CHAPTER 4.

Glancing down, past the window behind her, Katherine watched as a black car pulled into the parking lot. She wasn't surprised when Nicholas Smith stepped out. Another expensive car…another exquisite black suit. She glanced at the home screen on her system.

Eleven o clock.

He was late. This was the fourth time this week this was happening, and yet nothing had been done to put him in check. The manner in which lateness was frowned on by the company had been strongly emphasized in all the meetings she had attended so far, yet Nicholas Smith came to work whenever he pleased. Sometimes, he even restrained from attending meetings on purpose. And with all that he was being let off the hook without a rain drop's worth of sweat.

What irked her the most about it was that no one else seemed to be bothered by the level of special treatment he was getting. As she watched him walk into the building, she wondered why she had never seen him wearing something in another colour. Despite his shity attitude, Katherine couldn't help but love the way he walked. Nicholas Smith glided with an athletic grace without skipping a beat. He possessed a blatant, leonine power and always walked with purpose and authority.

As he took his seat beside her, Katherine's senses were filled with an earthy scent. She couldn't exactly tell what it was, but it smelt good. She wanted the cubicle wall separating them gone so she could lean closer and get a good whiff of him. Good looking as he might have been, he was an ass. And that was one thing she could not stand.

Nicholas glanced past the cubicle wall, and at Katherine who was now typing away on her computer system. For some reason, the more he looked at her, the more curious he became about who she was, what her life in the past had been. He wanted to know every single detail about her.

Not that he felt any sort of attraction to her or anything. He did admit that Katherine Cooper was very pretty, but little misses 'goody Two-Shoes' like her were not his type. Opening his email, he started a conversation with a nameless email account.

'Send me the document.'

'Yes boss.' came the reply and almost immediately the link to a file appeared on his screen. Nicholas clicked on it, and a document with Katherine Cooper's face on it opened. Comparing the girl in the picture to the one beside him, it seemed she had been a little younger in the photograph. But she was still pretty. The corners of his lips curved up in a smile as his eyes scanned the picture one last time before he started scrolling. Just then, he heard her voice clearly and he looked up.

She was going round from table to table handing out the documents containing the new program that was to be implemented into their marketing strategies. If only she knew what he was doing at the moment. A thud at his table, dangerously close to his keyboard, told him that she had dropped his own file as well. But she had taken out the pin used to hold the papers together. And now most of them had fallen to the floor.

Nicholas glanced up at the scowl on her face and he nearly chuckled. This was the fourth time this week this was happening. And he had been the only one in the OpenOffice with his pin taken out.

If this was her way of responding to the way he had acted when they first met, it was very amusing because she was trying too hard to show him that they had a dissension and he felt that was a rather stupid, childish thing to do. He didn't even bother to pick up the papers strewn all over the floor because he wasn't going to use them anyways.

Her qualification was very good. One of the best he'd ever seen. In fact, the only person he knew who worked in this company and had better qualifications than these was called Nicholas Smith by name.

''Nerd.'' he muttered amidst a chuckle. Aged twenty-two years, Little Miss Kate had lost both parents in an accident when she was ten. She still had a legal guardian though. That must have been how she was able to go to a college as good as 'Harvard' He concluded.

A new message popped up on his screen. The profile photo on the email had the silhouette of a round table cast against a chromatic blue background. Nicholas frowned. He clicked on the message.

'It is forbidden to leave the table after being served. You have served…now you must continue to be of service Nick. There is no escape.'