Page 8 of Irresistible

“I get where you’re coming from. He got me a little hot, too, if I’m being honest. I mean, who’s kidding who? The guy’s gorgeous. He’s successful. He’s rich. Who wouldn’t instantly fall in love with him. I’m sure he has all kinds of people tripping over themselves just to talk to him,” Jim said, starting to trail off a bit.

“I think he got you more than a little hot, Jim,” Scarlet chuckled.

“Fair enough. Anyway, back to you. I think you may just have to let this one be a fantasy, you know?” Jim said, snapping himself out of his reverie.

“I guess. I mean, you really don’t think there’s a chance this could ever work? These things happen every once in a while, right? Why can’t this be one of those times?” Scarlet asked in a desperate tone.

“I’ll be right there! Just give me a couple minutes, and I’ll be right in!” Jim yelled to Sunshine, who was waiting to leave for Café Soupçon.

“Do you have to go?”

“No. Our reservation isn’t for an hour. Sunshine’s just always been hyper-punctual. We’ll be fine,” Jim said quickly. “Anyway, I think it’s nice to think that this will be one of the exceptions to the rule that you shouldn’t date anyone you work with. But you have bigger things to think of here.”

“What do you mean?” Scarlet asked, even though she already knew the answer.

“Well, you have a job to think of. If this were to go south for you, you’d be the one to lose your job. They’re not going to fire the CEO over a crush that one of his employees has on him. Stuff always rolls downhill, you know?”

“I guess you’re right. I just wish you weren’t.”

“Wait, hang on Scarlet. I’m getting another call. Hold on just one second,” Jim said as he switched to his other line.

The line remained silent while Jim took his call. Scarlet felt somewhat down over what Jim was telling her, although she knew he was right. She kept reminding herself of all the horror stories she had heard from friends about dating at work. One of her her best girlfriends wound up getting fired when she dated a waiter she worked with. Scarlet couldn’t forget the endless nights spent talking with that friend about how she felt she had been wronged. The guy, of course, ended up being able to keep his job. He twisted the story to make it look like Scarlet’s friend was creepy and clingy when it was really just a relationship that didn’t work out. Sometimes bad things really do happen to good people.

“Scarlet? Are you still there?” Jim asked as the line came back to life.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m still here.”

“You won’t believe who that was,” Jim laughed.

“Who?”

“Richard Grant, of all people,” Jim said, trying to conceal further laughter.

Scarlet immediately tensed up. Every fiber of her being quickly regretted ever expressing any sort of interest in him. Surely, Richard was calling up to say that Scarlet’s behavior was inappropriate and that Jim should take some sort of disciplinary action against her.

“Crap, what could he possibly want? Also, how does he have your cell phone number? It’s about me, isn’t it? God, I knew I shouldn’t have said anything to him at the restaurant! I’m such an idiot. Why do I always do things like this. I should just be content for once in my life!” Scarlet said frantically.

“Hang on. Hang on. It was nothing like that. He didn’t even mention you.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, what did he want?” Scarlet sighed, her pulse rate starting to return to normal.

“He said that he and his team noticed some sort of issue with our financials. He said that it wasn’t the fault of anyone working at the branch. Apparently, something is going on with the way the bank’s central accounting software interacts with the accounting software we use at our branch. Anyway, the records don’t match up, and it turns out that Richard is going to have to stay longer than he originally thought.”

“Really? How long is he going to end up staying?” Scarlet asked nonchalantly, relieved that his call had nothing to do with her.

“Two weeks.”

“Wow. That’s a pretty long time. It’s going to take that long to get things sorted out?”

“Apparently. I guess he wants to stay to see how the interactions carry on once the central system is adjusted,” Jim explained.

Scarlet was letting herself drift into fantasy land again. Surely the CEO of a major bank can’t be reasonably expected to stay at one branch for two weeks over a technical issue. Banks must employ hundreds of people just to address IT problems. After all, they did have to protect people’s private information. If anything, this seems like something an overnight fix could take care of, with some possible follow-up at the branch the next morning. It hardly seemed like an issue someone as important as Richard Grant would have to handle personally.

She thought that there must be something that he wanted to stay behind for. Maybe he was interested in her after all. Perhaps she had made an impression. This could be the ending she was looking for, after all. Every relationship has a beginning, maybe this was theirs. She did everything she could to convince herself that this was an upside. Meanwhile, she didn’t realize that she had been silent on the other end of the phone for almost a full minute.

“Scarlet? Scarlet, are you there?” Jim asked repeatedly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Scarlet replied, snapping herself out of her fantasy.