Celebrity Crush

Chapter 2

Aven's POV:

Slumping down on my desk and brushing my dark brown hair back with my comb, "your image is everything," I hear my father's voice in my head.

Glancing at the stack of applications on my desk I decide to read through a few, this should be all of them, today is the last day to apply and there's no more applications that I know of.

I make a mental note to check with Sandra, my front desk lady, if there's any late applications. I hope at least one of them is decent, I'm sick of needing a new assistant every month.

Flicking past the first few, the frown on my face getting deeper, most of the female applicants have attached pictures as their paragraph of why I should hire them.

I make a mental note to burn them later, hopefully burning the image from my mind too.

There are a few decent ones, but most of them have no experience in this type of job situation or they are just bland. No character in their paragraph, just all of the qualities like "teamwork, natural leader and organised". Don't get me wrong, they're great qualities, but I don't want just a robot who tells me what do to, or I tell them what to do, I want an actual friendship type bond where they can give me their honest opinion of business ideas.

Well, I have one more meeting then I can check in with Sandra and go for my lunch break. At least this one is just a live call so if I roll my eyes, they can't see me, and there's an option to hang up if I need to.

"Good morning Mr Thornton, we have the manager of the London branch on call ready for you," Leanne, my financial officer, lets me know.

"Aven!" Thomas, the London manager's loud voice booms once I enter the room, "nice to see you." He says, in a much more appropriate voice with a big smile on his face.

Is it too early in the meeting to hang up?

"Thomas." I greet back with a small nod of my head, a strand of my hair falling on my forehead. "Appearance Aven! Image is everything." My father's voice echoes as I brush it back. I need to get more gel.

"What should we do?" Thomas' voice brings me back to the room. Whoops guess I zoned out.

"Sorry Thomas, could you repeat that, but slower this time." I say with a smile, pretending he was just talking too fast. He doesn't need to know I wasn't listening.

"Sorry sir," Thomas nods, I almost feel bad for the guy, almost.

"Someone in the company or outside the company is stealing the donations money. We didn't notice it at first because they were just taking small amounts, but they've started taking hundreds every couple of weeks. We don't know which point in the transfer of the money they are taking it so it's hard to narrow down if it's on our side or further down the track." Thomas says, in a much more serious tone to the one he used at the start of the meeting.

I look to Leanne and she nods her head, agreeing to go with whatever plan I come up with.

"I will come to visit in 4 weeks. But between now and then I want you to narrow down who is dealing with the money and don't transfer as much at a time. Rotate small groups throughout the 4 weeks and give each group a different amount each time. I will send out a form of secrecy that the groups will sign to ensure they don't share how much they are passing through and the amount that gets stolen each time will hopefully tell us which group is taking the money." I say, looking over to Leanne for assurance. She takes note of the important parts that I mentioned and gives me a final nod of agreement.

"Thank you for your time Mr Thornton," Thomas says to me, the smile back on his face.

"Not a problem Thomas, we will check in with you later on to confirm amounts.

Ending the call, Leanne walks over to me with a glass of water, a comb and my hair gel.

"I will work out the amounts for each group and who will be in each and send it through for you sir, you go for your lunch break." Leanne says while I comb back my hair.

There's are few people in my business who I would trust with my life. Sandra and Leanne are two of them. They used to look after me when I was young, both of them only two years older than me, but we all grew up with business parents who were friends. The two of us, Robert and my brother were inseparable.

Robert also works at Earth Energy. He is mainly my driver and will come along to any parties or events as my manager. He looks after the smaller groups within the business, like advertising etc.

Sandra and Leanne got married two years ago, it was a beautiful wedding. Ever since then I've been feeling a need to find my other half, it's hard when most people want me for my money, reputation or who the media sees me as. That's why I have to fire each of my assistants, they all expect me to sleep with them just because I'm nice to them. I let them tell people whatever they want. "All publicity is good publicity. If people think you sleep with them, they people know you're straight. We don't want people questioning your sexuality, it's bad for business and that's bad for all of us son."

Smacking my head on my desk and groaning. Here comes another headache. My father's voice not making my day any easier.

I drag myself off my chair and to the elevator. At least it's my lunch break.

"Sandra has another applicant downstairs for you." Robert calls as the elevator doors shut.

Before I can thank him for letting me know, the doors are shut and I'm heading down to the ground floor.

When the doors open again my ears are filled with one of the loudest, happiest laughs I think I've ever heard. It brings a small smile to my face; I want to know what has made this person so happy. I walk closer to see him talking to Sandra, he must be the applicant.

His light brown curls bounce around as he talks and laughs with Sandra. His wide smile seems to make the room a little brighter. As he shakes his head, his pale, freckled cheeks flushing slightly pink at whatever Sandra said.

I snap out of the trance that I was in, shaking my head slightly. I must be more tired than I thought I was.

I walk towards them and he starts laughing again and I just want to laugh along with him.

Unfortunately, my creepy staring has to stop eventually because there's still an unknown person at my reception desk.

"What is going on here?" my voice booms, a lot louder than I intended. I cringe inwardly at the authoritative voice, reminding myself of my father. The guy at the desk looks over to me, his brown eyes wide, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

Ezekiel's POV:

Shit

I didn't plan on actually seeing him.

He's even hotter in person.

The light blue suit he's wearing contrasts perfectly with the dark, almost black colour of his hair. His dark green eyes are- oh they're staring at me. Shit what do I say.

I look at Sandra for some guidance. She smiles and chuckles slightly at me. Rude.

"He's just handing in an application form." She says coming to my rescue. She hands it back to me gesturing for me to give it to him.

He stands there waiting for me to walk over to him, what does he think I am? His assistant?

Not yet.

I stand there in my place, he can come to me if he wants it.

To my surprise he rolls his eyes and walks towards me. Taking it from my hands and walking out the front door. Only giving me a second to take in the intoxicating smell of his cologne, I have no idea what it is, but it was good.

He runs back through the door a moment later, "I'm just going for lunch Sandra is that ok?" he calls to her. At least he has some manners.

"Yes of course." Sandra says the smile on her face directed towards him now.

And with that, he was gone again.

Well at least I know I'm not getting the job after that first impression.