Departure Lounge (Completed)

Sunday Dinner

One whole week has passed and still no word from Nate, I knew he was back in town actually the whole city knew, as he was the headline cover of probably one of the slimiest gossip magazines on the market. Nevertheless, it is not the magazine's fault he was caught with ­Bianca Souza, the rising Brazilian underwear model. To say I was completely fine would be an utter lie, jealously wracked throughout my entire body, practically seeing red I marched over to my paper bin and threw the magazine away.

"Ms. Romanos is it okay for me to take my lunch break now?" I felt the slight tap my on shoulder, "I'm sorry if I startled you, I tried calling but you weren't responding." My PA smiled apprehensively clearly not use to seeing me in such a state. In effort to try and regain some composure I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before answering.

"Yes Lauren that's okay, sorry I've been a bit...distracted this morning. Before you go or rather on your way out can you see it to my father gets this." I moved towards my desk to retrieve the large manila envelope handing it to her.
Officially back at work I had a decent amount of work to deal with due to my extended absence to spend time with the girls. My family indeed has a long history with money, my mother's family comes from what you called old money while my father's side of family owned a large shipping company which great-grandfather started in Greece. The Romanos name was widely know in the shipping world and had a global reach. Cole and I are to take over the company on the condition that we are settled in our lives but at the rate we're going that will be a while.

"No problem. Are you skipping lunch? If you'd like I can bring you back something, a few of the other PAs' and I are going to check out that new pizza place, Gino's." Lauren offered.

"No that's ok I have a lunch date this afternoon and I'm hoping he will be here on time." I took a cautionary glance at my watch.

"A date, really?" Lauren quickly sat down making herself comfortable waiting for what I only assumed would be the juicy details. I was about to explain that it was anything but the opposite when my 'date' decided to proudly announce himself.

"I'm here! Hungry! And you're buying!" Cole stepped into my office without even much as a 'Hello'.

"Oh him..." Lauren said scrunching up her nose obviously not very amused by my brother.

"Laura hun, long time no see." Cole stopped her on her way out.

"It's just Lauren as I've told you a thousand times already." She was obviously annoyed with my brother and did not care to be in his presence. "I will see you in one hour Ms. Romanos." And with that she made a quick exit.

"What have you done to my poor assistant Cole?" I asked as lock my computer screen and grabbed my handbag slipping it over my shoulder.

"Nothing!" He answered but I wasn't convinced and so gave him my 'don't lie to me' look. "Ok maybe I might have come on a little strong at the staff party we had last month." He confessed as he held open my door.

"Explain what you mean by "strong" please." I stopped in the threshold of my office door, arching one eyebrow waiting for an answer.

"It's not what you think okay, let's just go to lunch and I'll explain ok. I skipped breakfast and I didn't want to eat anything before coming here seeing you always complain about that 'bad habit'."

"It is a bad habit if mom ever knew you're the disciplined boy she raised, she'd probably send you back to reform school. On another topic, lately I have a craving for fortune cookies so I was thinking Chinese."

For the past week I have been meeting with Cole for lunch, mostly it consisted of him bringing take-out to my office and we having it there but today I felt the need to get out. Though today's need to leave the office had more to deal with Marc's threat of coming to my office since I refused to return his calls.