Page 17 of Irresistible
“How do you know I don’t have work to do?”
“You almost never have much work to do. It’s part of being a bank branch manager, right? You’ve even told me that it feels like you get away with stealing. You have that little work to do,” Scarlet said.
“Fair enough. I actually have something to do, but it’s not that much. Just tell me what’s going on. Are you about to break your promise to me? I swear, I’ll never speak to you again,” Jim said with a wry smile.
“No. But we did just talk about how awkward things have been over the past couple of days. And now we’re going to get coffee at three o’clock,” Scarlet replied with a playful grin.
“Why couldn’t you just let it be awkward? I don’t trust you for a minute. You’re going to wind up hooking up with this guy, aren’t you? You’re really going to endanger all of our jobs, aren’t you? You don’t know exactly how powerful the CEO of a company like this is. He could close this branch and put all of us out of work with a snap of his fingers. I’m sure he would, too, if the situation got weird enough,” Jim said, the smile on his face quickly fading.
“Look, have I ever broken a promise to you?” Scarlet asked, daring Jim to come up with an instance of her disloyalty
“No. You’re really ironclad. But that’s kind of why I’m worried. I haven’t seen you get like this over a guy before. There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”
“You have to know I wouldn’t do that. But you can’t keep me from enjoying every moment up to that line? You can’t keep me from doing everything up to breaking my promise and taking a great deal of joy in all of it. You know that, right?” Scarlet asked, increasing her intensity with each word.
“Of course. I’m not sure I would stop you even if I could.”
“Good. Then why don’t you just trust me as your friend, and let me live my life in accordance with my own beliefs? If I break my promise to you, you’ll have every right to cast me out of your friend circle,” Scarlet said, standing to leave.
“Okay. Fine.”
“But keep in mind, you always have the right to rescind the promise you forced on me and let me be happy,” Scarlet said, turning around just as she was about to open the door.
“Yeah, I don’t see that happening.”
“It was worth a try.”
The two exchanged winks as Scarlet left Jim’s office. Now Scarlet had to walk an incredibly fine line. She wanted to patch things up with Richard, but she had to make sure that she could still be friends with Jim once Richard left. There would be more time to think about the specifics later. All Scarlet wanted at this point was to have coffee with Richard and regain the friendship that they had developed before she turned him down. She went back to Richard’s office and screened some emails for him. You would be surprised at the sheer amount of junk email that a CEO’s email address gets in a given day. Almost all of them have at least one assistant to separate the junk from the emails that actually need to be addressed. Today, that was Scarlet.
“Are you ready to go?” Richard said, as he hung up the receiver from his latest call.
“Of course. After you.”
The two left his office and walked out through the lobby. All the tellers gave the two suspicious looks as Richard held the door open for Scarlet. This was not a business that experienced much in the way of true gossip. This was food for the gossip-starved, and the group intended to make use of every last bit. Scarlet didn’t care and Richard seemed oblivious. All she wanted to do was enjoy this coffee date with him and see what came of it.
