My Lovely Boss

Chapter 4

4.

I took a seat towards the back of the cafe. I decided to busy myself with my phone while I waited. Romantic eBooks were my time-killer.

I was reading a story where Jay came and placed a kiss on Jennie s cheek startling her (characters from the story). Then, to my surprise, the same thing happened to me. I felt a kiss on my cheek sending goose bumps all over my body with sudden hotness behind my ears. I looked up and saw Ryan who was still leaning towards my side. I pushed him away due to the sudden shock he gave me.

He was wearing a white round neck t-shirt and blue jeans. Someone please pinch me. He was looking extremely handsome like a supermodel from some magazine jumped out in front of me. I could still feel his lips on my cheek with his cologne still lingering around me.

"Hey beauty, good morning to you too. Is this your new method of greeting?" He asked, taking a seat opposite of me. He picked up a menu but continued staring at me intimidatingly.

"You just have to stop doing things like that." I pointed my index finger at his face trying hard to control the aftereffect of his kiss.

I glanced around the café and saw two girls sitting at the table next to us. They were giving me looks of envy while drooling over Ryan. I quickly looked back at Ryan before they saw me looking at them. He just smirked and asked what I would like to have. After scanning through the menu for almost ten minutes, we were ready to order.

We had so many plates of food on our table after waiting for half an hour. My most favorite dishes on the table were cheese croissants, garlic bread, nutty fudge brownies, cocoa fantasy, big crunch chicken burger, egg wraps. Yummy......

"You ordered everything I like. Are you trying to make me fat?" I asked teasingly. I was so hungry that I could eat half of what was on the table easily.

"Miss foody, I know currently you are tempted to eat all of this, and go on, but we will share. I can order more if you want. And about you becoming fat, that s something I would like to see." He said, winking.

"What do you mean? Whatever. Let s eat, this food is so tempting." I said and started eating.

He was watching me eat. I don t care. Uhhhh, actually, I do.

"Are you going to eat or will continue to watch me eat? Will it fill you up?" I asked.

"How can you look adorable and seductive at the same time?" He commented, while taking a bite of his burger and penetrating his brown eyes into mine.

I dropped what I was eating and looked at him with shock.

"RYAN!" I said, blushing. "Are you nuts?" I faked anger.

"Maybe." He said, shrugging his shoulders. "You are making me crazy. All this time I controlled myself and now I am losing you because of it." He looked at me emotionally.

"Ryan we have decided to be friends; you are again changing your track." I said. I felt very hot in my stomach as I saw him sighing heavily and running his both hands through his silky hair. I registered deep sorrow in his eyes.

"I already made a big mistake by choosing the wrong person once in my life. It cost me a fortune. She took my peace, my happiness, a part of my heart. She took everything. I don t want you to do the same. Just answer me Ana, Are you sure about Anshuman?" As Ryan took Anshuman s name I suddenly felt nervous.

This was the question I keep on asking myself. But then my Mom s happy face came in front of me and my doubt subsided instantly.

I wanted to be positive about Ansh but the person sitting in front of me was making that hard with his loving eyes. This feeling was so different from my first meeting with Ansh. There was only uneasiness because of how awkward we were.

Ryan was looking at me with his head tilted to one side and a little smirk on his lips.

"Your silence gave away your answer." He said, smirking.

"What, Nooo, I haven t answered your question yet. Ansh is very kind and friendly. So yes, I am sure about him." I said, taking a sip of my latte coffee nervously, looking down.

"Do you love him?" He asked. Oh crap.

"Ummmm, I don t know that." I replied. Why did he have to ask that?

"You don t know if you love him, but you are marrying him?" He asked while shoving his plate away angrily.

"Yes." I said, looking down at my plate. I was no longer hungry.

Why?" Bossy Aryan Patel was back.

"Ryan, we are doing it again," I said, getting up.

"What are we doing?" He asked me to get up as well. He followed me to the counter where I paid for our food. As I turned to leave Ryan grabbed my hand to stop me.

"Stop, where are you going?" He asked softly.

"I am leaving. There is no point in this meeting. Did you really want to apologize or just complete our last encounter in your office? You know what? I better resign. I still had my resignation letter at my home. I will meet you tomorrow with it. Please do accept it." I said, shaking my hand free from his grip.

I made my way towards the door. Again, Ryan grabbed my hand to stop me. I turned around but before I could say something he immediately dropped to his knees and held his ears between his fingers.

"I am sorry." He said, looking down.

I looked around the café and saw that everyone was looking at us and whispering about us. I felt embarrassed.

I immediately bent down and held his shoulders and made him get up.

"Ryan what are you doing? Please don t do that again. I am sorry for behaving so childishly." I said. We were staring at each other. I could do this all day. Staring at him was really sensuous.

He grabbed my hand and led me back to our table, where the remaining food was waiting patiently for us to eat.

"Let s just finish eating. I promise I won t get angry again." He pleaded, while making me sit down. I sat but didn t utter a word. So, he continued.

"Baby doll, truly sorry. But you know that I am letting you go. I think it s my right to know everything about the person you are choosing over me. And the main thing I know is that you don t love him." He kept looking at me waiting for my reply.

I sighed.

"Let s just forget what happened earlier, but I will not tell you anything until you tell me first about the wrong person you mentioned earlier". I said, folding my arms and looking at him demandingly.

"OK." He agreed.

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Crowded yet peaceful.

After finishing our food we decided to explore Mumbai, so gateway of India was our first sight, though I have been there so many times but walking around there with Ryan was a totally charismatic thing.

My car was parked near a coffee house because of Ryan's humble request. It was a funny thing for me to realize that he feared my last action of walking away against his arrogance. He was being more polite than usual. But on the other hand, it was making me uncomfortable too.

"Ryan, will you stop acting like this, I said I was sorry. But you keep on behaving strangely." I pointed him to sit beside me as I sat on one of the benches in the garden near Gateway.

"Strange?" he looked at me, showing a little bit of confusion. Ohh he looked so cute. I wanted to kiss him right away. Opps, I should control myself. I instantly looked down and I think he caught my discomfort.

"Ana, look up. I am sorry again. I just can't settle on how to act around you. I feel you would leave at any moment, that's why I was controlling myself" He misunderstood my awkwardness.

"I would really leave you if you keep on apologizing." We were seriously having more useless conversations than actual things. I needed to stop it.

"Ok before you say anything stupid let me clarify you, let bygones be bygones, leave it, now let's move to what we agreed on, okay? And please behave freely. Your calculated talk is really killing me slowly". I stabbed myself in the stomach with an imaginary knife. He laughed a little in my last sentence while shaking his head.

"As you say mam, so ask me anything you want to know." he said very calmly, slightly coming close to me.

"You better start talking about your wrong person who I can guess was Sonia Singh, right?" he sat straight and folded his hand as I said her name.

"Right" he breathed this word along with a sigh. I could guess his past was tragic.

" It was my first day in a new high school and I already hated it. Everything was different.

As I entered the school everyone was looking at me as if they were seeing an alien. There were very few fair people around there.

I made my way to the nearest group of boys and asked them about my class direction, but they started ragging me.

They were talking only in Kannada. Irritating me, poking me. I didn't know what they were saying but they were making fun of me. I asked again about directions. This time in English but again they laughed. As I was going to hit one of the most annoying of them, she came and started shouting at them. She dismissed them. They seemed somewhat frightened.

Then she helped me to find my class. She was very friendly, sweet and an outsider like me, but her father was on the school committee. So, no one messed with her.

She had a strong first impression on me.

After that day we were inseparable. She was always with me. Everywhere. I was finding you in her. I thought she would help me to detach myself from you. "He paused and it gave me time to process what he just said.

"Wait, what do you mean by detach?" It felt like he did it forcefully.

"Yes, actually our parents had fought over us. My mom didn't like you being around all the time and my affection towards you. She had some status issues at that time which were solved after a few years. Now she fully realized her mistake." He said remorsefully.

"What?" I made a big o of my mouth which he closed.

"Don't hyper. This is all a different story. You were actually too young to understand anything, so there was no point telling you anything at that time."

"And this story will continue after your first story, OK!" For now I was more interested in knowing about him and Sonia than our past.

"Sure".

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