Page 34 of The Blind Date

“I would have said no.”

"I know." He grinned, his lips curving even higher. "That's another reason I didn't ask you."

The longer I stared at him, the more I saw red, even behind my eyelids when I closed my eyes. There was just something about this man that infuriated me to no end. Something about him that would forever rub me up the wrong way and have me seeing red.

Unable to stop my anger from getting the best of me, I made a show of returning my attention to my plate–now sans my favourite vegetable–but behind the act, I stomped my foot down on his. Hard.

“Fuck! Ow!” Cedric cursed under his breath. At the shock, he lifted his leg and ended up banging his knee under the table, causing him to curse some more which sent Yasmin off on another rant about not being able to take him anywhere.

“Sorry.” I sent him a sickly sweet apologetic smile, not meaning it in the slightest. “My foot slipped.”

"Oh, it was just an accident, Cedric. You’re a grown man. Don't be so dramatic." Yasmin tutted.

Cedric grumbled under his breath and apologised to his mum. As soon as she looked away, he turned to me with a harsh glare, but I paid no attention to it. Instead, I sent him another sweet smile and kept my eyes trained on my food.

Even though I was never one to turn down chocolate fudge cake, I was glad that everyone came to the collective decision that they were too stuffed for dessert. Our parents led the way out, and I trailed behind. Unfortunately, even after stomping on his foot, Cedric hung back to walk alongside me.

“I forgive you.”

"For what?" I asked, feigning innocence.

"For hitting me," he clarified.

"I would hardly call accidentally stomping on your foot hitting you," I scoffed.

"Accidentally, of course," he mimicked my scoff and shook his head, a humoured chuckle slipping through. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again.” He halted and turned to face me. "You’re quite the character, Saffron. I don't think I've met anyone like you before."

“I’m not a character. I'm very much real," I snorted and continued walking, leaving him behind.

I took a few steps before a crazy idea sprang to mind. Perhaps I would regret this in the morning, or it would be a funny story I would tell my friends and then hide my face in embarrassment over, but I swivelled around on the balls of my feet to face him.

He sent me a questioning look. Instead of answering, I took slow, purposeful steps toward him, stopping only when the tips of my boots were flush with the tips of his trainers. I tilted my head up and made a show of fluttering my eyes closed. I waited a few moments, slowly angling my head up further the whole time before I opened them again.

Just as I had expected, Cedric, like the brainless moron that he was, had closed most of the distance between us, leaving only a hair span of space between our mouths.

After all the arguing, he actually thought I would kiss him!

I grinned widely and rose on my tiptoes to close the distance between us. The moment our parents called out for us, wondering where we had disappeared to, I lightly pressed my lips to the corner of his mouth. Before he could open his eyes and turn his accusatory eyes on me, I turned around and ran to my parent’s car, getting in and demanding that they start driving.

That would give him something to think about.

ChapterSeven

"That was intense, huh?" Owen murmured in question as we headed out of the lifts. It had just turned ten in the evening, and we had only now finished work.

“Intense would be putting it lightly,” I groaned. "What's even worse is that it's Monday, and we still have the rest of the week left."

"It was an eventful Monday, that's for sure." He echoed my groan. “There couldn’t have been anything else that could have possibly gone wrong today.”

The release itself wasn’t difficult. It was all the small things that kept going wrong that were difficult and took us a whole five hours to complete.

The worst part was that the two of us would have to be available early tomorrow morning in case anything went wrong on start-up and we needed to revert our changes. Not only would that be a waste of effort, but we would need to go in for the release again later this week. Just thinking of that possibility had me wanting to cry.

Did I mention that it was only Monday?

Most of the time, I loved my job. On days like today, I wondered if I would be able to spend the rest of my professional career doing long, difficult releases, but it was nothing greasy chips and a meaty cheeseburger couldn’t soothe away.

When we were out of the building, Owen turned to face me. “It’s late and neither of us has eaten yet. Do you want to grab a late dinner together?”

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