CHAPTER 7 – A PRIMITIVE MAN

The moment the door clicked shut, Chatrine found herself alone inside Liam’s office, a room that looked less like a workspace and more like the headquarters of a functioning psychopath. She set down her bag, let out a long breath, and muttered to herself,

“Alright, Chatrine. The challenge begins. If you can survive working in this room without losing your sanity, you can survive anywhere.”

Before opening her laptop, she carefully began tidying the clutter across the desk. A man’s territory could hide all kinds of unexpected dangers. Chatrine decided caution was necessary.

“Please don’t let me find a used condom.”

Meanwhile downstairs, the roar of machinery erupted through the workshop once again, vibrating against walls coated in sawdust.

Liam, his arms already dusted pale with wood particles, focused on trimming the corner of a massive classical dining table commissioned by Tobias Harlot, a billionaire who had entrusted the interiors of his new London mansion entirely to Liam’s gallery.

Around him, some workers polished furniture while others assembled unfinished pieces. Yet for some reason, their attention kept drifting toward Liam himself, who looked strangely out of place today in his neatly pressed shirt.

At last, one of them, Carlo, wiped the sweat from his forehead and spoke.

“Boss… is that blonde woman the new employee?”

Liam did not look up. He merely pressed the wooden board harder against the planer.

“Yeah. She’s replacing Eva.”

Just hearing Eva’s name shifted the atmosphere slightly, but another worker, Marco, leaned closer with shameless curiosity.

“She’s gorgeous. Is she single?”

BANG.

Liam shut off the planer with a violent motion. The workshop fell instantly silent. Sawdust floated through the air as though even it had stopped breathing.

Liam looked at them coldly.

“Focus on your work. A woman like that belongs to a different world from this woodshop. Don’t let your fantasies run wild.”

His voice came out sharper than necessary, though underneath it lingered something bitter, as if the warning had really been meant for himself. The workers immediately quieted down. Carlo even grabbed a hammer and pretended to work, though his face had gone red trying not to laugh.

Then Liam added, this time in a lower tone, clearly wanting to kill the gossip before it spread any further.

“She’s just an intern. An art student from the city. Eva’s friend. I’m not even paying her.”

“Ohhh… a student.” The workers nodded together like an audience that had just witnessed a dramatic plot twist.

“No wonder she’s so beautiful. Think she’ll come visit the workshop?” Marco still dared to mumble.

Liam shot him a glare. “Marco.”

“Yes, boss. Focusing.”

Marco immediately pretended to hammer a nail, though the nail bounced straight off the wood.

Liam grunted and switched the planer back on. But the rhythm of his work had changed. Uneven now. Distracted.

Not because of the wood.

Because his thoughts were filled with Chatrine.

She had not made a single sound since going upstairs. No dramatic complaints about the heat, no shouting that the room was suffocating, no demands for mineral water. Nothing.

Silence.

Too much silence.

Especially for a spoiled city girl.

Liam slowly grew uneasy. He pretended to focus, but ended up cutting one of the boards crooked.

“Damn it…” he muttered.

Every so often, he glanced toward the staircase, his imagination growing increasingly absurd.

What if she had fainted upstairs from lack of oxygen?

Finally, with a heavy sigh, Liam set down the wood, lowered the machine guard, and wiped his hands with a rag before heading upstairs.

The office door stood slightly ajar. Liam pushed it open casually, but the second it moved—

he froze.

The room had changed.

The office that had once looked unmistakably masculine, chaotic, buried beneath scattered papers and rough sketches, had transformed completely.

The large wooden desk now stood spotless, occupied only by Chatrine’s glowing laptop. Books had been arranged neatly in vertical rows. Pencils sat organized inside a glass container. Even the drawer that had jammed for months was somehow fully closed.

Apparently, Chatrine possessed a natural talent for fixing furniture, though in reality she had simply kicked the drawer shut with the tip of her heel.

“What is that smell?” Liam frowned.

It was not wood.

Not paint.

It was… perfume.

Fresh, expensive, elegant. The entire office smelled as though a Fifth Avenue boutique had exploded inside it. Liam nearly sneezed.

His gaze snapped toward the shelf in the corner.

Nearly every bottle of his cologne stood uncapped.

Liam stared in horror. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me…”

Chatrine sat calmly in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, typing away on her laptop with the composure of a corporate executive. Without even looking at him, she said lightly,

“I was cleaning your office.”

Liam pointed accusingly at the perfumes. “You… used all of them?”

Only then did she glance over with a diplomatic smile, as though presenting a business strategy.

“Just a little. I was testing which scent could neutralize the smell of sawdust. Turns out the answer was… all of them.”

Liam stepped closer, staring at the perfectly organized desk.

“Where are all my sketch papers?”

“I sorted them,” Chatrine answered smoothly. “The ones with aesthetic value and commercial potential went into the green folder. The ones that looked like abstract emotional breakdowns… I threw away. It seemed safer before they fossilized on your desk.”

Liam looked at her, caught somewhere between irritation and reluctant amusement.

“You do realize this is my office?”

Chatrine smiled far too sweetly as she stood and adjusted her hair.

“And now it’s mine too. Don’t worry. I didn’t ruin anything. I merely improved your standard of living.”

Liam tilted his head toward the ceiling and sighed deeply.

“God, give me patience. Or at least earplugs.”

He had no intention of listening to any more of her explanations. This entire situation was already spiraling beyond his control.

He stood in the middle of the office that no longer felt like his own. The perfume stung his nose. His polished desk gleamed unnaturally clean. Even the piles of sketches that had once surrounded him like organized chaos were now arranged in rigid symmetry.

Too neat.

It made his head hurt.

Meanwhile, Chatrine sat elegantly in the swivel chair, laptop open, typing while occasionally glancing at Liam’s thoroughly displeased expression.

“You’ll adjust eventually,” she said casually. “Tomorrow I’ll call a painter. We should redo the walls in here, and probably the entire gallery. Maybe ivory white or matte gray. Those tones are far more elegant.”

Liam was still irritated by how thoroughly she had invaded his personal space, and yet she kept talking as if redesigning his entire life were the most natural thing in the world.

“That’s enough,” Liam cut in, his voice low and firm.

His eyes locked onto hers with unmistakable warning.

“I can’t take this anymore.”

Without another word, he began unbuttoning his shirt.

Chatrine’s eyes widened instantly.

Her heartbeat lurched violently into her throat.

Truthfully, no sane woman could watch a man like Liam strip half-naked without reacting.

“Oh my God… no, don’t undress in here…!” she blurted out in panic.

“You’re making me overheat.”

Liam ignored her completely and continued undoing every button until the shirt slipped off entirely, revealing broad shoulders, a hard chest marked with faint scars, and muscles carved by years of physical labor.

Sunlight poured through the window and slid across his skin, making him look dangerously real.

Chatrine’s pulse went wild. Something terrible was about to happen. She was sure of it.

But instead, Liam simply turned around and walked toward the bathroom partition in the corner.

A second later, the sound of the shower burst through the room.

Of course he was overheated. He had spent the morning working in a fitted dress shirt that trapped heat and clung to his body.

The real problem was that the bathroom was separated only by frosted sliding glass.

Chatrine stared in disbelief.

“…Seriously? He’s showering in front of me?” she whispered to herself, caught somewhere between relief and outrage. “That man is absolutely primitive.”