she look so bad that morning that even Gabriel noticed?

The second question turned the assistant's hopeful smile into a frown which only disappeared with a strong shake of her head.

"Nath?" His voice brought her back as it echoed through the phone.

"Yes!" She cleared her throat. "I-I am f-fine!"

"Are you sure? I was worried that maybe I gave you too many tasks and that's what got you so sick."

"Sir." The dark haired woman forced a strange laugh. "I-I am perfectly okay. I-I mean perfectly okay with the workload!" She corrected herself before getting too lost in the idea of her boss being caring and her giving in.
"The tasks were basically nothing!" Nathalie lied. "I'm sure they aren't the reason for this little sickness."

"Alright." Gabriel sighed feeling hopeless.

Now he didn't know what to say.

If his assistant was fine then there was basically no point in continuing this conversation anymore.

Except, both of them secretly wanted to.

"Nathalie?" The man's voice unexpectedly began to speak again, to which his employee without hesitation replied:

"Yes sir?"

"If I would accidentally get carried away with giving you tasks or just in any way overwhelming you, you would tell me, right?"

"I-..." for a second the dark haired woman became speechless.

Never, or at least not in a long while had her boss asked such a thing.

Maybe something similar to this question came up when she began working for him, but right now that felt like centuries away, and hearing it again shocked her.

"Nathalie?" His voice repeated. "Are you there?"

"Yes sir!" The assistant blurted out.

She had not collected herself and she didn't know what she'd reply.

Of course, it should be simple to slip in a little lie and say that she'd tell him whenever he'd put too much pressure on her, but truth was that as of right now, for some unknown reason Nathalie couldn't get herself to say that.

For many years she's struggled with communicating anything to her boss, and now, at last she could have an opportunity.

"Sir." Nathalie's voice trembled slightly as she took a deep breath. "I actually have been wanting to tell you something about that."