‘I do,’ he said, and her grip tightened around the folder in her hand. She crossed the room and placed it carefully on the table and turned to him.
‘I thought you’d be busy preparing for the presentation today,’ she scolded lightly.
‘I was but I couldn’t do a lick of work without seeing you first.’ She felt heat creep up her neck, his presence like a magnet pulling a needle.
With a firm grip around her waist, he pulled her in between his legs. She stumbled onto him, her hands bracing herself against his hard chest.
‘Last time we were almost caught, that wasn’t adventurous enough for you?’ she asked, though her heart fluttered in her chest. She could smell the faint aftershave on him and she indulged herself by reaching up and rubbing her palm on his smooth jawline.
He closed his eyes, and leaned into her touch, a small smile playing on his lips.
‘I came here with such good, pure intentions but you can tempt a saint to commit a sin,’ Abhay said, then pulled her in for a kiss.
‘The door,’ she managed to say in between gasps.
‘Shh,’ he whispered, and his tongue swiped lightly on her lower lip. ‘Just this once.’
His pleading words shattered her inhibitions and she wrapped her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss in surrender. A strangled moan rang from his throat and his hand slipped behind her head to tilt her head back.
He kissed her slowly, like he was savouring her taste. His lips moved against hers in a slow, deliberate rhythm that drove her crazy. She felt a sudden urge to push him back onto the desk and climb onto his lap.
Luckily, Abhay still had some sense of the surroundings because he broke the kiss with a regretful sigh.
‘You’re going to make us late,’ she tried to reprimand him.
‘If being late means I get a kiss from you, I’d risk every minute.’
‘Did you come here just to steal a kiss?’ she asked, trying to catch her breath.
She caught how his jaw tensed when he said, ‘I wish but unfortunately, I come bearing bad news.’
Siya sat at the edge of the desk next to him as he handed her a glossy stack of reports. Her attention caught the#8658: Fraud Alertstamped on top in bold red. She read it through one by one, her pulse pounding in her ears.
Several gemstones from Shyamlal’s collection had been artificially treated. Her eyes flew down to the graphs where the final comment was flagged with an asterisk. Clarity enhancement fillers had been applied to stones he’d called naturally mined Colombian emeralds. Her heart twisted.
‘Bastard,’ ripped out of her throat as anger burned in her veins. She tore her gaze away to Abhay and saw the same fire in his eyes.
‘It’s good that we didn’t take his word on its face value. We have proof of his fraudulent scheme now but this could have slipped through the cracks so easily if we hadn’t looked closer,’ he said.
‘How did you get these done so fast? I thought it’d take a few days to get the results.’
‘Dhruv sent these in for rush inspection to a very reputed lab. His executive assistant dropped it off on my desk last night.’
Disbelief, warmth, suspicion tangled inside her into a ball. Her stomach dropped. ‘Wait,’ she whispered, ‘Dhruv did this?’
At a loss for words, Abhay just shrugged.
‘I can’t believe that he actually listened to our concerns,’ Siya said.
‘Not just that, he acted on it too. He even approved samples for enhanced testing.’
Siya bit her lip. Shame flared through her because she’d mistaken Dhruv’s insistence as arrogance. She realised this was the first time Dhruv had taken her voice seriously, and that knowledge both relieved and unsettled her.
She gathered the reports into a neat stack, her fingers shaking slightly. Abhay placed a steadying hand over hers and she lifted her gaze to meet his.
‘What do we do now? If we replace Shyamlal at this stage, Dad will push back. He’s already invested so much. And how will we find a reliable supplier this close to the launch?’ she asked, rubbing her temples.
‘Well…’ Abhay trailed off, handing her another folder. ‘These are some of the local suppliers, one of whom aced the lab tests and comes highly recommended.’
